How do you all do smaller commercial estimates? per window, sq.ft. man hour? we have done all of these and a kind of combination of them, but were having troubling settling on a structure that balances out across various types. restaurants, offices, store fronts etc.
Thanks for your input!
When we did commercial we would do price per peice of glass and try to average at least 75.00 per man hour up to 100.00 per man hour. That’s just us and for our location.
Well we categorize our work into 3 categories.
Residential
Which is priced per window
Storefronts
Priced per window but lower. These accounts are like restaurants, small offices, strip malls etc. Weekly, bi weekly and monthly cleaning schedules.
Commercial
Priced per window . The price can vary depending
On frequency and accessibility to the windows.
These type of accounts are large low to mid rise office buildings, warehouses, medical buildings ect.
We try to get them on at least a quarterly cleaning schedule. So the price per window can be a bit more than our storefront accounts because they are cleaned less frequently and they are typically more difficult to clean being larger buildings.
It interesting to see the different types of bidding. All of these can be put into what is called factor bidding. You are factoring all the different variations each account. How often, how accessible are the windows, labor cost and time. The most important is to make sure your margins are good enough so your business is growing. Otherwise you have a job not a business.
thanks for the response. I had Olive Garden in town call me and want an estimate. here are some pictures, if you can please give me your price and the formula used to estimate it. I would like to see how each of you do this. really appreciate the help.
Since this is a restaurant, and will likely be more regular (at least once per month) use “route” pricing. Do a window count, $0.50 per pane per side for the small square ones, and $1 per pane per side for the regular sized windows.
I personally hate doing interior windows, especially in restaurants, so you might consider doing a 1.5 multiplier for the interior total. Helps with dealing with the blinds, booths and clean up.
Now add 15% on top of that for insurance and workers comp costs etc. (even if you don’t have it now, you will need it one day, so build that into your price)
Take a look at the totals, and ask yourself: “Would I be happy to do this job for that price? How long do I think it will take me? Does it fit in with my hourly price goals? Is it close to other jobs that I have?”
Also, why did they call you for a quote? Did you approach them? Are their windows dirty and neglected? Did they lose their regular window cleaner? Or are they just shopping for a lower price?
Understanding the motivation of a potential client can go a long way to avoiding trouble. That being said, if you are just building your business you may not care what their motivation is and that is just fine.
I clean 2 different Olive garden locations. The insides take a lot of time because of blinds and lots of hand prints that require extra scrubbing. One location takes me an hour, the other takes me nearly 1.5 hours to do. I recommend charging at least $100 for a monthly service, maybe more.
@Luke this is almost how I do things as well, except residential for us is variable as we have
monthly/bi-monthly/quarterly/yearly/bi-yearly/yearly and even bi-yearly residential customers and needed to create a fairer system as we didn’t want to be overcharging regulars or under charging the 1-offs/yearlys!
I would love to just offer monthly/quarterly/yearly domestic service and a fixed price on all 3 but I am there to meet my customers needs and schedules (within reason) so we are flexible on our price/pane.
Such good points @DanTheWindowMan on the “why did they call you” motivation?
I try to factor all of these on and that is why I find it so hard when people try to pin you down to an exact price if you haven’t personally seen the job. So many other variables at play besides window size/location.
Thanks for all the help on this estimate. Got the account for $65 weekly
That’s awesome! Good job man!
