MaidBossPro Blog — Offices, Rentals & Move-Outs

Monthly Statements for Commercial Cleaning Accounts: One Bill for Every Location

Homeowners are used to paying after each clean. Businesses usually are not. An office manager, a dental group's bookkeeper or a property management company's accounts payable clerk wants one bill a month that clearly shows what they are paying for. Give them that, and you get paid faster with fewer questions. Send them a stack of separate invoices, and you may wait a long time.

Why Business Clients Want One Bill

Setting up a client with every location as an address, covered in One Account, Many Locations: Setting Up Commercial Cleaning Clients With Several Addresses, is the first half of this. The monthly statement is the payoff.

Most businesses pay their bills on a schedule, often once or twice a month. Every invoice that arrives has to be entered, matched to a location or cost center, approved and paid. Eight invoices from you mean eight times through that process. One statement means once. For the person doing the paperwork, that is a real difference, and it makes you the easy vendor to keep.

How Monthly Billing Works

In MaidBossPro, any client can be set to Monthly. Once an account is on monthly billing, jobs completed during the month do not each trigger their own invoice. Instead, the account gets one statement each month that covers every location and every visit.

Each line on the statement is labeled with the address that was cleaned. A property manager might see something like:

• Move-In / Move-Out — 412 Elm St, Unit 2
• Inside Oven — 412 Elm St, Unit 2
• Move-In / Move-Out — 88 Oak Ave
• Office cleaning, weekly — Leasing Office, 100 Main St (4 visits)

The bookkeeper can see which property each charge belongs to and assign it to the right owner or building. Extras show on their own lines, so nobody wonders why one move-out cost more than another.

Which Accounts Should Be Monthly

Monthly billing is a good fit for:

• Offices on weekly or every-two-weeks schedules. Four or more visits a month add up to one simple bill.
• Dental and medical groups with several clinics. One statement across every location.
• Property managers. Every move-out, make-ready and common-area clean in one place.
• Builders with several homes in progress. Every phase of every home on one statement.
• Rental hosts with several properties. Every turnover for the month together.

Single-location homeowners are usually better off with a card on file charged on completion, which is quick and familiar for them. You can have both kinds of clients side by side.

Line Items, Sales Tax and Payment

Statements carry line items and sales tax, the same as any invoice. Clients can view and pay from the customer app, and a card on file can be charged on a schedule if the client prefers automatic payment. For accounts that pay another way, the statement is the clear record of what is owed.

If a statement goes unpaid, past-due follow-up sends reminders so you are not chasing the bookkeeper by hand. More on that in Getting Paid by Commercial Cleaning Accounts: Card on File, Statements and Past-Due Follow-Up.

Get the Details Right Before the Statement Goes Out

A monthly statement is only as good as the jobs behind it. Because extras carry from approved estimates onto jobs, and jobs carry onto the statement, most of the accuracy takes care of itself. Still, glance over each commercial account before the statement goes out. Look for a rush fee that should be there, an extra added on site that needs to be on the bill, or a skipped visit that should not be.

If the client asks for something like a purchase order number or a cost center on their bills, a custom field on the account or address is a good place to record it.

Moving an Account to Monthly

Many commercial clients start out paying per visit and ask for monthly billing once the work grows. Switching is simple: set the account to Monthly, and from then on its completed jobs roll onto the monthly statement instead of creating separate invoices. Pick a clean starting point, such as the first of the month, and tell the client when the first statement will arrive so they are not surprised by the change.

It is also worth confirming where the statement should go. The person who hired you may not be the person who pays the bills, so ask for the billing contact by name and keep it on the account.

Monthly Billing Makes You Easy to Keep

Businesses rarely fire a cleaning company because of one missed corner. They do get tired of vendors who are hard to deal with. A clean, accurate monthly statement with every location labeled is one of the easiest ways to stay off that list.

To see how monthly statements fit with offices, rentals and move-outs, visit the MaidBossPro commercial cleaning software page.