[Tim Downer]

Hi Peeps.....

Been in the Builders clean side of the business for well over a year now.
Work is coming in nice and steadily now as we are building on our reputation.
However, i pay my cleaners £9.00 per hour for their hard work, especially as most are women and they work really hard.
But we don't seem to be making hardly any profit!! (Directors are on my back!)

Do any of you out there pay your team cleaners by the property? i.e instead of a per hour wage, a plot wage. For example £30.00 for each cleaner per plot for a builders clean.
Am thinking that i can control the money a bit closer this way. Have any of you tried it in the past but found it didn't work?

Just playing with some ideas to get round this, especially as nearly all the tenders that go out, the surveyors say we are expensive.....so i know its not the price of the work letting us down.

Your thoughts or ideas would really be appreciated.

Thanks,  Tim

[CMS]

Just a thought................

Are you as a company, and particularly your cleaners, doing TOO much.

I'm sure that you are doing a marvellous job but are you exceeding what the Client actually wants and therefore losing money.

[Tim Downer]

Could be, as sometimes i send them off as a group of say 6 cleaners to do what i would think as aceptable a 7 or 8 hour day and they have completed the work in 9 hours - which is 6-12 hours extra to spend on wages, which at £9 per hour is a lot of extra money to pay out.....

Thanx CMS and this is possibly one avenue to look at.

Regards

Tim

[CMS]

It's a very common problem in regular contracted work as well as 'one-offs'....................

It's totally pointless being the best Cleaning Company in the area i.e. achieving the highest standards at the best price...............................if you're making no money 

I think I've said before......there's only one way to judge whether you are doing a good job. It's whether or not you are meeting the terms of the specification...............not, in fact, whether the place is clean.

They are two different things.

[Prestige1]

Hi
£9 per hour is a lot for this type of work. I appreciate its hard, but this high cost may be where your profits going most I would pay is £7 out of hours and £6.50 during the day. if your paying staff £9 per hour what are you charging the customer? I would want at least £18 +vat per hour! one thing I am learning fast after doing this for 3 years now, and that is not all business is good bussiness for a while now I have been intent on getting the work but its no good getting it if your not making enough money on it.
kind regards Phil

[Tim Downer]

Hi

We dont charge our jobs by the hour.....they are a set price for the plot.
Apartments may be £150 for a builders clean, and we may have to clean several apartments a day......

Regards

Tim

 

[martin19842]

hi tim,

ecomomies of scale are a big problem,

not going to talk figures openly but we target each employee to generate an invoice valuse per day at wages x2,  in real life for build cleans we get wages X1.87 per emp per day. i hope that this makes sense.

we now have a product mix, of build cleans, weekly common area cleaning, showhome cleaning, px ie vacant property cleans, and then specialist cleans, high level, blast cleaning, carpet cleaning and flood works.

by doing that we are creating higher profitability to the company as a whole, ideally build cleans to us are a means to an ends.

regards

martin

[LRAZEC]

I know this question has been posted before but with no reply.
Those of you that charge builders clean per sqm how much do you charge?

Cheers

[BSF]

Hi Timbob,

Last time I posted on a subject along with you (vat) it was left on a bit of bad feeling between us, but hey that is the past, I dont hold any grudges, my company does over seven hundred properties per annum for a set price from one customer (not new builds as I do charge these per Sq Ft)

I pay my staff a set price for these properties, some they win some they lose, when I was paying per hour they took the p##s, so I had to change the way I paid them.

I dont do a great lot of new builds, proberbly only 20k's worth this year, I only pay £6 per hour and it works out a very good profit, only because I am hands on for these jobs, if I got into new builds in a big way I would have to consider paying my staff a set price per sq ft if I found they were taking too much time, 

LRAZEC if you do a proper search I have given away the average price, but to save you time, some new builds are basic jobs, some are high spec, fitted wardrobes, loads of kitchen cupboards, loads of hard wood windows (more time to clean) they are priced accordingly, start at 10p per sq ft for a very basic property and go up,  get as much pence per sq ft as you can get away with, if the builder thinks its over the top they will tell you.

Timbob, £9 per hour is too much to pay staff, when you consider holidays employers nic's etc, your directors want big dividends, I would suggest some sort of price per sq ft for them.

regards

Paul

[Tim Downer]

Thank you for your input Paul.....

The past?....all forgotton over here too....(why, what happened??..!!) :

I must admit that i have been playing with the concept of charging a set price for our work.....maybe trying it with one developer and seeing how it works out. At least with all involved having set prices, the developer and the staff, i can better plan the finances etc ahead of time.

However, we have just come off charging per sq.ft in our quotes, i have found it for me easier and quicker to set a price for a typical kitchen, bathroom suite, typical room size, downstairs toilet, etc etc etc This has been put into a spread sheet in excel and i just enter the details and it works the price out for me.

But there again, your suggestion of paying the staff per sq.ft is something to consider too. Even though we have been going for a year now, i feel i need to have a clean start as it were, and re-think how we operate.

Thank you again for your ideas.

Kind Regards

Tim