Know which jobs make money, and which only feel busy

Why a busy week can make nothing

Every cleaning company has had the week. The calendar was full, the crews were out from 8 to 5, the phone didn't stop, and on Friday the bank account looked about the same as it did on Monday.

What goes into the cost of a cleaning job

A cleaning job has five costs you can pin to it. Everything else (insurance, software, your phone, marketing, your own time in the office) is overhead, and it gets paid from what the jobs leave behind.

1. Labour. Each cleaner's hours on the job, times their pay rate. Real hours, from when they started to when they finished, not the hours you quoted.
2. Labour burden. If your cleaners are employees, what you pay on top of the wage: your share of CPP and EI, WSIB, vacation pay and public holiday pay. More on that in the next section.
3. Supplies. Chemicals, cloths, bags, the oven cleaner a move-out eats. Most owners work out an average per type of clean rather than counting spray bottles.
4. Travel. Getting the crew and the kit there: gas, parking, and the paid time driving between jobs.
5. Card fees. Whatever your payment processor takes on each charge.

Here's one real-looking job at a demo company, Your Cleaning Co.: Priya's deep clean at 21 Elm St. Quoted at $290, it ran 40 minutes long because the oven was worse than expected, and a $35 oven add-on went on the job. Marcus and Aisha checked in at 9:04 and out at 1:40.

Notice what isn't in the price: HST. The $41.60 of HST on that job was never yours, so it doesn't count as revenue. Cost against the price before tax, always.

Labour burden: what a $21 hour really costs

If your cleaners are employees, the wage on the pay statement isn't the whole cost of an hour. In Ontario in 2026, these go on top:

So a $21 hour costs you closer to $24.60. On Priya's deep clean, adding 17% to the $197.80 of labour is another $33.63, and the job's profit drops from $92.95 to $59.32. Still a profit. A thinner one.

These rates are from the CRA, WSIB and the Ontario government's employment standards guide, checked October 23, 2026. Your WSIB rate depends on how your business is classified and your own claims history, and it's on your premium statement. Your accountant can give you the exact burden for your payroll in five minutes, and it's worth asking.

More Knocks costs labour at each cleaner's pay rate, from their real hours. It doesn't add the burden on top, so the margin you see is before it. The simple fix is to aim higher: if your burden is 17%, a job showing 28.6% is really nearer 18%, and you price with that in mind.

Drive time and card fees: the costs nobody invoices

Drive time

Under Ontario's Employment Standards Act, an employee's travel between work sites during the day is work time. The drive from home to the first job is usually commuting, and isn't. So when Marcus finishes at 25 Elm St at 12:15 and drives 35 minutes to his next job, you're paying for those 35 minutes, and no customer is.

Two ways to keep it under control:

• Count it. Put a travel cost on every job, even a rough one. A job across town from everything else that day should carry more of it than the job next door.
• Shrink it. Group jobs by area so the van spends its day on one side of town. A job ten minutes from the last one is worth more than the same job forty minutes away, at the same price.

If your cleaners use their own cars, the CRA's reasonable allowance for 2026 is 73 cents a kilometre for the first 5,000 km. It's a useful yardstick for what a kilometre of driving really costs, even if you pay mileage another way.

Card fees

Stripe's standard rate in Canada is 2.9% plus 30 cents per charge, and it's charged on what the customer pays, HST included. On a pre-tax price that works out to about 3.3%, plus 30 cents for each charge. A job paid as a deposit and a balance is two charges. Check your own processor's rate, because some cards and plans cost more.

On Priya's $325 clean, that's $11.25. On a $1,450 monthly office contract paid by card, it's $47.82. You can't avoid most of it, but you can make sure it's in the price.

What margin to aim for

Search for cleaning business profit margins and you'll get numbers all over the place: net margins of 10% to 28% in one industry dataset, 20% to 40% in another software company's guide, and labour anywhere from 30% to 60% of revenue. Almost all of it comes from companies selling software, including us, so treat any one figure with suspicion.

A more useful way to think about it is from your own overhead. Add up a month of the costs that aren't tied to any job: insurance, software, phone, marketing, the office, and a fair wage for the hours you spend running things. For a small company that's often 15% to 20% of revenue.

Every job has to cover its own costs, then its share of that overhead, then leave a profit. So if overhead is 18% of revenue and you want 10% profit at the end of the year, your jobs need to average about 28% after labour, supplies, travel and fees. If your crews are employees, add your labour burden on top of that.

Then look at the spread. A business where standard cleans keep 34% and move-outs keep 12% doesn't have a margin problem. It has a move-out price problem.

Pricing a cleaning job from its cost

Most owners price by looking at what competitors charge, then shaving a bit off. That tells you what the market will bear. It doesn't tell you whether the job makes money. Do both, and when they disagree, believe the cost.

The formula is short. Add up labour, supplies and travel for a typical job of that size. Add 30 cents for each card charge. Then divide by one, minus the margin you want, minus your card fees as a share of the price (about 0.033 at Stripe's standard rate in Ontario).

For a 3-bedroom deep clean like Priya's, with a 30% target:

Priya was quoted $290 for that home and paid $325 once the oven was added. A price of about $332 for a 3-bedroom deep clean that takes two cleaners 4.6 hours would have kept 30% without any surprises.

Use your real hours, not your hopeful ones. Take the last ten jobs of each type and size, and average the crew hours. If a 2-bedroom move-out takes three cleaners five and a half hours more often than not, that's the job you're pricing.

Job costing software that does the math for you

All of that works on a spreadsheet, if you have an evening every week. In More Knocks, every job is costed when it's done, with nothing to fill in.

Labour from real hours

Cleaners check in when they arrive and check out when they're done, in the cleaner app. Those hours are costed at each cleaner's pay rate. The 40 minutes the oven added are in there, because nobody had to remember them.

Supplies, travel and card fees

The costs that never make it onto the quote come off each job too, including the card fees on the deposit and the balance. The receipts you photograph go into your books through snap receipts.

Margin by job, type of clean and customer

Every job shows its profit and margin. Then the same numbers roll up by type of clean, so you can see standard cleans next to deep cleans next to move-outs, and by customer, so the dental office three times a week sits next to the one-off move-out. Monthly revenue reports show how it all adds up.

Fix the price before the next booking

The point of all this is the next quote. When move-outs keep 12% and standard cleans keep 34%, change the move-out price on your instant quote before Saturday's booking comes in. The month as a whole, after cleaner pay and card fees, is in accounting.

Before you quote your next job: a checklist

Run through this whenever you set or change a price, whatever you use to cost your jobs: