[Michael D]

Hi guys,
            How many houses, per month would be considered to be a small round, a med round, and a large round. for a one man and a two man team

[Ian_Giles]

Michael,

If you are busy all day, 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month, 12 months of the year, the amount of accounts you have doesn't matter.
It's all relative, kind of depends how big your accounts are.
All 2 bed terrace houses and you will need 30 or more a day. Got lots of large houses out in the countryside and you might only need 10 a day.

If you are averaging £100 a day you are doing pretty good no matter how big your round is!!

Ian

[Michael D]

Ian,
       Would you say 100 for a small round 250 for a med round and 500 for a large. I only wish to find out what people think about the av size of a round. Not how much to make

         Michael

[rosskesava]

Hi Michael

There's 3 of us doing our thing with windows.

Your question is difficult to answer because it depends on the size of properties etc that you clean.

We now have 142 resindential customers and 45 commercial customers. In the past we had more customers and earnt less.

The largest house we do takes 3 of us 6 hours and the quickest takes a few minutes. One commercial customer is just 1 window and the largest is maybe 60 odd.

I think the best idea is to fill up your books untill you always have work and then go for higher prices when quoting for new work and pass on the under priced work.

Cheers

Ross

[rosskesava]

Hi Graham

Is that per person?

We average about £200 in total for 3 of us when the weather allows. Today between us we managed £178.

I think I am correct that you use WFP's and I am now of the opinion that for some work they are quicker. I think had we been using WFP's then we could have done maybe 3 or 4 house more which would have taken the takings to about £250.

So yes, I agree with you about £250 - £300 but not with trad methods and ladders even though we use trad methods at the present.

Cheers

Ross

[Ian Rochester]

Rosskesava,

I am not trying to be derogatory, but that is way too low a turnover for 3 people, I expect one person to be doing that in a day.

By the time you've paid for your overheads, there must be hardly anything left.  Even without overheads, its less than £60 each per day, you can work in a factory job earning more than that.

One person should be capable of doing a 3 bedroom house (11 windows) in no more than 15-20 minutes and it is proportionatly faster if there are two of you doing it because the gear is split between the two, one concentrates on ladder work/pole work whilst the other does the ground floor.

You are either pricing yourselves way too low or you are working too slowly, I would guess it is most probably the price that is causing you the problem.

Surely Brighton is quite an affluent area and you should be able to command good prices.  Go out on Tuesday and stick all you prices up by £1.00 and if you are doing 40 houses a day then thats another £40 without any extra work, you may lose a couple but stick to your guns, make sure when you price new ones that they are priced right.

We live in the back of beyond where they winge about any price increase, but our minimum now is £5.00 for a small terraced house 6-7 windows, we did lose a couple that had been at £2.50-£3.00 but pick up lots more lucrative ones instead. 

[jsm]

You are either pricing yourselves way too low or you are working too slowly, I would guess it is most probably the price that is causing you the problem.

it may be somthing to do this Ross's car - they don't go over 5mph  they take all day to get down the road 

only kidding - john

[UBA1]

Hi Graham

Is that per person?

We average about £200 in total for 3 of us when the weather allows. Today between us we managed £178.

I think I am correct that you use WFP's and I am now of the opinion that for some work they are quicker. I think had we been using WFP's then we could have done maybe 3 or 4 house more which would have taken the takings to about £250.

So yes, I agree with you about £250 - £300 but not with trad methods and ladders even though we use trad methods at the present.

Cheers

Ross

Very wrong! With a decent well priced, compact round, easily £200-£250 per day! EASILY!

I sell excellent rounds and ALL of my previous clients earn £200 + per day, and that`s a 6-8 hr day. That`s just 1 shiner NOT 2 or 3!

All the fellas i know will NOT use WFP, and use traditional, on 3 seperate occasions i beat my mate who uses WFP, domestic i believe is far superior traditionally.

[s.hughes]

I wouldnt know if I have a small, medium or large round, I start the day off and finnish they day off 3 and a bit days a week. Its like Ian says it dosnt matter so long as your busy.
If I look at my paperwork it dosnt look like a lot of work but I do mainly large houses some of which take all day in & out.. My smaller houses I only need to do about 15 to earn my money.

Steveyboy

[s.hughes]

Ross
I think you are undercharging. It took mean years to realise that I was undercharging and I had to give up w/c cause I couldnt live on it. When I went back to it I was really hard on my customers and it has worked.
I gave a lot of work over to a mate who was starting up and he refused to do work that was underpaid unlike most of us when we first started. He went onto 1 road where i was charging 10.00 and increased the price to 18.00. Not everyone was happy but they accepted it. I was gutted cause I had always tried to increase them but got all the funny looks etc which made me feel bad. He said that if they didnt accept it he would just say that its not worth doing for less and start walking off. They soon stopped him and accepted the price.
I have found over the years that people seem to give you more respect when you charge more than they do if you are cheap. I dont know why but most certainly where I live it seems to be that way.

Steveyboy

[Ian_Giles]

£200-£250 easily?
No way. Not a chance, there may be the odd and very lucky experienced pro with several years working as a window cleaner getting up to that rate, but anyone reading this thread as a newbie will be being given very inaccurate information.

As an individual, if you can average around the £100 a day mark you are doing ok.
A great many will earn more than that, and many will earn less.
BUT IT IS REASONABLE TO EXPECT TO BE ABLE TO EARN £500 PER WEEK.

