Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: tonyoliver on March 21, 2016, 05:06:34 pm
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Before you get out of your van and do a clean
Has anyone worked out how much it has cost to get you outside the property ....,
I mean that pro rata the van ,insurance ,mot ,tax ,road tax equipment, uniform ,liability insurance odds and ends and so on
and on.
I know we all have different kit androunds but expenditure before we actually start a clean must be similar?
Each job must have a set cost to you even before you even start cleaning
Any ideas
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More than people think especially doing wfp work.
That is why some happy to earn a low hourly rate could end up actually losing money if not careful.
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More than people think especially doing wfp work.
That is why some happy to earn a low hourly rate could end up actually losing money if not careful.
Silly comment there smurf. It would take a very low hourly rate to actually'lose' money.
£30 an hour is a very reasonable rate to be aiming for. Even if you minus £10 an hour of that, which realistically you shouldn't have that much expenditure, then £20 an hour is still a good wage.
7 hours a day =£140 × 5 = £700 a week, obviously less after tax/insurance but that's still comparable to a £33-34000 salary a year for a 48 week year.
If you speak to the average Joe they would be shocked window cleaners are earning £30,000+ a year after expenses.
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More than people think especially doing wfp work.
That is why some happy to earn a low hourly rate could end up actually losing money if not careful.
Silly comment there smurf. It would take a very low hourly rate to actually'lose' money.
£30 an hour is a very reasonable rate to be aiming for. Even if you minus £10 an hour of that, which realistically you shouldn't have that much expenditure, then £20 an hour is still a good wage.
7 hours a day =£140 × 5 = £700 a week, obviously less after tax/insurance but that's still comparable to a £33-34000 salary a year for a 48 week year.
If you speak to the average Joe they would be shocked window cleaners are earning £30,000+ a year after expenses.
It's not a silly comment at all if you're just starting out and don't have a compact round. How many have you seen that just do one or two in a street then have to drive a way to the next job?
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I aim for £30 ph.
Most my jobs are well inside of that e.g. less than an hour
Funny how most customers don't even bat an eyelid at quoted prices yet ( like I had to on one job last week because I had no idea how many hours ) when you quote an hourly price their jaw hits the ground :o ;D
To op's original question , no I've never worked it out ( cannot be bothered ) but like already said doubtful all things considered it would cost any more than £10 of that "hourly rate" - probably less.
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Turn over is not profit.
We earn net profit.
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More than people think especially doing wfp work.
That is why some happy to earn a low hourly rate could end up actually losing money if not careful.
Silly comment there smurf. It would take a very low hourly rate to actually'lose' money.
£30 an hour is a very reasonable rate to be aiming for. Even if you minus £10 an hour of that, which realistically you shouldn't have that much expenditure, then £20 an hour is still a good wage.
7 hours a day =£140 × 5 = £700 a week, obviously less after tax/insurance but that's still comparable to a £33-34000 salary a year for a 48 week year.
If you speak to the average Joe they would be shocked window cleaners are earning £30,000+ a year after expenses.
Silly comment yourself. 48 x £700 = £33,600. What about running costs? Sick pay? Pension? I doubt you'd have £25,000 left after those are deducted if you're WFP.
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More than people think especially doing wfp work.
That is why some happy to earn a low hourly rate could end up actually losing money if not careful.
Silly comment there smurf. It would take a very low hourly rate to actually'lose' money.
£30 an hour is a very reasonable rate to be aiming for. Even if you minus £10 an hour of that, which realistically you shouldn't have that much expenditure, then £20 an hour is still a good wage.
7 hours a day =£140 × 5 = £700 a week, obviously less after tax/insurance but that's still comparable to a £33-34000 salary a year for a 48 week year.
If you speak to the average Joe they would be shocked window cleaners are earning £30,000+ a year after expenses.
Silly comment yourself. 48 x £700 = £33,600. What about running costs? Sick pay? Pension? I doubt you'd have £25,000 left after those are deducted if you're WFP.
Read again ::)roll
That was AFTER deducting £10 pH for running costs.
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More than people think especially doing wfp work.
That is why some happy to earn a low hourly rate could end up actually losing money if not careful.
Silly comment there smurf. It would take a very low hourly rate to actually'lose' money.
£30 an hour is a very reasonable rate to be aiming for. Even if you minus £10 an hour of that, which realistically you shouldn't have that much expenditure, then £20 an hour is still a good wage.
7 hours a day =£140 × 5 = £700 a week, obviously less after tax/insurance but that's still comparable to a £33-34000 salary a year for a 48 week year.
If you speak to the average Joe they would be shocked window cleaners are earning £30,000+ a year after expenses.
Silly comment yourself. 48 x £700 = £33,600. What about running costs? Sick pay? Pension? I doubt you'd have £25,000 left after those are deducted if you're WFP.
