Pricing up troubles how much per hour roughly

[Johnny]

Hi I just started my window cleaning business up just over a month ago and I'm having troubles pricing up work.

I cleaned a conservatory today about 10ft wide and 6ft in length inside and outsides and also the glass roof bloody night mare hard to access one side of it but I made the best of a bad situation.

I also cleared the ladies gutters took me 5 mins only few leafs and so on,

job took 4 hours!!! I know I'm slow as I've just started but I've picked up the method really quickly both wfp and traditional. roof was dirty kept rinsing and rinsing more dirt kept falling and falling.

I came out of there with 60 quid, I sat in my van and thought hang on that's only 15 pound per hour plus driving time there and back about 4.5 hours in total, the customer gave me an extra tenner no wonder why lol..

a man coming out with his van and equipment for 15 pound an hour I don't think so.

How much should I be aiming for an hour,

I'm going to stick to my guns on the price I've spent 6k+ on my setup and already want to upgrade but I shouldn't run before I can walk I suppose haha.

got a call from a customer he had a 3 bed terraced house in a nice bit of town houses 1m+ but I'm in London so the house your getting for 1m isn't anything out of this world. a one off clean he wanted I said £30 he says "oh I was thinking 20" I thought you cheeky lil see you next Tuesday.

 

[Crystal Windows]

£40 - £50 an hour minimum

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[Johnny]

do people pay that? how long would it take you to do 3 bed semi dethatched first cleaned?

 

[Peter Davenport]

People will pay what they are happy to pay!!! You just need to know your area and price your work accordingly. An average semi around here will be between £5 and £7. An initial clean, if it's very dirty would be £15 and if not too bad it would be £10.

I price at the rate I'm willing to work for. If they haggle, I walk. I work for the price I quote and nothing less. I can do between 4 and 5 houses per hour at them rates so we're looking at an average of about £25/£30 per hour. I'm happy with that. That's good money up here!!!!

But it's all relative. If someone buys a patch of land in a desirable area near you and builds a big **** off detached that stands him at a million quid (like one of my customers), it's £30 for 25 mins work.

You will learn as you go, some you will under price and then regret it every time you do it and some, you will over price and you won't get the job. That's the learning curve.

Just don't be worried about it. Price it up and live or die by it.

You'll suss it out one way or the other.

Welcome to the window cleaning world!!!!!

 

[Peter Davenport]

do people pay that? how long would it take you to do 3 bed semi dethatched first cleaned?

30-40 mins.

 

[Johnny]

im happy with 30 an hour, I'm in London and surrounding areas, I'm going to price any future work correctly I've been getting a lot of people wanting one of cleans how much extra should I charge as there normally rotten and a lot more time consuming.

 

[Johnny]

you can bang them houses out quick are you using wfp

 

[adamangler]

A lot depends where you are.

Like peter says hes doing semis for 5-7 quid that in London will be 20 quid easy.

Long term I would aim to be at the very top end of what's acceptable locally.

I average 10-12 quid a semi and that's pretty high for round here, generally these get done some here around 5-8 quid by the local tradders. Lower you price quicker you will build but you have to think Long term. My round building is super slow because I'm only getting 2-3 out of 10 quotes accepted and get told quite often I'm too expensive but I stick with in because eventually it will pay off hopefully. Still need another 90 customers to be full.

Dont worry about pricing mistakes be glad of them, every one gets it horribly wrong sometimes.

In London I reckon you could aim for 50 an hour. Me I aim for 30 an hour on the glass and 40 an hour for add on work. Dont always get it but the more work you get the higher you will price because sometimes you get so busy you stop caring if you get the job or not.

Nothing wrong with starting off on the low side building the work uo and upping the prices as you go, you'll probably find that conny you quoted at 30 quid starting out yoI'll be quoting at 60 next time then a few years down the line you'll be quoting 150 for the same job. Its all about progression.

 

[Johnny]

a lot of work is in London but on the outskirts its not central or anything but London postcodes. thanks for all advice everyone I'm going to stick at minimum 30 and hour if they don't want to pay it then let some other see you next Tuesday do it. try tell the Indian 50 an hour there have a heart attack lol.

 

[C Rose Cleaning Services]

im happy with 30 an hour, I'm in London and surrounding areas, I'm going to price any future work correctly I've been getting a lot of people wanting one of cleans how much extra should I charge as there normally rotten and a lot more time consuming.

Mate you've only got yourself to decide what you want to earn. It's about how much you think you're worth.

I used to charge £40 an hour for me and an employee. Once he left I went back down expecting 25ish on my own. I now charge 35-40 for window cleaning and 45 for gutter clearance. And I'm making more than I ever have - the best thing about it is nobody ever moans about it being too expensive. I'm in Milton Keynes, Leighton Buzzard areas (feeder towns to London) so you should definitely be charging the same or more to allow for your extra living costs.

