Job costing for cleaning and janitorial companies

Cleaning contracts are priced per month, but they’re paid for by the hour, and a crew that stays 30 minutes longer every night quietly eats the margin. JobMargin puts every clock-in at every building against the contract, so you can see which accounts pay and which don’t.

What cleaning companies track in JobMargin

• GPS clock-in at each building. Cleaners clock in on their phones, with the location recorded only at clock-in and clock-out, so you know who was where.
• Spanish crew mode. The clock, hours, and daily log screens are available in Spanish on each crew member’s phone.
• Missed clock-out alerts. A shift left open past 12 hours shows up for the office to fix before payroll, common with night crews.
• Payroll hours export. Each person’s hours for the pay period, by pay type, as a spreadsheet for your payroll.

JobMargin isn’t scheduling software. Most cleaning companies set up each account (or each account’s month) as a job and track its margin there.

Set up for cleaning from the first day

When you pick Cleaning & Janitorial as your trade, JobMargin loads these cost categories for budgets, receipts, and job costs. You can rename or add your own at any time.

• Labor
• Supplies & Chemicals
• Equipment
• Uniforms
• Fuel
• Disposal
• Subcontractor
• Other

Bid line items use the units cleaning actually bid in: square feet (SF), hours (HR), each (EA), and lump sum (LS).

Example: what a cleaning contract looks like mid-way

Five-night-a-week cleaning for a 45,000 sq ft office, set up as one job per month. It’s the 20th, about two-thirds of the way through the month.

Two-thirds of the month is gone and labor is at 74%: the crew is working about 11% more hours than the bid allowed. If labor and supplies keep this pace, the month’s margin drops from about 21% to about 13%. The clock-in times show which nights it’s happening.

Guides and tools for cleaning and janitorial companies