Just deleted it for the 3rd time. It’ll pop back up tomorrow. Pro tip: Web.com sucks.
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Got it. Thanks a lot man
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No problem. Hope it’s helpful.
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What would be the best way to bid a commercial job? I see some do by the hr and some do by sqft. I do houses and driveways by sqft but looking to pick up some commercial jobs but not sure how to go about it. Any advice? I thought of stopping in and giving a business card and explain what I do and what I noticed they needed cleaned but not sure how I should do that or give a price.
I think sqft is the best option, specially if you go in and offer your services and say i charge $100/hr, i feel they’ll assume you’ll milk the job and take forever, plus they might not deem the service is worth that per hour. Soo just measure and give a price, they don’t have to know how long it takes ya, just explain your equipment/process and the end result and what they want and don’t want done. They may assume you’ll clean something specific then complain it wasn’t done or if they ask you then you raise your price and open up a whole can of worms…
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Should I charge more pre sqft for commercial or keep it the same as my residential price?
If you’re happy with your prices then keep the same, sell sell sell, you’ll find out if you’re too expensive. There’s always a cheap company out there beating your price but cheap customers aren’t really worth it in the long run.
in the beginning any job is a blessing so don’t price yourself out of work
Find out what your local competition is charging
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I do it by the hour with a 2 hour ± variance so I’m not working extra hours for free. Not to mention if it’s a 6 hour job you’ve still lost an 8 hour day.
I just sent someone this example actually.
8 x hourly commercial rate of $140 = $1,120.
The customer doesn’t have to know you charge hourly. You can just type in $1,120 in your estimate and type in a description of the work.
$1,120
+$99 water tank charge if I have to supply the water
That’s about it. My cost to aqcuire the customer, marketing, etc is a set percentage in the monthly operating budget when I sit down to look at how much is in the bank. Maintenance and other costs are already factored into the hourly.
How do you do that? If it’s costing you $500 each month to maintain machines, gear, truck, trailer, reels, whatever then maintenance of $16.67 per day or $2.09 per hour.
I just started using House Call Pro. That’s $124 per month or $.51 cents per hour. These are small numbers, but when you sit down and add up liability insurance, various local licenses, HomeAdvisor lead fees, CRM monthly fee, CPA monthly fee, other marketing fees, consumables (average daily fuel cost, latex gloves, elemonator, SH, whatever else you have to constantly stock), TAXES, and the list goes on forever, it all adds up pretty quick and you’ll see that $140-$180 an hour is pretty dang reasonable.
30% of that is going to get set aside for taxes from the get go and if I don’t pay 30% in taxes then that’s a bonus, but there’s no quicker way to go out of business than if the IRS takes it from you.
Pricing things is and always will be more complicated than most people make it. I know what my costs are to operate by the hour so I charge by the hour. I don’t know what my costs are to operate by the square footage of various different surfaces and I don’t really care. Lol. To each their own though, everyone’s business is a little different.
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More. Always charge more for commercial. They’re using more durable materials, need customer areas cleaned for the sake of keeping up appearances, and probably make in an hour what you’re going to charge for the day. Don’t be afraid to charge more. You’re helping commercial customers save AND make money.
You’re only helping residential customers save money. 
That’s purely my opinion and I’m sure someone hates it. Works for me. Like JHH said, if you’re happy, you’re paying your bills, and you can still buy bait to fish with on Sundays, don’t listen to anyone else about pricing.
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Thanks that’s a lot of help. I do .10 cents a sqft on houses last one I did came out to about $100 an HR. The first house I ever did I was gonna do by the hr but someone told me to charge $50 an HR and I thought that was way to low. So I research here in my area and most ppl do .10 cents sqft so that’s what I’m been doing. But since iv been on here reading a lot of what ppl charge I feel I’m to low but I don’t wanna run ppl off by such a high price. Just for giggles if u had a 2800 sqft house with back deck 450 sqft and front porch concert 300 sqft with my pricing it would $410.
What part of the country are you in? That seems like a really low price. For me, that 2800 square foot house is gonna be $350 alone. So that job you described would be $700ish…
@KNBExteriors I’m in North Carolina. I went and looked at a job yesterday guy wanted a price on just washing one side of his house.
40’w x 28’h I did $185 am I to low on that?
Had one guy call me said he wanted his house and roof cleaned I don’t do roofs to start with but he said, he had someone else price him $280 and it’s a 2 story house. I said no way I could do it for that and told him he better call the other guy back. That was a month ago. Went by yesterday just to see how they did, guess he was bluffing lol
One side in NC is a $75 service call. Leave the truck running wirh the A/C on. 5 minute job.
Well we also servicing his AC units that’s gonna take longer than washing that one side
I thought you were a pressure washing contractor. Why are you servicing A/C. Any way, the washing is 5 minutes. Going to be hard to charge a lot for that.
Lol my partner is hvac Tech he talked this guy into getting AC serviced he like the extra cash
We turn down “one side” jobs. I just tell customers it is as much as to do the one wall as the whole house, due to set up time, travel time, tear down time and to pay the insurance and my guys… Then I say the one wall is 275 and thee whole house is 350 ( or what ever the price is) 95 percent of the time they go for the whole house. A lot of times u will drive by the people whole refused and most of them still have a dirty wall… No job is 5 minutes, takes me 5 minutes to turn the key and warm up the truck…lol
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I don’t do partial house washes either. Aside from the financial part of it, the rest of the house always looks way worse once you clean one side…
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What??? Is .10c per sq ft too low? There is a guy in my area who does up to 3000 sq ft for $99 and of course everybody says he is" the best", another guy is charging .08c sqft so based on that I always try to stay in between
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squid, mind sending me a copy of what you are using? I would really appreciate it man.
