Clean It Up
UK Floor Cleaning Forum => Carpet Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: derek west on July 15, 2008, 09:28:00 pm
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got a call today for a quote on a letting agency office, its got me thinking, they want me to quote for cleaning the office, surely they've got cc's on there books so are they feeling me out, they have 14 offices in my vacinity but its the local one they want the quote on, they also have a few thousand houses let out, dilemma time, do i go with my prices for domestic as thats all ive done so far or do i quote low and hope i get extra work from the quote, dont worry i wont be quoting brightclean prices, i want to make a living not dig an early grave. i want this job, ive not done any commercial yet and i so want to give it a go, i really need some sensible advice as to how to approach this one..
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Price it so you make a decent amount of money from it and SELL the job.
Give them the benefits.
If all they're looking for is rock-bottom pricing, take a walk...
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Hi
Depends what they want?
Do they want just a clean of desks, toilets & floor, or do they want you to also quote with bags, toilet rolls etc (consumables)
Do not sell yourself cheap, you HAVE to price as if you are staffing it, because at some point you may want to and you don't want to be in a position of cleaning at a loss, otherwise you will be paying them to clean their office.
Go in with your PL Ins, refs, biz card and your letter also.
Min price is £12.50 per hour, try for £15, if they dither you can drop to £12.50. I do a LA office, I am also their main cleaner
Good luck
Regards
Martin 8)
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its just the carpets they want cleaning but the chance of getting the other offices and maybe a chance to clean there lettings. £12.50 an hour sounds ok but as a newbie i'm not sure how long it will take, even after seeing it. eeeeek,
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Offer them a 2 tier clean, your super dooper for all over freshness and very dirt dwellings and a freshen up clean where you go in to clean the carpets after the general cleaners have been in and vacuumed first, clean around beds and move basics.
Keep your minimum charge though don't get fooled into lowering that.
Shaun
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no shaun, they want me to clean there office. not sure if there doing this to check out my prices and quality and then they can compare it to there regular cleaner if they have one. or they just dont have a regular cleaner and they just want there office cleaned, ?????????????
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£12.50 a hour for carpet cleaning aint enough, triple it at least ;D
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then theres a chance i wont get the job? dave
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Derek
Some you win, some you lose. You need to make a living and pay for the tm. Give them your best price and sell the service.
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best price as in lowest price that i'm prepared to do it for gerry?
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Ah, apologies. Thought it was a general clean, not CC.
In that case charge per sq m
Regards
Martin 8)
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Fer christs sakes!!!
How many m² is this office? What sort of carpet? Is it open plan, plenty of elbow room or is it all squished up with hardly any floor showing?
Town location? Parking? Time restrictions?
OK here's an example.
I do the office area for a warehousing company. There's a hall with an external door from the car park, a door in from the warehouse and a door in from the kitchen, so 3 bad soiled areas that all converge in the middle.
The job's only 45m² and I don't clean every last square inch of it.
The hall is a T shape with a huge plant pot and some filing cabinets to negotiate round, one of the offices I can barely get between the desks with my rotary it's that cramped, the other office is easy to whizz round. I can park right outside the door, there's water within 6ft of my machine and I can tip it away right next to my work area.
I do this in daytime hours, they make me as much coffee as I can drink and don't care about noise or not having to work for an hour or two.
It always needs prespray, scrubbing like hell with a stiff brush on the rotary and then a thorough rinse through. Takes me a couple of hours and I charge them £140+VAT, they are chuffed to bits with the results and the service so they think this is great value for money.
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if they have there owner cleaner then there not happy with them ! why else would they be ringing around , and if you go in cheap they will want every job done cheap after that
now if you skint and need the work you havnt got any room on this so cheap it is ,
but if you want to play safe then go in about halfish if your one of the dear guys but make a show of it ! use a air mover takeing a big stain removel kit in even if you dont need it , shirt n tie see where i am come from ??? ;)
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We do not do this type of work as payment is always slow in coming, and as our business is based on quick turnover (and ALL our customers pay on completion and in cash) we shy away from this, unless of course the tenant is paying direct and is in situ at time of clean.
