This calculator vs. a flat rate per square foot
"20 cents a square foot" is not a price for a building — it is a price for one specific mix of open office, restrooms, and common area, quietly applied to the next building whether or not its mix looks anything like the first one's.
What a flat per-foot rate is
A flat rate is the fastest way to quote: multiply total cleanable square footage by a number and read off a monthly price. Prospects like it because it is easy to compare between bids, and it needs no walkthrough to quote over the phone. It is also the number a prospect holding a competitor's proposal will ask you to match.
The rate was set on one building — one particular split of open office, private offices, restrooms, and common area — and then reused for the next building's square footage, whether or not that building's mix looks anything like the one the rate was built on.
What this calculator is
This page keeps no account and sends nothing to a server. You enter each space type's cleanable square footage, its own production rate, and cleanings per week, plus your loaded wage and payroll burden, supplies, equipment, overhead, and target margin. It turns each space's own labor hours into a price, and reports the price per square foot, the effective hourly rate, and the walk-away price below which the job loses money — for this building's actual mix, not a generic one.
| What a flat per-foot rate does | What this calculator does instead |
|---|---|
| Charges the same $/sq ft whether a 10,000 sq ft building is 5% restrooms or 20% restrooms — a several-times difference in restroom labor for the same total floor area. | Prices each space type at its own production rate, so a restroom-heavy building's extra labor shows up in the price instead of being averaged away into one blended rate. |
| Assumes the building the rate was set on is the building being quoted, with no way to tell when the mix has changed. | On two otherwise identical 10,000 sq ft buildings cleaned 5×/week, prices the 5%-restroom building at about $2,386/month and the 20%-restroom building at about $2,948/month — a 24% difference the square footage alone never showed. |
| Carries a rate set on a light-restroom building over to a heavier one at the same square footage: $0.2386/sq ft × 10,000 sq ft = $2,386/month. | Reports the heavier building's own walk-away cost ($2,506/month) and target-margin price ($2,948/month) — the carried-over flat quote lands about $120/month under walk-away and $562/month short of the target margin. |
| Bakes payroll burden into a round rate nobody re-derives, so the rate quietly drifts from the crew's real loaded cost. | Loads the entered hourly wage by the entered payroll-burden percentage every time, so labor cost tracks the actual burden rather than a memorized rate. |
| Gives a number to quote, not a number to check a quote against. | Reports the walk-away price and the effective hourly rate, so a shopped price can be scored against real cost before the contract is signed. |
A flat rate is not wrong because it is simple — it is wrong when the building's mix has moved away from the one the rate was set on, and nothing about a per-square-foot number tells you when that has happened. This calculator does not replace judgment about your market; it replaces the arithmetic a flat rate skips.
Common questions
Why does a flat rate per square foot get janitorial bids wrong?
Because labor hours come from a space's production rate, not from its square footage alone. A restroom takes several times the labor per square foot of open office, so a building's mix of space types -- not just its total floor area -- decides how many hours the contract actually needs. A flat rate charges every building the same for a given square footage and is wrong on most of them.
Can two buildings the same size really cost differently to clean?
Yes. Take two 10,000 sq ft buildings cleaned 5 nights a week with the same wage, burden, supplies, overhead, and target margin -- one that is 5% restrooms and one that is 20% restrooms. This calculator prices the 5%-restroom building at about $2,386 a month and the 20%-restroom building at about $2,948 a month: a 24% difference on identical square footage, from the restroom share alone.
What happens if a rate set on one building is quoted on another?
On the pair above, the $0.2386-per-square-foot rate that holds the target margin on the light-restroom building comes to $2,386 a month if quoted on the heavy-restroom building's identical 10,000 square feet -- about $120 a month under that building's own walk-away cost of $2,506, and about $562 short of the price that would actually hold the target margin there. The flat rate does not know which building it was set on.
Is a flat rate ever the right way to quote?
For a narrow band of similar buildings -- close to the same restroom, office, and common-area mix -- a flat rate can land close. The risk is carrying a rate set on one building's mix over to a building with a different one, because the square-footage total looks the same either way and nothing about the rate itself says the mix has changed.
Does this calculator know what to charge in my market?
No. It has no data on local rates or what competitors charge. It takes the square footage, production rate, and cleanings per week you enter for each space, plus your wage, burden, supplies, overhead, and target margin, and turns that into a price, a walk-away cost, and a price per square foot for the building you describe -- the arithmetic a flat rate skips, not a market survey.
Nothing here says or implies that quoting a flat rate per square foot is a bad-faith practice — it is a common, honest shortcut that works until a building's mix stops matching the one the rate was set on. This page describes where that shortcut breaks down, not a fault in anyone who uses it. The $2,386, $2,948, $2,506, and $562 figures above are this calculator's own arithmetic on the two example buildings described in this page, not a claim about any specific contractor's real costs.
Open the Janitorial Bid Calculator and price your own contract.