Guide · Commercial
Most bad cleaning contracts
were bad scopes first.
What to specify, what to ask, and what to check before you sign. Written so you can take it into a walkthrough and use it on every tenderer, including us.
Book a site walkthrough
Choosing a commercial cleaner is a procurement decision rather than a price comparison: the thing being bought is a schedule of tasks, performed to a standard, by staff you will rarely meet, at hours you are not on site. Almost every problem in this category comes from one of those four being left undefined rather than from a cleaner being bad at cleaning.
So the useful preparation is not collecting quotes. It is writing down what has to be done, how often, and who is accountable when it is not. Everything below is built around producing that document.
Write the scope before you ask anyone
Before you speak to anybody, write a page. It does not need to be formal, and it will save you more money than any negotiation.
- Every area, listed. Not "the office" — reception, open plan, two meeting rooms, kitchenette, two bathrooms, the stairwell, the back store.
- What happens in each area and how often. Daily, three times a week, weekly, monthly, quarterly. Bathrooms and kitchens are almost always more frequent than everything else.
- The periodic work, separately. Carpets, hard floor stripping and sealing, high dusting, internal glass, external glass, upholstery. These are the items that quietly disappear from a low quote.
- Consumables. Who supplies hand towel, toilet paper, soap and bin liners, and whether that is inside the price or invoiced on.
- Access and hours. When can they be on site, who holds keys or codes, is there an alarm, is there a lift booking, is there anything they must not touch.
- Your own constraints. Trading hours, patient or client privacy, food safety requirements, security clearances, anything that rules out a subcontracted stranger.
- What "clean" means for the two or three things you actually care about. Every site has them, and they are never the same two.
Send the same page to everyone you ask. Three quotes against one scope tell you something. Three quotes against three different assumptions tell you nothing, and that is the state most tenders in this category are in.
Work out what the low number cannot contain
Take the lowest quote, divide it by the hours the scope actually needs, and look at the hourly figure that falls out. Out of that number come wages and on-costs, superannuation, insurance, workers compensation, leave, equipment, chemicals and consumables, travel between sites, supervision, and the margin that keeps the business alive to service the contract next year.
If the figure is below what one of those alone should cost, the quote is not efficient, it is incomplete. Usually one of three things has happened: the hours have been cut and the scope will quietly shrink to fit, the periodic work has been left out and will be invoiced later, or the labour is arranged in a way that pushes cost somewhere you cannot see.
None of that makes the lowest quote wrong. It makes it a quote you should ask a specific question about. Ask how many labour hours a week the price is based on. It is one question, it is entirely reasonable, and the answer sorts the field faster than anything else on this page.
The terms to look at before the price
None of these are unusual to ask for, and a contractor who will not put them in writing has told you something useful.
| What separates a workable agreement from a stuck one | A workable agreement | The one you regret |
|---|---|---|
| The scope is attached (As a document, listing areas, tasks and frequencies) | ||
| Term | A defined initial term you chose | Rolling, automatically renewing, with a long notice period |
| Getting out | A stated notice period either way | Notice one way, or an exit fee you find later |
| Price rises | A stated mechanism and how much notice you get | At the contractor’s discretion |
| Periodic work | Scheduled and priced in the agreement | Quoted separately each time, at short notice |
| Consumables | Named as included or invoiced, with a basis | Unmentioned until the first invoice |
| What happens when standards slip | A process, with a timeframe to rectify | Nothing written, so your only option is to leave |
The exit terms matter more than the price, because the price is a number you can renegotiate and the exit terms are the reason you cannot.
If your site has its own requirements
Four situations where the scope needs more than areas and frequencies. In each case the obligations are yours to establish, and the cleaner has to work inside them.
If you handle food
Kitchens, cafés, venues and staff canteens all have requirements that sit with you rather than with your cleaner, and your cleaner has to work inside them.
Ask what they do differently in a food area: colour-coded equipment, separate cloths, what goes on stainless, and whether they will document what was done and when.
If you have patients or clients in rooms
Clinics, allied health, salons and consulting suites all have a privacy dimension as well as a hygiene one, and cleaning happens when nobody is watching.
Ask about staff screening, whether the same people attend every time, what training they have had for treatment rooms, and how clinical waste is handled and by whom.
If children are on site
Schools, childcare and anywhere running programs for young people carry screening requirements for people working on the premises.
Establish what applies to you, then ask the cleaner to show that their staff meet it and how they keep it current as people join and leave.