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thanks for the advice, i'll take some of it on board, here i go, wish me luck.
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best price as in lowest price that i'm prepared to do it for gerry?
Yes but sell it on service with a good price
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derek,
you need to go and talk properly with them and see if they will give you the lettings contact for there properties, and then bargain on what being offered.
As an example we have dealt with one letting agency for about 10 years and we do there offices and some of the staffs home carpets for free in return for the contract, believe me they wont go any where else if theres something in it for themselves, but you have to make sure its worth it.
we are guaranteed work from them every week, so for us its a good deal.
regards
steve
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As they have 14 offices they more then likely have a property management team for all their offices who deal with the maintenance issues of their portfolio.
I wouldnt quote to cheap for it and do a good job as I am sure you would. If you get the job use the opportunity to find out who it is that deals with the maintenance and where they are based.
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quoted £60 for 2 small rooms a very small box room and a corridor, i also said if they can get me work on there lettings i could offer £10 towards there own cleaning per job they get me, office or home, they said it sounds great but didn't commit, is that the kiss of death, also cos i'm not vat registered they seemed to frown when i told them i'm not, is that letting me down,
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Some perceive if you are not VAT registered then you are not big enough to do their job. Whether thats the case or not here, I dont know.
You have to register for VAT if your turnover exceeds a certain amount (about £58k but someone will have a correct figure)
or you can voluntary register.
Remember you will have to show VAT on your domestic clients as well. Either you charge them 17.5% so the tax man can have his/her bit or you absorb it in your current charges and you pay the VAT out of current turnover.
If you charge 17.5% to a domestic client that undoubtedly puts you less favourable with your competitors.
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cheers joe, yeah had a chat with my accountant and i'll give vat a miss till i have to, and hopefully one day i will have to, but until then i'll just let them frown. good news is i rang the deafness society near us, as i did a quote for them last week and hadn't heard anything so i thought sod it, i'll be cheeky and find out how my survey went and why i didnt get the job, turns out there finallising some building work and then i'm in to clean up, yippee, my first commercial, ish job, onwards and upwards.
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good luck ;)
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I had a similar experience except my presentation fell on deaf ears.
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I've never found VAT to be a problem, been registered from day 1. I find that if I can sell a job to a domestic customer at £100 I've got no problem selling it to them at £117.50. We moan about customers being price-fixated but if we are too then we're the ones to blame. The pricing almost needs to be an incidental part of the quotation process, after you've already sold the job to them on the strength of the benefits they're going to receive.
Yes, VAT does give commercial clients more of an impression that you're a "serious" business, not that I think that's fair. But the thing is when you don't charge VAT, people may assume that you're simply charging what you would have done with VAT included and pocketing the difference.
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If £117.50 is ok for a customer then they might pay £135.
Some will no doubt, but there has to be a limit with everyone what personally they will pay.
The higher you go, the more people will have reached there limit and so less to say YES.
Its a fine balance I suppose.
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You can register for a reduced small business VAT rate. I think for cleaning it is 10 or 11%.
You can not claim any VAT back on this scheme but you can charge the custy 17.5% and keep the 7.5%. or you can charge residential customers 10% and commercial custys 17.5%.
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Interesting!
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think i need a new accountant, he never mentioned anything like that. all though i think i'll stay as i am for now and see how many more frowns i get.
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Bound to incur more paperwork and that will have to correct!
Is commercial work where you want to go Derek?
Must admit, whilst I will do it I am not too fussed because of potential delays in payment, plus the hassle in chasing late payments when they are late!
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commercial or domestic, i'm easy joe. late payments arnt a problem as long as they eventually get paid. its none payments that i dont like, and neither will my customer if they try that on. 30 foot of waste pipe will sort that out, joke. but seriously though, 30 foot of waste pipe.
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Just checked on HMRC website and it is 11%. Called Flat rate scheme.
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Yep, Prodry is correct.
Compulsory VAT registration now starts at £67000 t/o. (De-registration £65000.)
Flat rate scheme is 11% for our industry but you get 1.0% off the headline rate discount for the first 12 months. In other words a 10% discount from 11% down to 10 %.
