Window cleaning: pricing the access, not the glass

A window cleaner spends very little of the day cleaning glass. Most of it goes on reaching the glass and moving between panes.

A quote built on glass area therefore prices the wrong thing, and it prices it identically on jobs that behave nothing alike.

Height sets the method and the cost

Ground level work needs a bucket. First floor work needs a pole system. Anything higher needs a lift, a rope access ticket or a cradle.

Each step up multiplies both the equipment and the paperwork, so the quote has to name the method it assumed.

What stands under the window matters

Garden beds, air conditioning units, awnings, fencing and parked cars all block the spot where a ladder or platform has to stand.

A walk around the building at quote time finds those. Nobody finds them in a photograph, and the crew meets them on the morning.

Frequency changes the rate, properly

A pane cleaned every six weeks takes a fraction of the time a pane cleaned once a year takes, because nothing has bonded to it.

That justifies a genuinely lower rate for a regular round, which is the argument for selling the schedule rather than the clean.

Hard water and pollution leave marks nobody expects

Sprinklers hitting glass, coastal salt and construction dust all etch the surface, and ordinary cleaning leaves the marks exactly where they were.

Restoration is a separate job with a separate price and a real risk of damage, so a quote should identify it rather than absorb it.

Commercial work runs on a schedule and a contact

An office building needs access arranged, an induction completed and somebody who knows the cleaner is coming.

A single named contact, confirmed before each visit, prevents the most common failure in commercial work: a crew standing at a locked door.

Insurance and tickets decide which jobs you can quote

Height work has requirements, and a building manager asks for the documents before the first visit rather than after an incident.

Holding those current, and knowing the expiry dates, is what keeps a business eligible for the work that actually pays.

Weather moves the round, so tell people early

Cleaning glass in the rain wastes everybody's time, and a wet week moves an entire round at once.

A message the evening before, offering the new day, keeps a customer informed rather than waiting. Our guide to drive time on a round covers the same problem in another trade.

Tracks, sills and screens are extra, and worth selling

A customer looking at a clean pane through a dirty screen believes the job went badly, whatever the quote said.

Offering screens, tracks and sills as a named addition, with a price, gives them a choice and protects the reputation of the basic clean.

Water quality decides the finish

Pole systems rely on purified water, because ordinary tap water dries with every mineral it carried still on the glass.

Filters and resin are a running cost, and a business that lets them exhaust delivers a worse result without changing anything else.

Time the job, per building type

A record of minutes per building, by height and frequency, turns the next quote into arithmetic rather than instinct.

Instinct is reliable on the jobs a cleaner does constantly and wildly wrong on the unusual ones, which are the jobs worth pricing correctly.

What to change first

• The quote names the access method it assumed
• A walk around the building records what blocks a ladder or platform
• Regular rounds carry a genuinely lower rate than a one off clean
• Etched or stained glass gets identified and quoted separately
• Commercial jobs carry a named contact, confirmed before each visit
• Height tickets and insurance dates sit somewhere with expiry dates
• Minutes per building record by height and frequency