How to Know Whether a Cleaning Client Is Actually Profitable

Run the account on two levels

• Per visit: price − payment fee − loaded labor (owner and employee, including nonbillable) − supplies − vehicle − allocated overhead = fully loaded profit per visit.
• Monthly: multiply revenue, cost and profit by visits per month. Weekly is about 4.33 visits, biweekly about 2.17, monthly is 1.
• Annualized: monthly profit × 12, treated as a modeled figure, not a forecast. It assumes the schedule holds.
• Also compute fully loaded profit per productive crew-hour so accounts with different visit lengths can be compared.

Why a big account can be a weak one

A $220 monthly deep-maintenance visit across town at four productive hours can generate less fully loaded profit per crew-hour than a $135 biweekly clean three streets from your last job. The invoice is larger; the economics are not. Frequency compounds this: a weak weekly account repeats its weakness 52 times a year, while a weak monthly account only does so 12 times.

The four levers, in order

• Reprice: raise to the modeled target price. The cleanest fix when the work itself is efficient and the price is simply old.
• Rescope: remove work that was never priced in. Often more acceptable to the client than a price increase, and it fixes the hours rather than papering over them.
• Reroute: move the visit to a day that clusters with nearby work. Paid drive time is one of the few costs you can cut without touching price or scope.
• Replace the slot: only when the first three fail, and only when you have realistic demand to fill the slot with something better. An empty slot earns nothing.

Context the arithmetic does not know

Before acting on a weak result, check the things the numbers cannot see. Does the account anchor a route that makes two other visits efficient? Has it produced referrals? Is it a long-standing relationship in a small market where a badly handled increase becomes a reputation problem? Is the schedule slot one you could actually refill? A weak account with strong strategic value is a decision, not a verdict.

An illustrative example

Illustrative only. A biweekly account at $135 per visit with 3.5 productive owner hours, 0.8 nonbillable hours, $9 supplies and $12 vehicle cost is carrying more than four paid hours against a price built for three. Once overhead is allocated, the fully loaded profit per visit can be negative even though the account looks like $293 of monthly revenue. Repricing to target might move it above water; rerouting to cut the drive might close half the gap on its own.