[Steve B]

Hi I'm trying to understand commercial pricing and the difference between that and Domestic.

So for example lets say a window on a Domestic that you would charge £1 for how much would you charge the same but on Commercial?

Does frequency play a factor?

Does amount charged depend on how long you would need to wait for payment?

[simon smith50]

good question
i was thinking that i would suppose all factors would need to be taken into account especially at the moment

[williamx]

There os no easy answer to this question, on a general rule commercial is not priced by the window.

You need to look at serveral factors, how often is the clean, the size and time to clean, the payment method is it linke dto other commercial work.

The best answer I can give, is price the job at the rate where you don't regret going too clean, if you hate the job then you have underpriced it.

[Oakley Windows]

I always think a good point to start at is the 80p a metre scenario, as if it was residential.

But then with commercial there are factors which are likely needed to be taken into consideration which you may not have with residential.

These generally are:

Frequency: if a longer time span elapses between visits allow for this (double the price perhaps if its an annual thing, maybe 20% extra if the visit is 3 monthly)

Level of grime: this generally is something that is dependant on frequency, initial visit is certainly going to be dirtier.

Amount of glass: if theres plenty of glass the rate could be lowered.

Payment: whats the companies frequency of pay-runs? All of mine are pretty good, I get paid within 6 weeks of doing all my commercial, if it was too long Id be unhappy and probably want more.

Those are the things I generally feel need to be taken into consideration, Im sure others have found other criteria that need to be taken into consideration, but thats about it for me.

Quite often I feel that good commercial contracts are more about kudos than the need to have the job. Be careful if that is the case, as youll probably find if you go all guns to get a job then youll regret in the future.

Matt

[Ian_Giles]

I think it really depends on the type of commercial work you are pricing.


Shops? Tight as a ducks proverbial, often very, very tightly priced, great when you have lots of them but hard to get a toe hold as prices so tight to compete with.
Offices up to medium size, the sort of thing you could do WFP in an hour or so can be lucrative, I'd say to price much as you would for residential work, and then add 20% but if you price say a normal semi at £7 or £8.00 or less then - pro rata -  you will be way under priced.
You should be able to work AT A £1.00 PER MINUTE WORKED as a minimum on work like this, please note that I say 'per minute worked' this doesn't mean close to a £500 day!!!
Even on residential work your rate per minute worked should be around a £1.00 a minute, which if you are an experienced window cleaner should be easy enough to go for (Average house say, 10/12 windows and a charge of £10 or £12 and time to clean approx 10 or `12 minutes (WFP that is))

But on small to medium sized commercial work, you should be able to earn at least 20% more than that.

When you get onto the bigger work, stuff that will take days rather than a couple of hours then the price will drop alarmingly on a pro rata basis.
But of course as you may be 2 or 3 days on it, your day rate shouldn't be that much different in the end.
If you are doing £250+ a day with a mixture of several small commercial accounts, each earning you the pro rata rate of £60 an hour, then you will equal that on a large job even though the pro rata rate is more like £30 an hour.

The danger is in under pricing yourself on the medium sized commercial stuff, a facilities manager isn't going to be too worried paying out £60 or £70 and whether you take 30 minutes or 60 minutes, no one is going to be noticing that.
But of course on work that is several hundred quid they pay an awful lot more attention!!

Ian

[Alex Gardiner]

Commercial will nearly always pay less per window than domestic, but usually you have a lot more glass in one place so time wise they can often earn more per hour. There is usually a lot more hassle associated with commercial work though and this really will need to be factored in to the pricing. I can sometimes spend as much as 50% extra time on paperwork, communication and chasing money as actually carrying out the work.

A good pricing model is to price the job at £50 per hour of actual work; for areas around London this would need to increase to about £80 per hour of actual work, not that you will earn much more in London because each job will take you longer to get to and park, etc.

[Steve B]

Some very interesting and informative replies there thank you!

This information is certain to be good reference for many people, I will now read through again to take it in.

Thank you!