How to price your cleaning jobs so you actually make money

You're booked solid. Three jobs today, four tomorrow, a full week ahead. So why does your bank account still feel thin at the end of the month?

For most cleaning operators in New Zealand and Australia, the answer is the same: the pricing is off. Not by a dramatic amount — just enough that every job quietly bleeds margin. The schedule looks great. The profit doesn't.

The problem isn't effort. It's that most people in this industry price by feel — they check what someone on Facebook is charging, round to a number that seems reasonable, and hope for the best. That's not a pricing strategy. That's a guess dressed up as one.

Here's how to price cleaning jobs so the numbers actually work.

Why most cleaning businesses undercharge (and how to tell if you're one of them)

The most common sign you're underpricing isn't that clients complain about your rates. It's the opposite — nobody ever pushes back, every lead converts instantly, and you're always flat-out busy. That's not a sign of success. That's a sign your prices are too low.

A healthy cleaning business should lose some quotes. If you win every job you price, you're probably leaving money on the table.

The second sign is the "busy but broke" trap. You're doing the work, the invoices go out, the money comes in — but after paying for supplies, fuel, time, and yourself, there's not much left. That's a margin problem, and it almost always traces back to a rate that was set without doing the maths.

The four numbers you need before you quote anything

Before you set a rate, you need to know four things:

1. Your labour cost per hour. If you're a solo operator, this is what you need to pay yourself per hour — not what a casual employee earns, but what makes the business worth running for you. If you hire staff, in Australia the minimum casual rate from 1 July 2025 is $31.19/hr (Fair Work Commission), and you'll likely pay more to attract reliable people. Add KiwiSaver or Super on top.

2. Your direct costs per job. Cleaning supplies, equipment wear, and travel (fuel, vehicle depreciation) that are directly tied to each job. For a typical residential clean, this is often $8–$18 per job depending on distance and product use. Be honest here — most operators underestimate this number.

3. Your overhead per hour. These are costs that exist whether or not you're on a job: insurance, software, phone, marketing, accounting. Add them up for the month and divide by your billable hours. If you spend $600/month on overhead and work 80 billable hours, that's $7.50/hr you need to cover before you've made a cent of profit.

4. Your target margin. Residential cleaning typically earns 10–15% net margin; commercial cleaning runs 15–20% (source: ContractorPlus, 2026). A well-run solo operator can push higher. Pick a margin that reflects the risk and effort involved, then price to hit it — not to hope for it.

A real pricing formula with worked NZ and AU examples

Once you have those four numbers, pricing becomes arithmetic rather than guesswork.

The formula:

Job price = (Labour cost × estimated hours) + direct job costs + (overhead rate × estimated hours) + profit margin

Say you're a solo cleaner in Hamilton. You want to pay yourself $35/hr, your direct costs average $12 per job, your overhead works out to $6/hr, and you're targeting a 20% margin.

For a standard 2-bedroom house taking 2.5 hours:

• Labour: $35 × 2.5 = $87.50
• Direct costs: $12.00
• Overhead: $6 × 2.5 = $15.00
• Subtotal: $114.50
• 20% margin: $22.90
• Job price: ~$137

That puts you comfortably inside the published NZ residential cleaning market range of $35–$65/hr (source: Clean for Good, 2026) — but you're not guessing at that range. You're anchoring to your actual numbers.

For a crew of two doing a 3-hour deep clean in Auckland, the same logic applies but your labour cost doubles, your direct costs increase, and your price should reflect that accordingly.

In Australia, the maths shifts slightly given different wage floors. With a casual employee at $31.19/hr (Fair Work, July 2025) plus superannuation (11.5%), your base labour cost alone is around $34.75/hr before any overhead. In Brisbane or on the Gold Coast, residential cleans typically command $50–$70/hr for insured professional services — which means the margin is there if you're pricing to your costs rather than matching the cheapest quote on Oneflare.

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How to move from hourly rates to flat-rate quoting

Hourly pricing has one big problem: it punishes you for getting faster. As you and your team become more efficient, your revenue per job drops. That's backwards.

Flat-rate quoting flips the incentive. You quote a fixed price for the job — say $145 for a standard 3-bed house — and if your team gets it done in 2 hours instead of 2.5, that extra 30 minutes is profit, not a discount to the client.

It also makes the buying decision easier for customers. "How long will you be?" is a harder conversation than "It's $145 for your home, every time."

Start by tracking your actual clean times over 2–4 weeks. For each property type (2-bed, 3-bed, end-of-tenancy, deep clean), work out your average time, apply the formula above, and build a simple price list. Quote from the list. Adjust for unusual properties.

How to handle the "you're too expensive" pushback

When a client says you're too expensive, most operators do one of three things: discount, panic, or lose the job and feel bad about it. There's a fourth option: hold the price and explain the value.

"I understand you can find cheaper. I can tell you exactly what's included — public liability insurance, quality products, consistent staff, and a guarantee if anything's not right. That's what the rate covers."

Some clients will still walk. That's fine. The clients who leave because of price are usually the highest-maintenance ones anyway. The clients who stay because they understand your value are the ones who refer you, rebook regularly, and don't complain when you increase rates once a year.

If you're losing a rate you genuinely can't live with, the answer isn't to drop it. It's to look hard at your costs — can you tighten your routing to cut travel time? Are you buying supplies at trade prices? Is there overhead you could reduce? Cutting your price should be the last lever, not the first.

What to do this week

Price confidence comes from knowing your numbers. If you've been quoting by feel, the fix is straightforward: spend an hour working out your actual labour cost, overhead rate, and direct costs per job. Then run your current prices through the formula and see where you land.

If your existing rates don't cover those four numbers at your target margin, you need to adjust — either by raising prices with current clients at renewal, or by setting a higher rate for new clients while holding existing ones temporarily.

It's uncomfortable the first time. It gets easier quickly when you see the margin improve. The goal isn't to be the cheapest cleaning business in your area. It's to be the one still operating in five years.