House cleaning cost calculator

What this clean costs you: $206.42
Paid hours in this clean, drive included: 6.75
Wages for the clean, before employer tax: $128.25
Labour once employer tax and insurance are on it: $144.92

The constants in these sheets are the IRS employer payroll-tax rates: Topic 751 sets Social Security at 6.2% and Medicare at 1.45% on the employer side, and Topic 759 sets FUTA at 6.0% on the first $7,000 paid to each employee in the year, 0.6% once the maximum state credit applies. Where a sheet costs a trip, the figure is the IRS standard mileage rate. Every other number in the sheets is one you type in, because your wage, your supplies and your drive time are not ours to guess.

Your numbers

Cleaners on the job How many people are in the house at once. Two cleaners for three hours is six paid hours, not three.Hours on site, per cleaner Door to door inside the house, not counting the drive.What you pay a cleaner an hour, dollars The gross hourly wage on the payslip, before any employer tax.Employer payroll tax and insurance, percent of wage Federal employer FICA alone is 7.65% (IRS Topic 751); add state unemployment, workers' compensation and any paid time off you fund.Paid drive time for the job, hours in total If you pay travel between houses, it belongs in the cost of this house.Supplies and consumables used, dollars Cloths, chemicals, bags, filters and machine wear used up on this clean.Vehicle cost for the trip, dollars Fuel, wear and the share of insurance and payments the trip carries.Overhead you carry per paid hour, dollars Office, phone, software, marketing and the owner's unbilled time, divided by the hours you actually bill.

The figures above are one house worked as an example ($206.42). Put your own hours, wage and supplies in and the price moves as you type.

Download the House cleaning cost calculator worked example (CSV)

The Sudslane workspace, Quotes and invoices tab, showing the saved cost of a fortnightly clean against the customer record: two cleaners for three hours, 6.75 paid hours, $128.25 of wages, $144.92 once employer tax and insurance are on it, and $206.42 as what the clean costs. — The same worked figures, kept against the customer in Sudslane Pro.

This sheet works out what one house clean costs your business, which is a different number from what you pay the cleaners. It takes the cleaners on the job and the hours each is on site, multiplies that out into paid hours, adds the drive time you actually pay for, puts the employer's share of payroll tax and insurance on top of the wage, and then adds the supplies used up, what the trip cost the van, and the overhead each paid hour has to carry. The answer is the floor under any price you quote for that house.

What owners ask before they price a clean with the House cleaning cost calculator

Why is the cost higher than the wage I pay?

Because the wage is not the cost. The IRS sets the employer's share of Social Security at 6.2% and Medicare at 1.45% (Topic 751), which is 7.65% before you add state unemployment, workers' compensation or any paid time off you fund. That is why the sheet asks for a burden percentage rather than assuming the wage is the whole story.

Should drive time be in here?

If you pay for it, yes. Time between houses that you pay a cleaner for is a cost of that house whether or not you bill the customer for it; leaving it out is how a tight route looks profitable and a spread-out one does not.

What do I put for overhead per paid hour?

Take the things that do not change with one clean, office, phone, software, marketing, your own unbilled time, add them up for a month, and divide by the hours you actually billed that month. If you bill 400 hours and carry $2,400 of overhead, that is $6 an hour.

Where the constants in this tool come from

IRS Topic 751: Social Security and Medicare withholding rates.

IRS Topic 759: Form 940, employer's annual federal unemployment (FUTA) tax return.

Keep this price against the customer it belongs toStart Sudslane Pro, $39 a month