This whole business is a learning curve but you've got to make it a business model worth the time!

Good luck.

 

[spruce]

Hi I just started my window cleaning business up just over a month ago and I'm having troubles pricing up work.
I cleaned a conservatory today about 10ft wide and 6ft in length inside and outsides and also the glass roof bloody night mare hard to access one side of it but I made the best of a bad situation.

I also cleared the ladies gutters took me 5 mins only few leafs and so on,

job took 4 hours!!! I know I'm slow as I've just started but I've picked up the method really quickly both wfp and traditional. roof was dirty kept rinsing and rinsing more dirt kept falling and falling.

I came out of there with 60 quid, I sat in my van and thought hang on that's only 15 pound per hour plus driving time there and back about 4.5 hours in total, the customer gave me an extra tenner no wonder why lol..

a man coming out with his van and equipment for 15 pound an hour I don't think so.

How much should I be aiming for an hour,

I'm going to stick to my guns on the price I've spent 6k+ on my setup and already want to upgrade but I shouldn't run before I can walk I suppose haha.

got a call from a customer he had a 3 bed terraced house in a nice bit of town houses 1m+ but I'm in London so the house your getting for 1m isn't anything out of this world. a one off clean he wanted I said £30 he says "oh I was thinking 20" I thought you cheeky lil see you next Tuesday.

Have a look at Vin's pricing. He is Southampton. Some cleaners say he's too expensive for his area but he's a growing business.

Perfect Windows Pricing

Everyone's round will be different. If you are starting up, you have very little chance of starting with a compact round unless you purchased one.

So most of us will end up with little pockets of work in our area. If you take traveling time into consideration you may only be able to knock out 2 say 3 bed semi's an hour, so if that's the case then you need to be charging £15 each to achieve £30 an hour.

I have seen some who can clean a 3 bed semi in 10 minutes, but on closer inspection, I personally wouldn't be happy providing that level of clean as in my books, it just wasn't good enough.

And so here's the next thought. I had a discussion with a local windie who I'm friendly with and he says that he is looking for customers who are happy with a 90% clean. He says he can spend twice as long getting the standard of clean up to 95% (we can never achieve 100%) and he would still earn the same money. There would hardly be any noticeable difference in quality of the clean in his opinion. Any OCD people wouldn't stay on his books long.

He also dumped all his customers who had windows with 2 openers above the main window below. For wfp windies, these are the worst as inevitably they will leave a streak down the center of the glass when dry meaning they will need to be re-cleaned. He also dumped all those with locked rear gates if they didn't agree to front only and rears when someone was in at a first clean price.

So you need to consider obstacles that will slow you down whilst cleaning and charge extra for the time it takes to negotiate those obstacles.

With any new business start up you can't expect to be earning 'mega' bucks to begin with. Some businesses run at a loss for years before they get established and start to turn a profit. If you are getting 100% of the work you quote for you are too cheap; if you get none you are too expensive; you need to aim for about 40% of the work you quote on. But if you have underpriced work on your books (we all have) then you can approach your customer and say that the job is taking longer than I first estimated it would and I'm sorry but I need to charge you this. I've done this on several occasions and still clean those customer's today. If they don't accept that then politely thank them for their previous business and walk away.

Be prepared to refine your round as you go. Yes you will pick up other windie's work that they have dropped for whatever reason, but if any new work turns out to be a pain; eg payment issues, then don't put up with it because you need the money. Use the time to canvass better work. Don't be afraid to adopt the 3 c's of running a window cleaning business; canvass, clean, cull.

.

 

[chris clean]

As others have said it really depends what you want to earn an hour. All I would say though is don't beat your self up at first, I used to when I started but you soon get a better idea for how long jobs take. Also it's swings in roundabouts there will be days where you quote 100 for a job turn up and it takes hour and half and other days you day 50 and it ends up taking 4 hours. It happens.

 

[Green Pro Clean Ltd]

Today will start with a thre bed semi with conservatory roof, gutter clear and quick brightening of the UPVc. That's going to be 3 hour. £240

Then first clean in 2 bed semi in need of PVC salvage. £100. About 40 minutes (i will pop a pic of this minger on later)

Round corner for one off external end of tennancy £45.

Then over the river for a gutter clear and PVC clean on a 5 bed detached. £240.

£625.00

Less £80 for the lad, £20 for fuel and wear on thr tools. £10 on chems. Lets toss in £10 towards advertising.

£505 for the day. Should be home by 3pm.

A touch over £72 per hour.

Starting out that would have been AT LEAST 2 days graft, but with experience and undersranding comes profits. If this was a 2 day job then costs would also double. That £120 becomes £240 Leaving an hourly rate closer to £27.50.

It takes time and patience is all.

Lastly NEVER EVER EVER price a job, let a customer say 'oh, I thought it would be cheaper'and come down to their price.

