How to calculate the hourly rate for your cleaning services

Why so many cleaning companies charge too little

Many prices in the sector are based on gut feeling or on what competitors charge. That is risky: your wage costs, travel and client mix are different. A correct hourly rate starts from your own costs and is only compared with the market afterwards.

The key insight: you pay your cleaners for every hour they are employed, but you can only charge for the hours they actually spend working at a client. Everything in between has to be built into your hourly rate.

Step 1: calculate your full wage cost

Start from your cleaners' gross wage. On top of that come the employer's social security contributions and other wage costs: holiday pay, end-of-year bonus, any meal vouchers, commuting allowance, occupational accident insurance and the fees of your social secretariat.

Cleaning companies in Belgium fall under joint committee 121 (PC 121). Always check the current wage scales and bonuses of that committee, as they are adjusted regularly. Your social secretariat or accountant can give you the total wage cost per paid hour for each job category. Work with that figure, not with the gross wage.

Step 2: work with productive hours, not paid hours

A cleaner who is paid for a full working week does not spend all those hours at a client. Part of the time goes to things you cannot invoice directly.

Work out what share of paid hours is actually productive. Then divide your wage cost per paid hour by that percentage. That gives you the wage cost per productive hour, the figure you use for the rest of the calculation. Non-productive time includes:

• Travel between clients during the working day
• Sick days and short authorised absences
• Statutory holidays and public holidays
• Training, team meetings and admin
• Waiting time, for example when a key is missing or a location is not yet free

Step 3: add your operating costs

Besides wages, you have costs that keep running whether you have many jobs or few. Convert them into an amount per productive hour by dividing your annual cost by the number of productive hours you expect in a year.

Do not forget overhead. The hours you or your team lead spend on scheduling, quotes and complaints are not paid for directly by anyone, so they need to be included in the price of every productive hour. Include costs such as:

• Products and consumables: cleaning agents, microfibre cloths, bin bags
• Equipment: vacuum cleaners, scrubber dryers, trolleys, plus their maintenance and replacement
• Vehicles: leasing or depreciation, fuel, insurance and maintenance
• Insurance: public liability and other policies
• Overhead: office, phone, accounting, software and the salary of whoever plans and follows up

Step 4: productivity, margin and rounding

Many clients ask for a price per month or per visit, not per hour. That is where productivity comes in: how many square metres a cleaner cleans per hour. It depends heavily on the type of space. An open-plan office goes much faster than washrooms or a practice full of furniture. Measure it on your own jobs instead of copying general benchmarks.

On top of your total cost per productive hour you add a margin. It is your buffer for unexpected costs and your profit. Preferably calculate it as a percentage of the selling price, so you know exactly what share of each invoice you keep.

Finally, round to a clear amount, and always round up. A few cents per hour sounds like little, but across all the hours in a year it makes a difference.

Worked example

Suppose you work with the figures below. They are fictitious round numbers chosen to illustrate the method. Do not use them as a reference price; replace them with your own figures.

• Total wage cost per paid hour: €22.00
• Productive share of paid hours: 80%. Wage cost per productive hour: €22.00 / 0.80 = €27.50
• Products and equipment: €1.50 per productive hour
• Vehicles and fuel: €2.00 per productive hour
• Insurance, office, admin and software: €2.50 per productive hour
• Total cost per productive hour: €33.50
• 15% margin on the selling price: €33.50 / 0.85 = €39.41, rounded to €39.50 per hour
• Suppose a client has a 300 m² office and your cleaners do 200 m² per hour there: a visit takes an hour and a half, so 1.5 × €39.50 = €59.25 excluding VAT per visit

Travel, recurring jobs and indexation

Travel between clients within your usual area is already covered by your hourly rate, through the non-productive hours. Charge a separate travel fee when a client is outside your usual area, for a short one-off job, or when you have to drive out specially for a single visit.

Recurring jobs are predictable: you can schedule them efficiently and your cleaners know the location. One-off jobs, such as an after-builders clean or a move-out clean, take more preparation and are harder to estimate. A higher hourly rate or a minimum charge per job is normal there.

Include an indexation clause in every contract. Your wage costs rise with indexation in the sector, and without a clause you absorb that increase yourself. State how and when the price is adjusted, for example annually based on wage developments in joint committee 121, and have the wording checked by your accountant or a lawyer.

Mistakes to avoid

The most expensive mistake often goes unnoticed: never checking whether the estimated time per job is right. Your hourly rate may be correct on paper, but if a job you estimated at two hours actually takes three, you still lose money. So regularly compare the planned hours per client with the hours actually worked.

In Cleaniro, your cleaners clock in and out through the app on their phone, and you see how many hours were worked per client. That quickly shows you which clients your rate no longer covers. On the Pro plan you can export those hours as CSV for your own calculations.

Also watch out for these pitfalls:

• Calculating with the gross wage instead of the total wage cost
• Forgetting non-productive hours, so every sick day or traffic jam eats into your margin
• Copying a competitor's price without knowing your own costs
• Giving a discount on recurring jobs when the work does not become more efficient
• Not adjusting your prices after a wage indexation