Yeah but, he's already counting on £30 ph, less £10 running costs, your calculations above are after running costs, just saying. ;)
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More than people think especially doing wfp work.
That is why some happy to earn a low hourly rate could end up actually losing money if not careful.
Silly comment there smurf. It would take a very low hourly rate to actually'lose' money.
£30 an hour is a very reasonable rate to be aiming for. Even if you minus £10 an hour of that, which realistically you shouldn't have that much expenditure, then £20 an hour is still a good wage.
7 hours a day =£140 × 5 = £700 a week, obviously less after tax/insurance but that's still comparable to a £33-34000 salary a year for a 48 week year.
If you speak to the average Joe they would be shocked window cleaners are earning £30,000+ a year after expenses.
Silly comment yourself. 48 x £700 = £33,600. What about running costs? Sick pay? Pension? I doubt you'd have £25,000 left after those are deducted if you're WFP.
Don't know about you but iv only had about 4 maybe 5 sick days in 5 years. I rarely get ill and when I do I normally just get on with it.
What's a pension? ;)
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Most new starters think of an hourly rate as if they are working for someone else which is not the case.
As rightly pointed out it's nothing of the sorts as it's net profit you should be looking at.
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More than people think especially doing wfp work.
That is why some happy to earn a low hourly rate could end up actually losing money if not careful.
Silly comment there smurf. It would take a very low hourly rate to actually'lose' money.
£30 an hour is a very reasonable rate to be aiming for. Even if you minus £10 an hour of that, which realistically you shouldn't have that much expenditure, then £20 an hour is still a good wage.
7 hours a day =£140 × 5 = £700 a week, obviously less after tax/insurance but that's still comparable to a £33-34000 salary a year for a 48 week year.
If you speak to the average Joe they would be shocked window cleaners are earning £30,000+ a year after expenses.
Silly comment yourself. 48 x £700 = £33,600. What about running costs? Sick pay? Pension? I doubt you'd have £25,000 left after those are deducted if you're WFP.
Read again ::)roll
That was AFTER deducting £10 pH for running costs.
Apologies, read too quickly. To achieve £30 p/h, you need to be charging around £40-£50 ph on the glass unless your work is compact.
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More than people think especially doing wfp work.
That is why some happy to earn a low hourly rate could end up actually losing money if not careful.
Silly comment there smurf. It would take a very low hourly rate to actually'lose' money.
£30 an hour is a very reasonable rate to be aiming for. Even if you minus £10 an hour of that, which realistically you shouldn't have that much expenditure, then £20 an hour is still a good wage.
7 hours a day =£140 × 5 = £700 a week, obviously less after tax/insurance but that's still comparable to a £33-34000 salary a year for a 48 week year.
If you speak to the average Joe they would be shocked window cleaners are earning £30,000+ a year after expenses.
Silly comment yourself. 48 x £700 = £33,600. What about running costs? Sick pay? Pension? I doubt you'd have £25,000 left after those are deducted if you're WFP.
Don't know about you but iv only had about 4 maybe 5 sick days in 5 years. I rarely get ill and when I do I normally just get on with it.
What's a pension? ;)
Nice sensible post Chris, I was employed for over 29 years and never got a paid pension, if your not in the public
sector then sick pay is also something that means very little ( a few quid a week paid after 3 days )
Plus unlike us an employee cant claim for costs that can soon mount up if you have to travel a distance to work and back,
some of these guys need to get a grip.
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Weekly running costs 290/wk
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Year one £15k
Year two £5k
Into year nine and its coming in at around £3500 a year without deducting the capital value of my equipment and van.
So from day one your talking around £28/29k.
I honestly could have done it a lot cheaper as there must be at least £2k of that wasted on rubbish gear that was hardly used
and I bought a ready built system.
The thing is it doesn't mean squat as there will be guys paying £3k a year on insurance alone and other things like metered
water and high fuel costs that don't effect me.
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Before you get out of your van and do a clean
Has anyone worked out how much it has cost to get you outside the property ....,
I mean that pro rata the van ,insurance ,mot ,tax ,road tax equipment, uniform ,liability insurance odds and ends and so on
and on.
I know we all have different kit androunds but expenditure before we actually start a clean must be similar?
Each job must have a set cost to you even before you even start cleaning
Any ideas
Divide your expenses last year by the number of jobs you did last year. Simple.
Vin
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Yes I have. I did it a couple of years ago.
Each job cost me £3.97 in expenses (excluding wages) just to arrive at the door. Expenses include equipment costs, van depreciation, insurance, fuel, MOT, servicing etc. Or put in another way just over 40% of my turnover for that year. I don't have a new van so depreciation is minimal.
The figures were a little skewed as it also included a couple of large annual commercial jobs counted as one job each (one takes us 5 days to complete). So whist £3.97 wasn't a suitable figure with these being far to low, the % of those jobs was too high.
