MaidBossPro Blog — Quotes & Pricing

Quoting a Home You Have Cleaned Before

Some of the easiest quotes a cleaning company gives are for homes it already knows. The holiday deep-clean customer calls again in November. The family that cancelled recurring service last spring wants to start again. A landlord asks for another move-out at the same rental. You have been inside, you know the layout, and you probably know the lockbox code. The trick is using what you know without assuming nothing has changed.

Why Returning Homes Are Different

On a new home, everything on the job comes from the estimate, as described in Cleaning Details on the Estimate: How They Carry Onto the Job. On a home you have cleaned before, you already have a record of the last job, and that record is often more accurate than anything the customer will tell you on the phone.

Your team has seen the home. They know whether the “three bathrooms” includes a powder room, how much the dog sheds, and whether the oven is the hard kind. That knowledge is worth using.

MaidBossPro Remembers Each Home

In MaidBossPro, when you create a new job at a home the company has cleaned before, it fills in from that home's last job: bedrooms, bathrooms, pets, extras and the entry code. A note on the job says that the details came from the last visit, so the office knows to double-check them rather than treat them as new.

Nobody re-types the lockbox code, and nobody asks the customer for information they already gave. Because one client can have many addresses, a landlord or property manager with several rentals keeps each address's details separately, so the second rental does not borrow the first one's door code.

Ask What Has Changed

Homes change. Before you send the quote, run through a short check with the customer:

• Any new pets, or pets no longer in the home?
• Any remodeling, new rooms or a finished basement since we were last there?
• Is the entry the same? Same lockbox, same code, same alarm?
• Any rooms to skip now that were not before, or the other way around?
• When was the home last professionally cleaned?

Update anything that changed on the job. The next visit will then start from the updated details.

Pricing a Returning Customer

Use your current service list. Prices may have changed since the last visit, and a returning customer should be quoted the same as a new customer with the same home, unless you have a deliberate policy otherwise. A few situations come up often:

• Lapsed recurring customer. If they stopped several months ago, the home probably needs a deep clean again before recurring service restarts. Explain why, and quote the deep clean and the recurring price as separate lines.
• Repeat one-time deep clean. Quote from the last job's details, check what changed, and use current prices.
• Repeat move-out at a rental. The layout is known, but condition depends entirely on the last tenant. Ask for photos.

If your prices have gone up since the last visit, say so plainly: “Our prices have gone up a little since last year. Your deep clean would be $340 this time.” Customers generally accept a change they are told about. Example numbers only.

Turn One-Timers Into Recurring

A customer who books a deep clean every holiday season already likes your work. When they call, it is a good moment to mention recurring service: “Since the home will be in great shape after the deep clean, an every-two-weeks clean would be $155 a visit to keep it there.”

Put both on the estimate, the deep clean and the recurring option, and let them choose. Showing frequencies as separate prices is covered in Weekly, Every-Two-Weeks and Monthly Cleaning Prices, Written as Separate Prices.

Returning homes are also a good test of your notes. If the office has to ask the customer things a past team should have recorded, such as which bathroom has the delicate stone or where the vacuum is kept, that is a sign the notes from earlier visits are too thin. Fix it now, so the next re-quote is even easier than this one.

Keep the History Useful

The value of remembering each home depends on the notes being accurate. Encourage teams to note anything that changed on each visit, such as a new code or a new pet, so the office can update the details. Before-and-after photos from past visits also help when re-quoting, especially for move-outs where condition matters.

For how returning homes fit into the rest of your quoting, visit the house cleaning estimate software page.