Bookkeeper for Commercial Cleaning Companies

How does money come in?

Your revenue is a small number of recurring contracts, each invoiced monthly. Most commercial cleaning is priced per square foot, per visit, or per hour. The common model is a monthly contract based on square footage, ranging from about $0.05 to $0.25 per square foot. A 5,000 to 10,000 square foot office might run $1,000 to $1,500 a month. You send one invoice per contract, and payment often arrives late. So your bookkeeping needs to track each contract separately, with accounts receivable aging, so you know what is owed and when.

Many owners also take on one-off jobs alongside the recurring contracts. Those need their own revenue lines. Since recurring contracts are the bulk of the income, the profit and loss should read contract by contract, not as one lumped sales number.

What are the real costs you have to track?

Labor is your biggest cost, and it is also the messiest to track. You have a crew of cleaners, some W-2 employees, possibly some subcontractors. Payroll has to account for turnover, new hire reporting, and state-specific sick time. Alongside labor, you have supplies like cleaning products and equipment, vehicle costs for mileage and maintenance, insurance for liability and workers comp, and overhead such as home office, marketing, and software.

Some pricing advice suggests cost of services sold runs around 50% of revenue, with overhead at 20% and profit at 30%, but that varies widely from business to business. What matters is that you know exactly what each contract costs in labor and supplies, not just total company expenses.

What bookkeeping mistakes do cleaning owners make?

The most common mistakes come from mixing personal and business money, not tracking mileage, and lumping all revenue together. Since you have a few big contracts, it is tempting to see one big deposit as a single win. But each contract needs its own revenue line. Crews come and go, so payroll errors happen. Many owners do not separate supplies per job, so they cannot see which contract is profitable. Sales tax on supplies is often missed, and vehicle expenses go under-recorded if you do not keep a mileage log.

What should you track for each contract?

Each contract should have its own revenue and its own direct costs. Because your revenue comes from a handful of recurring contracts, your P&L should show each contract as a line. Assign labor hours and supplies to each contract. Some businesses also do one-off jobs, so track those separately. That way you know if the big retail chain is actually less profitable than the small office after you account for travel and extra cleaning.

If you have add-on services like floor buffing or window washing, those should be tracked as separate service lines within a contract, because they often carry different margins and require more equipment.

Which financial reports should a cleaning owner actually look at?

You want to see a profit and loss that breaks down by contract, plus an accounts receivable aging report and a cash flow forecast. A standard P&L that lumps sales hides which contract is making you money. Contract-level profitability is the only way to know. Since many clients pay late, an accounts receivable aging report tells you when to follow up. And because payroll goes out weekly while revenue comes in monthly, a cash flow forecast is essential.

A budget versus actual report also helps. It shows if your pricing assumptions hold up and where you are overspending on labor or supplies before it becomes a crisis.

What decisions should the books support?

Your books should tell you when to hire, how to price new contracts, and whether to take on specialty work. If one contract keeps needing overtime labor, that might mean the pricing is off or the crew is not efficient. If you are consistently making 20% net profit but want to expand, you need to know how much cash you can put toward a second crew. And if you are thinking about adding floor care or window cleaning, you need to know if your current equipment and crew can handle it without hurting your core work.

The numbers also help you evaluate whether a new contract is worth the travel time and equipment cost. A contract that looks big on paper might have low margin once you factor in driving between sites and the frequency of cleaning.