MaidBossPro Blog — Quotes & Pricing

House Cleaning Estimate Software: The Complete Guide to Quoting, Pricing and Winning Cleaning Jobs

Every cleaning company lives and dies by its quotes. A quote that is too low fills the schedule with houses that lose money. A quote that is too high, or too slow, or too confusing, sends the customer to the next company on the list. And a quote that is right but never reaches the team leaves them walking into a house without knowing about the dog, the alarm or the oven the customer paid to have cleaned.

This guide walks through the whole quoting side of a house cleaning or maid service business: how to set up what you sell, how to price it, how to send it, and what should happen after the customer says yes.

What Estimate Software Should Do for a Cleaning Company

This guide is the starting point for everything on the house cleaning estimate software page, and each section below has its own deeper article.

A cleaning quote is not a single line with a price on it. It is a home with a number of bedrooms and bathrooms, a size in square feet, maybe a pet or two, a frequency, a first visit that often needs more work than the rest, and a list of extras. Good estimate software for a cleaning company should handle all of that:

• A service list of what you sell, priced the way you price it.
• Pricing by size, tied to bedrooms, bathrooms or square feet if you choose.
• Cleaning details on the quote: cleaning type, beds, baths, square feet, pets, extras and entry notes.
• Online approval, so the customer can say yes from their phone.
• Approved quotes that become jobs, with every detail carried along.
• Follow-up for the quotes that go quiet.

MaidBossPro does each of these. The rest of this guide is about how to use them well.

Start With a Service List

Before you send a single estimate, write down what you sell. A typical list for a residential cleaning company looks something like this:

• Standard clean (one-time)
• Weekly, every-two-weeks and monthly recurring cleans
• First-time deep clean
• Deep clean (one-time)
• Move-in / move-out clean
• Post-construction clean
• Office cleaning
• Add-ons: inside oven, inside fridge, interior windows, baseboards, inside cabinets, laundry, change linens

In MaidBossPro, the service list is what estimates are built from. Set it up once and every quote becomes a few picks instead of a blank page. It also means every office person quotes the same prices for the same work. The details are in Building a Cleaning Service List Your Estimates Can Pull From.

Pick a Pricing Method

Cleaning companies generally price one of three ways, and many mix them:

• By bedrooms and bathrooms. Easy for customers to answer on the phone. Bathrooms usually drive the time more than bedrooms. Example: a 3 bed / 2 bath recurring clean at $155 every two weeks.
• By square feet. Better for large or unusual homes where room counts mislead. A 1,800 sq ft home and a 3,400 sq ft home can both be “3 bed / 2 bath.”
• Hourly. Useful for jobs nobody can predict, like heavy post-construction or a hoarding situation, but customers often find it harder to compare.

In MaidBossPro, prices can tie to bedrooms, bathrooms or square feet, or stay flat. Whatever you pick, the important thing is consistency: the same house should get the same price no matter who answers the phone. The trade-offs are covered in Square Feet, Hourly or Flat Rate: Choosing a House Cleaning Pricing Method.

First Visit, Recurring Price and Extras

The single most common cleaning quote is a first deep clean followed by recurring service. Write them as separate prices. For example:

• First-time deep clean, 3 bed / 2 bath: $325
• Every-two-weeks clean after that: $155
• Weekly clean option: $135
• Monthly clean option: $185

Showing each frequency at its own price is clearer than a discount the customer has to work out. They can see that more frequent visits cost less per visit because the house never gets as dirty, and they can pick what fits their budget.

Add-ons go on as their own lines too: $35 inside the oven, $30 inside the fridge, $40 for interior windows. Separate lines mean the customer sees what they are paying for and the team sees what they need to do. Pets belong on the quote as well, both for pricing and so the team knows what to expect.

Get the Details Right Once

Whoever takes the call learns a lot about the house. In MaidBossPro, that goes on the estimate: cleaning type, bedrooms, bathrooms, square feet, pets, extras, and entry notes such as the lockbox location, door code, alarm, rooms to skip and products to use.

When the customer approves, those details carry onto the job. The team sees them on their phone under the address, something like “Deep Clean · 3 bed / 2 bath · 1,800 sq ft · Dog” with “+ Inside Oven” and the entry notes underneath. Nobody re-types anything, and nothing gets lost between the office and the house. If you have cleaned the home before, a new job fills in from that home's last job, with a note saying so.

Send It Fast, Make It Easy to Say Yes

Speed matters as much as price. A customer who calls three cleaning companies often goes with the first clear quote they get. Send the estimate while you are still on the phone if you can, or the same day at the latest. Templates help: a saved “first deep clean plus every two weeks” estimate can be adjusted and sent in a minute.

The customer approves online. There is nothing to print, sign or scan. If they do not answer, estimate follow-up emails remind them, which picks up the customers who meant to say yes and simply got busy.

Quote requests also come in from your website. The website request form and the sign-up form both flow into Form Responses. The sign-up form lets a customer choose from the services and prices you offer and captures a card, and one click converts that sign-up into a client.

After the Yes

The approved estimate becomes the scheduled job. For a recurring customer, the office adds the cleaning on Recurring Cleanings with a fixed slot: the same day, the same time and the same team, weekly, every two weeks or monthly. Every visit for the next 3, 6 or 12 months goes straight onto the schedule. The team works them from the phone, and when the job is complete the invoice is created from the same prices the customer approved, with a card on file charged if the customer has one.

Office cleaning and rental-property accounts work the same way, and an account with several locations can be billed on one monthly statement with each line labeled by address.

Where to Go From Here

Quoting is where a cleaning company sets its margins and makes its first impression. Get the service list in place, choose a pricing method you can apply every time, write recurring prices as their own numbers, and let the approved quote become the job so the details reach the team. The guides that follow go deeper into each of these. For the full picture of how quoting fits into MaidBossPro, visit the house cleaning estimate software page.