Cleaning contracts: a scope that survives month three

A cleaning contract is one of the few jobs quoted before anybody has seen it work. You price a weekly clean from a walkthrough, and then the reality of the site arrives one small request at a time.

Three months later the visit takes an hour longer than the one you priced, and nobody can point to the day it changed.

The scope is the product

A cleaning quote that lists a price and a frequency has sold the customer a feeling. The scope is what you are actually selling, so it belongs in the quote in the words the site uses.

Write it room by room, or area by area, with what happens in each and how often. Kitchen floors mopped every visit, skirting boards wiped monthly, inside the fridge on request and priced separately. A reader should be able to hold your quote against the site and tick it off.

Name what you do not do

The exclusions are worth more than the inclusions, because they are where the argument will be. Say plainly that you do not move heavy furniture, do not handle biohazard waste, and do not clean inside cupboards that are full.

A customer who reads that at quote time asks about it then, when it is a pricing conversation. A customer who discovers it in month three experiences it as you refusing to do your job.

An extra is a change, and a change has a price

The clean that kills a contract is never one big extra. It is a windows request in week two, a bins request in week four, and a storeroom in week nine, each too small to bill and all of them permanent.

Decide once what happens when somebody on site asks for something outside the scope. The cleaner writes it down, it gets priced, and it either becomes a one off charge or a variation to the monthly price. What it never becomes is a quiet addition to the visit.

Priced lines and optional extras belong in the quote itself, so the customer picks what they want before the work starts and accepts it in one tap. Quoting for trade jobs covers how to structure those lines so a customer can say yes to part of a quote.

Photographs settle disputes that words cannot

Commercial cleaning runs at night, and the person who judges it arrives in the morning with no idea what the room looked like at eleven. That gap is where most complaints live.

Before and after photos on the job close it. In Diract the cleaner ticks off the checklist room by room and attaches a photo where you need proof, and the customer gets one link to the lot. The complaint that a bathroom was skipped stops being your word against theirs.

It also protects the cleaner. A site that reports the same room every week, with a photo each time showing it done, has a problem on their side rather than yours.

Reprice on evidence, once a year

Hold the recorded time on site against the price you charge. Where the visit has grown, you have the photos and the checklist showing what it now includes, which turns an awkward conversation into a short one.

Bring the variations with you. A customer who agreed to four small additions over a year will usually accept that four additions cost something, as long as you can name them.

What to do first

• Write the scope area by area, with the frequency against each line
• List the exclusions in the quote, not in your head
• Give every out of scope request a price before the cleaner does it
• Photograph the rooms that generate complaints, every visit
• Keep the checklist the customer can read, and send it with the invoice
• Compare time on site against price yearly, with the variations listed