How to write a cleaning contractor invoice

What goes on a cleaning contractor invoice

Six things, in the order they belong on the page. The invoice generator opens a cleaning service document with the lines already in place, so most of this is checking rather than typing.

1. Attach the schedule of what a visit includes. Rooms, tasks and frequency. It is the entire defense against was that included.
2. Date every visit on a contract invoice. Four dated lines beat one monthly total every time.
3. Price one-off deep cleans by the job, not the hour. Nobody wants an open-ended hourly count on a deep clean.
4. State whether materials and equipment are included. It is the single most common gap in a cleaning quote.
5. Bill extras as their own lines. Oven, carpets, windows and appliances are add-ons, not part of a standard visit.
6. For move-out work, reference the property and the check-out. That invoice is going to a landlord or an agent, not the person who booked it.

The lines a cleaning contractor invoice usually carries

These are the lines the generator opens with when you pick Cleaning service. The figures are a starting point to type over rather than a going rate: this site runs no pricing survey, and the number on your invoice should be the one you charge.

Add, rename, reorder or delete any line, and set tax per line where it applies. Priced as they open, that comes to $825 before tax.

A worked cleaning contractor invoice, filled in

This is the same job as the table above, written out the way it would leave your phone. Every figure on it is a starting point rather than a going rate, and the tax line is shown at ten per cent purely so the arithmetic is visible: set your own rate, or none, per line.

Subtotal $825, tax $82.50, total $907.50. The parts worth copying are the structure rather than the numbers: the job reference next to the client, every line separately priced with its count showing, the tax on its own line, and terms that name a number of days instead of saying on receipt.

Regular contracts, and making a recurring invoice unanswerable

A cleaning contract is the easiest recurring invoice to write and the easiest to have queried, because nothing on it changes and the customer stops seeing the value.

Invoice monthly with each visit dated as its own line and the standard schedule referenced. Keep the wording identical month to month. The consistency is the point: an invoice that looks the same every month reads as a service running properly.

Where a visit was missed or moved, show it with the reason rather than adjusting the total silently. Customers rarely object to the money and almost always object to a change they discover rather than one they were told about.

Deep cleans, move-out and pricing a job nobody can estimate by eye

A one-off clean is quoted before anybody has seen the state of the property, which is why hourly pricing on this work is a trap for both sides.

Price by the job against a stated scope, with the property size and the rooms listed. Then state your position on condition: where a property is materially worse than described, additional hours are chargeable at your stated rate with the customer agreement. That sentence is what saves a job that turns out to be twice the work.

Move-out is a special case because the real reader is a landlord or agent deciding on a deposit. Reference the property address, the check-out date and the scope covered, and keep the itemization detailed, because the invoice is being used as evidence that the property was professionally cleaned.

Materials, consumables and commercial contracts

Cleaning is one of the few trades where a customer genuinely may not know whether the products are meant to be theirs or yours, and it is worth removing the doubt in writing.

State it on the quote and repeat it on the invoice: materials and equipment supplied, or consumables provided by the client. On commercial work, consumables like paper, soap and bin liners are usually a separate recharged line and should be shown with quantities.

Commercial contracts also need the site, the contract reference and the period covered, with terms in days. An office manager approving a monthly cleaning invoice wants to see the period and the schedule, and nothing else.

Hourly, fixed price or per unit: how cleaning contractors price the work

Cleaning is priced per visit against a written schedule, or by the job for one-off work. Hourly pricing survives only in ad hoc domestic work, because everywhere else it gives the customer an open-ended number they cannot approve in advance.

Whichever model, the schedule is what makes the invoice unanswerable. A customer reading cut, wipe, vacuum, bathrooms, kitchen with four dated visits pays it without thinking. A customer reading cleaning services, one month, asks what they got.

Working out what to charge

This guide is about what goes on the document, not what the number should be, and nobody should hand you a rate for your own market. What the site can do is the arithmetic: the freelance rate calculator works back from what you need to earn, the service price calculator prices a service against your costs, and the profit margin calculator checks what is left once the job is done.

Writing it on your phone, in five steps

Most cleaning contractors write the invoice standing next to the work rather than at a desk a week later, and the week later version is the one that gets details wrong. The generator is built for the first case.

1. Open it with your trade already chosen. The cleaning service invoice loads with deep clean (per visit) and the rest of the lines already on the page.
2. Put the client and the job reference in first. It is the part you will not remember accurately in three days, and on agent, landlord or contractor work it is the reason the invoice gets paid at all.
3. Edit the lines rather than starting from empty. Change the quantities and the rates, delete what you did not do, add what you did. Keeping the descriptions means the wording stays consistent from one job to the next.
4. Set the terms to 14 days and add a payment link. A due date that is an actual date gets chased. A link and a QR code means it can be settled before you have packed up.
5. Send it before you leave. The clock on your terms starts when the invoice arrives, not when the work finished, so every day it sits unsent is a day added to getting paid.

Getting paid once it is sent

Put a due date and your terms on the document, because an invoice without them is hard to chase. Add a payment link and a QR so settling up is a tap rather than a transfer somebody has to set up. When part of it lands, the receipt maker records it as a part payment and prints the balance still due. If the due date passes, the late fee calculator works out what your own terms allow and writes the chasing letter to go with it.

Five dates decide whether a cleaning contractor gets paid on time, and four of them are set before the work starts.

Mistakes that cost cleaning contractors money

• Cleaning services as the only description. Nobody can tell what was included.
• Undated monthly totals. The customer cannot confirm the visits happened.
• Hourly pricing on deep cleans. An open-ended figure the customer cannot accept in advance.
• Materials position unstated. An argument at the door on the first visit.
• Move-out invoices with no property reference. Useless as the evidence the customer actually needed.

Cleaning service invoice questions

Free cleaning contractor invoice template

The free cleaning contractor invoice template opens with the lines above already priced, in any of 200 designs, and exports a print-ready PDF with no signup and nothing saved to a server. If you would rather edit a file offline, there are 72 Word templates, 72 Excel templates with the totals already calculating, and 72 fillable PDFs.

Invoicing guides for related trades

The same billing questions come up next door. These four guides cover the trades closest to cleaning contractors, and each one sits alongside its own free template.

Every trade has one: see all 46 invoicing guides, or go straight to the 46 free invoice templates they describe.

Everything on this site, set up for cleaning contractors

The whole toolkit, with the reason each one matters to cleaning contractors rather than in general. The five marked links open with cleaning service already selected.

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