If the site is shared or stratified
Common property, multiple tenancies and a committee that changes composition every year. The scope has to say which areas belong to whom, or somebody ends up cleaning a space nobody is paying for and stopping.
Ask how they handle instructions from more than one person, because they will get them.
Where we fit, and where we do not
For completeness, since we wrote the list: we are a local business with our own employed cleaning team, working across the Northern Rivers and the Tweed. We are not a national contractor and there are jobs we are the wrong answer for.
If you need a multi-site contract across several states, a 24-hour roster, or a hundred staff cleared for one facility, engage somebody built for that. We would rather say so at the walkthrough than win it and struggle.
What we are built for is a single site or a handful of local ones, where the same small team attends often enough to notice when something has changed, where the person you ring knows your building, and where the cleaners are employed by us rather than found on a platform. If that describes the site, the way to find out is a walkthrough rather than a form, because commercial work is priced on floor area, frequency, trading hours and how much of the site is wet area, and none of that survives a quote form.
Read next
The two other guides a commercial buyer is likely to want.
Choosing a commercial cleaner: frequently asked questions
1. How do I compare commercial cleaning quotes?
Send every tenderer the same written scope: areas, tasks, frequencies, periodic work, consumables and access. Without that, three quotes are three different assumptions and the numbers mean nothing. With it, the remaining differences are staffing, supervision and margin, which are the things you actually want to choose between.
2. What should I ask a commercial cleaner before signing?
Who does the work and whether they are employed or subcontracted, what insurance is current and in whose name, who controls keys and codes, what happens when someone is sick, who inspects the work and how often, and who answers the phone at seven in the morning. Then read the exit terms before the price.
3. Why is one commercial cleaning quote so much lower?
Divide the price by the labour hours the scope actually needs and look at the figure. It has to cover wages and on-costs, insurance, equipment, consumables, travel, supervision and margin. If it cannot, the quote is incomplete rather than efficient. Ask how many labour hours a week the price is based on.
4. Should I sign a long contract?
A defined initial term is normal and often gets you a better price, because it lets a contractor invest in your site. What to avoid is a rolling agreement with a long notice period, notice available only one way, an exit fee you find later, or price rises at the contractor’s discretion. Read those clauses before the number.
5. Employed cleaners or subcontractors: does it matter?
It changes who is accountable, who carries insurance, and how consistent the person attending your site is. Both models exist and both can be run well. What matters is that you know which one you are buying, and that the answer you are given matches the certificates you are shown.
6. How often should a commercial site be cleaned?
It varies by area rather than by site. Bathrooms and kitchens are usually the highest frequency, general areas lower, and periodic work such as carpets, hard floors, high dusting and glass sits on its own cycle. Set the frequency per area in your scope rather than buying a single site-wide number.
More guides
Everything else we have written down.
- What the law actually says
- The end of lease checklist
- What a bond clean costs
- What house cleaning costs
- Which carpet cleaning method
- What is in a deep clean
- The Airbnb turnover checklist
- The Byron Shire 60-day cap
- Commercial cleaning
- Office cleaning
- Strata and common area cleaning
- Commercial carpet cleaning
- All guides
Something we have not covered? Ask us and we will write it.
Where we clean
Commercial work across the Northern Rivers and the Tweed.
Northern Rivers NSW
- Lismore
- Goonellabah
- Alstonville
- Wollongbar
- Casino
- Kyogle
- Nimbin
- Clunes
- Bexhill
- Dunoon
- Ballina
- East Ballina
- Lennox Head
- Skennars Head
- Wardell
- Evans Head
- Broadwater
- Woodburn
- Coraki
- Bangalow
- Byron Bay
- Suffolk Park
- Mullumbimby
- Brunswick Heads
- Ocean Shores
- New Brighton
- Billinudgel
- Federal
The Tweed
- Murwillumbah
- Tweed Heads
- Tweed Heads South
- Banora Point
- Terranora
- Bilambil
- Bilambil Heights
- Chinderah
- Fingal Head
- Kingscliff
- Casuarina
- Cudgen
- Cabarita Beach
- Bogangar
- Hastings Point
- Pottsville
- Uki
- Burringbar
- Mooball
If a town isn't listed, ask us anyway.
Commercial cleaning
Bring the list to the walkthrough.
Ours or anybody’s. A site walk with a written scope in hand is the half hour that decides whether the next three years go well.