If they wont pay your price they obviously do not value you so let them walk on.

 

[Chris33]

As you get busy you'll happily walk away from jobs unless your happy with the prices.

It's a curve and you weren't sure quite know how long this would take so plz don't see that as a bad reflection at all.

Also your hourly rate with fluctuate per job. Yesterday mines started at 50 an hour, dropped to 25 an hour and back up again when doing gutters at end of day.

Point being, varied as this job is so will your rates be...unless you have a very square round and do windows only.

 

[Dave B]

I think too many people worry about hourly rate

It is irrelevant how much you earn per hour as it will fluctuate

If you have a target of say £250 per day and you hit it then that is what counts

Personally i have no targets at all..i know what work is due and i do it..if i feel in the mood i will smash out more one day..less another if i feel like a rest or have other plans

Pricing i know by looking what i need to charge for it..loosely based on how long it will take but that is only for the purpose of quoting it

 

[Johnny]

green pro that's my kind of day. I'm going to buy a stream line gutter vac how many gutter jobs do you guys get a month roughly.

Thank you so much for all replies really appreciated. Daveboy I understand what your saying its all about what you got at end of day then you can work out your average.

Starting this business is the best thing I've ever done. One day I got 6 calls in a row the potential to expand is there possiblitys are endless.

I've got a much better idea on pricing now so hopefully all future work will be spot on.

Do you guys offer first time cleans? Getting loads of people wanting one offs alot of asian and Jewish people I've noticed.

 

[Dave B]

Whereabouts in London are you?

 

[C Rose Cleaning Services]

green pro that's my kind of day. I'm going to buy a stream line gutter vac how many gutter jobs do you guys get a month roughly.
Thank you so much for all replies really appreciated. Daveboy I understand what your saying its all about what you got at end of day then you can work out your average.

Starting this business is the best thing I've ever done. One day I got 6 calls in a row the potential to expand is there possiblitys are endless.

I've got a much better idea on pricing now so hopefully all future work will be spot on.

Do you guys offer first time cleans? Getting loads of people wanting one offs alot of asian and Jewish people I've noticed.

I only do one offs if it's a gutter job and worth my time. I rarely turn up and do a window clean one off because it's just not worth the money.

Example: I've recently moved and am starting to build a round closer to home but I still cover all my old areas and existing customers. Last week I had two new houses booked in 5min from home coming in at £150. I get a message through my website asking for a quote for gutters. I went the night before my other two were due and asked if it was going to be regular. She was honest and said no. So I quoted it £100 if she had it done with the other two tomorrow. She agreed. So it boosted my day to my usual target (2-250) and made all my work local. It was great. She was delighted, paid me online within an hour and I was finished by 1pm and in the gym. So for me it was worth it and saved driving 45min to work elsewhere for the rest of the afternoon.

Had it just been a £20 window clean I wouldn't have bothered.

Again, it's all about what YOU want to do and earn mate. Not anyone else on here.

 

[Lukas87]

Hi I just started my window cleaning business up just over a month ago and I'm having troubles pricing up work.
I cleaned a conservatory today about 10ft wide and 6ft in length inside and outsides and also the glass roof bloody night mare hard to access one side of it but I made the best of a bad situation.

I also cleared the ladies gutters took me 5 mins only few leafs and so on,

job took 4 hours!!! I know I'm slow as I've just started but I've picked up the method really quickly both wfp and traditional. roof was dirty kept rinsing and rinsing more dirt kept falling and falling.

I came out of there with 60 quid, I sat in my van and thought hang on that's only 15 pound per hour plus driving time there and back about 4.5 hours in total, the customer gave me an extra tenner no wonder why lol..

a man coming out with his van and equipment for 15 pound an hour I don't think so.

How much should I be aiming for an hour,

I'm going to stick to my guns on the price I've spent 6k+ on my setup and already want to upgrade but I shouldn't run before I can walk I suppose haha.

got a call from a customer he had a 3 bed terraced house in a nice bit of town houses 1m+ but I'm in London so the house your getting for 1m isn't anything out of this world. a one off clean he wanted I said £30 he says "oh I was thinking 20" I thought you cheeky lil see you next Tuesday.

That would of been my reply as well mate! one off clean for £20 on a 2up 2 down maybe if i not busy!

 

[craig at pure]

I'm in the south. Hampshire. We charge £17 for a 3 bedroom house. We clean on average 20-25 houses a day. Last week we cleaned con roof, solar panels, gutters pvc and then the windows. It took us just under 2 hours and walked away with £280. Then went and did a days work. Some times the custy says. That was quick. But they only see the time your working. Then don't see behind the scenes on what it takes and costs to run a business. And it's not cheap.

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[Poles Apart]

I would take anything the Perfect Windows Guy says with a heavy dose of Salt.