How a Retail Cleaning Quote Is Built, and How to Compare Them

Put three retail cleaning quotes side by side and the prices can be a long way apart. Sometimes one provider is simply more efficient. More often the quotes are for three different jobs, and only one of them says so.

This post explains what goes into the price of regular cleaning for a shop, and how to compare quotes so you are comparing like with like.

What drives the price

Almost all of a cleaning price is labour: the hours a cleaner spends in your store, at the rate they are paid. Everything below changes either the hours or the rate.

Floor area and what is on it

A large open floor with a few fixtures is quick. A smaller store full of display tables, gondolas, mannequins and fitting rooms is slow, because the cleaner works around everything. When you ask for a quote, the layout matters as much as the square metres.

Floor types

Carpet is vacuumed. Hard floors are swept or vacuumed and then mopped, which takes longer and needs time to dry. Polished concrete, vinyl, timber and tiles each need the right product and method. A store with a mix of all of them takes longer than one with a single floor type.

Frequency

More visits a week costs more per month, but each visit is shorter because the store never gets far from clean. Three visits a week is not three-fifths of the price of five, because the first visit after a gap always takes longer. See how often should a shop be cleaned for how to set the frequency.

When the cleaning happens

Cleaning after close, before open or overnight is outside normal daytime hours, and cleaners working those hours are entitled to shift loadings under the Cleaning Services Award. A quote for after-hours retail cleaning priced as if it were daytime work means someone isn't being paid properly, or the hours in the quote won't be worked.

Access

A street-front store with a key and an alarm code is quick to get into. A tenancy in a shopping centre can mean signing in at the loading dock, a walk through back corridors and access only during set hours. That time is part of the job. We explained the centre rules in cleaning a shop inside a shopping centre.

Toilets, fitting rooms and staff areas

These take longer per square metre than anything else in the store. A shop with a customer toilet, six fitting rooms and a staff kitchen is a bigger job than the same floor area without them.

Glass

Shopfront glass inside and out at reachable height is normally part of the regular clean. Full-height and external high glass usually isn't, and needs ladders or poles and more time.

Consumables

Toilet paper, hand towel, soap and bin liners can be supplied by the cleaner and charged, or bought by you. Either works, but the quote should say which.

What a good quote should show

A quote you can compare should set out:

• The scope: the areas and the tasks, and how often each one is done.
• The visits: how many a week, on which days, and roughly when.
• The hours per visit, or at least an honest estimate.
• Consumables: included and itemised, or excluded.
• Periodic work such as floor scrubbing, carpet extraction and high glass, quoted as separate lines you can accept or decline, not buried in the regular price.
• The notice period and how the price is reviewed.

If a quote is a single monthly figure with "general cleaning" underneath, ask for the detail before you compare it with anything.

Comparing quotes

Lay the quotes out against the same scope. If one includes fitting rooms every visit and another does them weekly, they aren't the same price for the same job. Then ask each provider:

1. How many hours per visit have you allowed? If one quote allows ninety minutes and another forty, the cheaper one will cut corners or run over.
2. Who will be cleaning, and who covers when they are away? A store left uncleaned for a week while the regular cleaner is on leave is not a saving.
3. How will I know the clean happened? Our cleaners sign in and out of every visit on our app inside a geofence around the store, with a photo, so you can check attendance rather than trust the invoice.
4. What happens when something is missed? Our clients raise a request in our client portal and can follow it through to the fix.
5. What is the notice period? A long lock-in with a long exit protects the provider, not you. We work on 30 days' notice.

Our post on the clauses to check in a cleaning contract covers the rest of the paperwork.

Where cheap quotes come from

A quote well below the others usually means one of four things: fewer hours than the job needs, after-hours work priced at a daytime rate, periodic work left out so it can be added later, or the job being passed to a subcontractor you never meet. None of them stays cheap for long. The store gets cleaned less, the cleaner turns over, or the extras arrive on the invoice.

That doesn't mean the dearest quote is right. It means the price only makes sense next to the scope and the hours.

Getting an accurate quote

The more you tell a provider up front, the closer the quote will be to what you end up paying. Give them your trading hours, the floor types, the number of fitting rooms and toilets, whether you are in a shopping centre, and anything you have had trouble with before. A walkthrough of the store is better still.

When you are ready, ask for a quote or read what a regular retail cleaning contract should cover first. Our commercial cleaning page explains how we work with retail.