We are in the North East so we would be fortunate to get £9 - £10 for a 3 bed semi. We often get asked to clean two top dormer windows, so getting an idea of what our expenses are helps us not to waste our time. Its full house or nothing. It also helps us to realise that there is a good reason to have a minimum price.
It would be too difficult to put an accurate costing of annual expenses against each job either as a value or as a percentage as your expenses are never the same each year and turnover or the number of jobs done are also never the same.
Unfortunately those figures will also change the following year.
But I have used that figure of 40% to briefly explain why my quote was much higher than they expected.
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Before you get out of your van and do a clean
Has anyone worked out how much it has cost to get you outside the property ....,
I mean that pro rata the van ,insurance ,mot ,tax ,road tax equipment, uniform ,liability insurance odds and ends and so on
and on.
I know we all have different kit androunds but expenditure before we actually start a clean must be similar?
Each job must have a set cost to you even before you even start cleaning
Any ideas
Divide your expenses last year by the number of jobs you did last year. Simple.
Vin
If I remember correctly Vin, it was your suggestion that influenced me to do it.
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Year one £15k
Year two £5k
Into year nine and its coming in at around £3500 a year without deducting the capital value of my equipment and van.
So from day one your talking around £28/29k.
I honestly could have done it a lot cheaper as there must be at least £2k of that wasted on rubbish gear that was hardly used
and I bought a ready built system.
The thing is it doesn't mean squat as there will be guys paying £3k a year on insurance alone and other things like metered
water and high fuel costs that don't effect me.
I agree Sean.
My figures would be better if I could do twice the work I'm currently able to do because of health. So working out a cost per job is only applicable to me and no one else. They say that statictics are like a musical instrument you can play any tune on.
My son is working along with me at the moment as he trashed his van in the summer. My expenses haven't changed but if I add his turnover to mine (we are currently helping each other to get through both of our customer lists) then our cost per job and % is much healthier.
I think your figure of £3.5K is a pretty good expenses estimate.
One thing I have learnt is that expenses tend to remain reasonably constant no matter how much work or how little work we do a year.
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Everyone's different.
I don'T count van depreciation mot and insurance into the equation as it's my only vehicle and i would have a vehicle regardless of employment status. Yes there may be a slight difference from running a car but if there is its negligable.
Outside of that resin filters costs poles bits n pieces uniform flyers website would be about a grand a year.
Public liability is about 100 quid. Diesel maybe a fiver a day.
Not worked it out proper as can't be arsed but my tax deductable expenses for the year tend to be about 2 grand but a lot of that's van mileage based so over what my actual expenses are. So whats that a tenner a day roughly in expenses.
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If I remember correctly Vin, it was your suggestion that influenced me to do it.
Cool. Scares me when people follow my advice... Ian101's still cleaning partly because of me. I hate to think of people taking me seriously.
The only reason I don't give a number is that if I give you my number it'll be barmy because I'm spending some money on franchise stuff for all of our franchisees. And I can't give you their number because it's not my information to share.
If you have round planner software you should be able to get your number of cleans to work out your own cost to turn up.
Vin
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More than people think especially doing wfp work.
That is why some happy to earn a low hourly rate could end up actually losing money if not careful.
Silly comment there smurf. It would take a very low hourly rate to actually'lose' money.
£30 an hour is a very reasonable rate to be aiming for. Even if you minus £10 an hour of that, which realistically you shouldn't have that much expenditure, then £20 an hour is still a good wage.
7 hours a day =£140 × 5 = £700 a week, obviously less after tax/insurance but that's still comparable to a £33-34000 salary a year for a 48 week year.
If you speak to the average Joe they would be shocked window cleaners are earning £30,000+ a year after expenses.
Then your TAX accountants bill out of that 30k coz the van and other bits should amount to the 4K,I can't see the point TBH you may as well earn £100 a day working for another window cleaner,just my opinion.
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If I remember correctly Vin, it was your suggestion that influenced me to do it.
Cool. Scares me when people follow my advice... Ian101's still cleaning partly because of me. I hate to think of people taking me seriously.
The only reason I don't give a number is that if I give you my number it'll be barmy because I'm spending some money on franchise stuff for all of our franchisees. And I can't give you their number because it's not my information to share.
If you have round planner software you should be able to get your number of cleans to work out your own cost to turn up.
Vin
Hi Vin.
TBH I have the greatest respect for you and the way you have driven your business forward.
It doesn't make sense someone not taking your advice seriously. I had wondered how much each job was actually costing me earlier but was trying to find a formula that would 'weigh' the figures into something more accurate. I felt that time taken also needed to be part of the job. But that was just too complicated.
Following that simple formula, although not 100% accurate, gives me a good sense of direction when quoting small residential jobs.