The 2 major benefits of the scheme are firstly you only pay your VAT bill once you have been paid (ie unlike the big boys you don't have to pay VAT on debtor monies) and secondly the paperwork is ridiculously simple!
Add up all t/o generated and paid into your bank account (or at least accounted for) and pay 11% over to HMRC. You can even do it via your own computer so that you can time the payment to the last possible day before it is due.
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got the job, cheers for all the advice guys.
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clinton, i'll buy every one a can of asda'a finest lager on this thread who gave me some good advice, and 2 cans to steve chapman, preciate the comments steve, top notch advice.
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;D glad to hear you got the work derek its a good start for you..
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just got to do a top notch job of there office now clinton and hopefully they'll give me a shot at some of there lettings, roll on saturday, game on.
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Hi derek,
glad its worked for you, sounds like you did some bargaining, hope you get some good contracts from it,
i know a lot shy away from letting agencies, but if you understand they are not like domestic customers, they are running a business and like a bit of flexiblilty aswell, then you may hold on to them for the long game
I've even had to wipe of a few debts they owed me when some jobs have gone really pear shaped for them (as they invariably do !) but i know they will look after me and i them so in the long run it works fine, its about knowing the customer and treating them accordingly, not all are the same.
30 day payment is generally rule for me and i can live with that, although if you do work for the local authorities it could be 3 months+ or whenever they feel like it ::)
regards
steve
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steve, i can live with not getting paid for a while, moneys not a problem at the mo. i offered them £10 per job they get me off there own office and personal cleaning, not quite as generous as you but as long as i do a good job (which i will) i'm sure they'll use me, well i hope they will. what are charity's and catholic schools like at paying, ive got 1 each of them next month. better start looking for invoices to give them, not given one yet, all been domestic so far.
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You need to give invoices to ALL of your customers and keep copies for yourself, it's part of the law! If the HMRC tax inspectors ask to see your books you're screwed mate!
www.hmrc.gov.uk/sa/your-tax-return.htm
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maybe if your vat registered you do, but not if your not, ive got records, thats all they need. and thats all there getting.
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Nothing to do with VAT, it's to do with TAX.
RTFM!
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I dont think you have to actually issue an invoice to every customer, i'm sure window cleaners dont , just need a record of every transaction, obviously a receipt is a good idea, but i dont think there are hard & fast rules on how to keep records as long as you do it!
steve
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Picked up a letting agent today, out of the blue - my fitting job was delayed by the painters so I thought today would be a rub out.
Got a call asking me if I could do a 3 bed house and 2 rooms in a flat - but I had to price match their current cleaners price of £ 1.95m2.
Now this is much lower than I normally charge, but you have to look at the bigger picture and they already have asked me to quote on re-carpeting another 2 bed flat, so swings and roundabouts.
Anyway, long story short, 4 hours work £ 175 - not such a waste of a day after all.
Steve
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a 3 bed house and 2 rooms in a flat! 4 hours? what am i doing wrong, thats an all dayer for me,
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Derek
Vacuum, pre-spray and agitate all of upstairs, fill machine, then ready to rinse all upstairs. Get machine downstairs, spray, scrub stairs, have a ciggy, rinse. Then repeat for lounge/diner, hall and downstairs loo. 2 and a half hours.
Then 2 empty rooms, took a bit longer as I had lug everything up 2 flights.
Take keys back - 4 hours start to finish.
Don't forget it's empty, no poxy furniture to move, no kids and dogs getting in the way, no 20 questions from the customer.
Steve
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i'm guessing you dont edge then steve, if all the so called rooms were empty then i may be able to do it about 6 hours, depends on stains, did 2 empty bedroom last week, took 3 hours, lots and lots of stains and draft marks though, think i need to speed up or stop excepting coffees.
best one so far, living room, 1hr 10 mins from leaving home to getting back home, no draft marks and the stains came out with the trucky. wish they were all like that.
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Everything done by the book Derek.
Fortunately no real stains to speak of, everything came out with the rinse.
Must admit I was going like the clappers as I had to drop the keys back for the first one before the agent closed.
Steve