How to price a cleaning job without guessing

Two cleaners can quote the same three-bedroom house at £45 and £110 and both be right, because they are quoting different jobs. Pricing goes wrong when the quote happens before anybody has agreed what the job actually is.

Hourly or per job

Hourly protects you on a first clean, when you cannot see what is behind the sofa. Per-job pays better on regulars, because you get faster at the same house and the price does not fall as you do. The usual pattern that works: first clean hourly, regulars per job, quoted after you have seen it once.

What goes into the number

1. 1Your time, at a rate you would still accept in February — not the rate that felt fine in a good month.
2. 2Travel: time and fuel, both ways. A £40 job forty minutes away is not a £40 job.
3. 3Products and equipment, including the machine you will replace next year.
4. 4Insurance, per hour worked.
5. 5Tax and the weeks you do not work — holidays and illness come out of the same rate.
6. 6Then the job itself: rooms, bathrooms, pets, stairs, ovens, whether there are children's toys on every floor.

The walk-through questions

• How many bathrooms, and are any of them showers over baths?
• Pets? How many, and do they shed?
• Inside the oven, the fridge, the windows — included or extra?
• Ironing or laundry, or neither?
• Who is home while I work?
• How often — weekly, fortnightly, one-off? Fortnightly takes longer per visit than weekly, and should cost more.
• Parking, keys, alarm code.

Write the answers down and quote from them in writing, listing what is included. Almost every dispute in this trade is about scope, not money, and a list settles it before it starts.

Raising a price on an existing client

Four weeks' notice, in writing, with the new price and the date it starts. One line of reason, no apology. Most people accept; the ones who leave were the ones taking the most time for the least money, and their slot fills at the new rate.

Keep a record per client of what you quoted, what you actually spent there, and what it cost you to get there. After a month it is obvious which jobs pay and which ones you have been subsidising.