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Weekly running costs 290/wk
my weekly running costs (based on a 44 week working year)last year was around £90 a week.(£18 a day over the course of a 5 day week).my diesel bill is around £30-£40 a month though and i didnt buy a van last year.realistically if i add 2k to my expenses a year to include buying a new second hand van/system/poles after 4 or 5 years itll be more like £130 a week(£26 a day).this includes ALL expenses in relation to my business(commercial van insurance,vehicle tax,MOT,repairs,workwear,water bill,resin,internet,phone,cleaner planner,gas,new equipment etc,etc).
ive based it on a 44 week year as 2 weeks is 2 holidays abroad for a week at a time,2 weeks for xmas break and 4 weeks for sickness/bad weather/DIY jobs around the house or just taking a week off cos i feel like it.
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so even my more realistic expenses over 5 years including the purchase of a new(second hand) van and DIY system(£5,500-£6,000 a year all in)your paying over £7,000 more a year in expenses?is this mainly due to the purchase of a brand new van,professional installed system and much larger fuel bills matt?
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so it costs me around £4.30 an hour in expenses based on a 6 hour day working 5 days a week 44 weeks of the year with annual expenses of £5,500-£6,000 a year.i know this is a rough estimate but i bet im not too far off.
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so it costs me around £4.30 an hour in expenses based on a 6 hour day working 5 days a week 44 weeks of the year with annual expenses of £5,500-£6,000 a year.i know this is a rough estimate but i bet im not too far off.
Dazmond you have barely spent £6000 on vans since you first started and everything you have bought other than poles has
been cheap DIY equipment.
Nothing wrong with that, but to say your spending £5 to £6k a year on expenses is nothing more than nonsense.
Like I have already stated there will be exceptions but for the majority of self employed wfp window cleaners it will cost
very little to run their business and as Spruce stated this doesn't really rise by much the busier you get infect it can get cheaper.
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£27500 to £30000 over five years for one man to clean windows, at worst that's 600 £10 semis a year to clean before you break even or for somebody on £30k a year that's one in every five years worked for nothing, any wonder you need to work in hurricanes.(http://www.cleanitup.co.uk/smf/1458690067_grin[1].gif)
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seanK my expenses for last year were just under 4k.ive already spent nearly 2k this year.its not nonsense.its realistic for me and thats without high fuel bills.maybe your not claiming for everything you buy in relation to your business?
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seanK my expenses for last year were just under 4k.ive already spent nearly 2k this year.its not nonsense.its realistic for me and thats without high fuel bills.maybe your not claiming for everything you buy in relation to your business?
Then there's all those bottles of Vision.
Dazmond throws more money away in a year than SeanK spends.
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this year already( jan -march)
cleaning supplies 665.51
cleaner planner 45.00
bad debt 13.00
ink 26.00
gas 127.50
motor expenses 460.00
phone/internet 30.00
stamps 54.00
van insurance 373.56
water bill 30.00
workwear 162.00
total:£1,986.57
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It's not a silly comment at all if you're just starting out and don't have a compact round. How many have you seen that just do one or two in a street then have to drive a way to the next job?
I've been going over 10 years and most of my round is still like this ;D
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cleaning supplies include new pumpbox,leisure battery,clx4,resin,vision,univalves,connectors etc.motor expenses include diesel,MOT,repairs and new starter motor.workwear i bought a new goretex jacket. ;D
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£30 water bill a year? I pay that every week!
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£30 water bill a year? I pay that every week!
water bill is £10 a month so £30 for 3 months and im on a water meter too.i dont think its working properly but who am i to argue with the bills they send me?they must be right! ;)
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It's not a silly comment at all if you're just starting out and don't have a compact round. How many have you seen that just do one or two in a street then have to drive a way to the next job?
I've been going over 10 years and most of my round is still like this ;D
Me too , these days you don't have to clean a whole street to earn good money , work can be dotted around , you've just got to be good at logistics to join the dots together and move jobs around
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It's not a silly comment at all if you're just starting out and don't have a compact round. How many have you seen that just do one or two in a street then have to drive a way to the next job?
I've been going over 10 years and most of my round is still like this ;D
Well the prices you charge no wonder you make a good living at it...That's the difference ;D
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£27500 to £30000 over five years for one man to clean windows, at worst that's 600 £10 semis a year to clean before you break even or for somebody on £30k a year that's one in every five years worked for nothing, any wonder you need to work in hurricanes.(http://www.cleanitup.co.uk/smf/1458690067_grin[1].gif)
I earn a lot more than 30k a year sean working as a sole trader.
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it was costing me around 3k a year when i was 100% trad!(15k over 5 years)so double that to 6k over 5 years (WFP) is 30k but im now earning 20k MORE a year than when i was 100% trad which is 100k over 5 years costing me an extra 15k in expenses.
go figure! :)