Contractors search this because a facility manager who wants fewer visits usually offers a linear cut: 3 days instead of 5, so pay 60%. That sounds fair if every dollar of the bid were labor. It is not.
Labor hours do drop with the visits. A 2.4-hour clean five days a week is about 52 hours a month; three days a week is about 31. The loaded wage on those hours scales the same way.
Travel, equipment, and the monthly supply line stay. The van still goes to the building. The auto-scrubber is still assigned to the account. Paper, liners, and chemicals in a per-square-foot monthly model do not disappear because Tuesday and Thursday came off the calendar. Overhead is a markup on that whole direct cost, not only on labor.
On a typical 8,000 sq ft office — restrooms, break room, lobby, $17 wage, 28% burden, 15% overhead, 20% target margin — a 5-day bid is about $1,720 a month. Sixty percent of that is $1,032. The 3-day price that still holds 20% is about $1,069. The gap looks small until travel climbs: at $800 a month for equipment and drive time, the same linear 60% offer loses money outright.
| 5× / week | 3× / week, priced right | Linear 60% | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Labor hours / month | 52.0 | 31.2 | 31.2 |
| Price that holds 20% | $1,720 | $1,069 | $1,032 |
| Same bid with $800 travel | $2,834 | $2,184 | $1,700 (under water) |
Open the janitorial bid calculator, enter your own wage, burden, and travel, and set current days / proposed days. It shows the 3-day price that still holds your margin, the margin left if you take their linear number, and a reply you can paste. Nothing is uploaded.
This page is arithmetic, not advice. It does not tell you to accept or refuse a renewal. Confirm scope, insurance, and payroll before you send a number.
No. Labor hours scale with visits, but travel, equipment, and a monthly supply line stay on the job. The price that still holds your target margin is higher than 60% of the 5-day price.
Recalculate labor hours at the new weekly frequency, keep equipment, travel, and monthly supplies, then reapply overhead and margin. A production-rate bid calculator does that without guessing a square-foot discount.