If you think you are going to buy a round as a complete newbie to window cleaning and earn £200 a DAY you will be in for a sad and disillusioned awakening.

It'll take you at least 3 months before you can become even reasonably adapt at the job, several months before you really get up to speed and in the groove.

If you read these forums, the average price, for the average 3 bed semi is probably around the £6.00-£7.00 mark.
Bare in mind I am talking AVERAGE there.
You will after you have got some experience be able to do 3 houses like this in an hour, 4 per hour if they are all virtually next door to one another.
But they are rarely all so close together, they are rarely all the same type of houses, or the same size.
You will not work for 8 uninterupted hours, time is lost throught travelling, talking to customers, driving off to find somewhere to use the loo, buying a pastie and so on.
Throughout a 9 till 5 day your productive time will be between 5 and 7 hours.

If all your accounts were 3 bed semi's and you were charging £6.50 per house, managed to do 3 an hour and also managed to work 6 hours you would turn over £117 in the day.
And don't forget, you can't work till 5pm for a lot of the winter, it's too dark.
When you apply time and motion studies to your working day you will see.

But to get back to the original thrust of the post.

The physical size of a round is totally irrelevent, it isn't how many, it's how much.

As I said above, if you are doing 20 accounts a day that is 100 houses a week, 400 a month. And THAT is PHYSICALLY a large account.
But you won't have all 3 bed semi's with just 10 or 11 normal casement windows in them
Now if someone is bragging they do 600 houses every month all by themselves they must be cleaning one bedroom grannie flats

There are just too many variables to consider, and if someone has a round that are all shops, they may well have lots of accounts that only take them 2 or 3 minutes to clean, less even on some (I know, that describes much of my work) add in a big office block and one account is taking up to 5 hours to do.

I'm hungry, need my breakfast

Ian

[gaza]

IAN: YOUR SPOT ON MATE :ave you been watching me on my round,doing a time and motion on me.some mornings though you must be wrong ,cus when Ive been on the booze the night before you would need a sundial to do t/motion.

[Simon Carter]

£300 per day, that's £1500 per week, getting on for £75 000 per year !. In most peoples language, that is very serious money. I agree that an average of £100 per day is more realistic on residential work, although without working terribly hard. Frankly, my experience is that most window cleaners don't want to bust a gut. The good news is there aren't many easier ways to earn £400 - £500 per week.
There was an interesting thread here the other day about tight fisted customers, but the only way I can think of possibly earning £250 - £300 per day is to have a bunch of customers who are frankly paying far more than they need to. £6.50 - £7.00 for a three bed semi sounds low to me, but you would need to be charging triple that to earn £300 per day, or else be jet propelled.
I have no wish to compete with the benifit fraudsters supplementing their beer money charging silly cheap prices, but  I'm sure that even if I could pick up work at the other end of the scale, I'd struggle to retain much customer loyalty.
If it is EASY to earn £250 - £300 per day, please tell me how?

[gaza]

IAN: YOUR SPOT ON MATE :ave you been watching me on my round,doing a time and motion on me.some mornings though you must be wrong ,cus when Ive been on the booze the night before you would need a sundial to do t/motion.

[GRAHAM.K]

£250-£300  per day easily?

sorry Graham, that is simply not true.  We've been in business over 40 years so I know a bit about window cleaning.Of course for some it is achievable if you have the right contracts and work hard, but in my experience £300 per day for the average single window cleaner is way off the mark. Do you actually clean windows for a living?
PS.let me know when you want to sell that gold mine of yours. 

[replacement]

Depends what your prices are. 20 houses aday at £6 = £120 now same 20 houses at £10 a clean = £200 aday.

Justin

[s.hughes]

£300 a day is way of the mark. Ian is right. If you can get it then great but in residential as a 1 man band I dont see it. Yes your prices may be high but I think that for any newbie w/c to read a thread like that will put them off w/c cause they simple are nowhere near to it. Us who have been in the trade for years can see when pigs fly (sorry for the expression) but I can see that every now and again you can achieve it but not everyday. No-way.

Steveyboy

[Simon Carter]

Justin is right. You can charge £10.00 where someone else selling himself short may charge £6.00, but even if we are talking bog standard 3 bed semis, 20 per day, day in day out is not easy & even then is only £200 per day, not £300. Unless you are insane, we all lose time to the weather etc. etc. Even £1000 a week as a residential window cleaner,working independently is unrealistic. It's wrong to mislead others as to what is reasonable to expect if new to this. I ask again. How is £1500 a week easy without charging way over the odds or bumping every other window ?

[GRAHAM.K]

Simon, I agree with you 100%. I have never, ever met a residential window cleaner, working on his own make any thing like £1500 per week, and I know lots of window cleaners. The only way to approach that figure is high quality , high profile commercial contracts.
Totally misleading.
Thats why I asked if Graham was a window cleaner.
I would assume the fundamental reason for this sites existence was to share knowledge, experience and help us all promote our businessess.
Stating on a website that window cleaners make £300 per day is not good PR.

cheers

[Michael D]

Hi All
        I agree with Ian £100 on a good day, and if I work hard. Sometimes £120 All depends what i have on my job list for the week. In total I have 230 houses 1 goverment job and 2 other jobs I fit  in I also clean carpets I do have a busy month

                 There have been some very intresting replies.