How to read a
janitorial proposal

If you are comparing office cleaning or janitorial quotes for a building in Essex County, you have probably noticed that the monthly figures are not comparable. One company says $900, another says $1,450, and the documents look similar enough that the obvious conclusion is that one of them is overcharging.

Usually neither is. They are quoting different work. Here is where the difference hides.

01Frequency: what happens nightly and what does not

The headline is usually a monthly number, and the monthly number is meaningless without the visit schedule behind it. Five nights a week is roughly 21–22 visits a month. Three nights a week is about 13. That alone is most of the gap between two quotes.

Then, inside the schedule, there is a second layer almost nobody reads: not every task happens every visit. A well-written scope says so explicitly. Look for a table like:

• Every visit — trash, restrooms, kitchen/breakroom, entrance glass, spot-mopping, vacuuming traffic lanes.
• Weekly — full vacuum including under desks, detail dusting, mop all hard floors edge to edge.
• Monthly — high dusting, vents, baseboards, interior glass partitions.
• Quarterly or by schedule — machine scrubbing, carpet extraction, strip and wax.

A proposal that lists twenty tasks with no frequency column is not a scope. It is a wish list, and when the building looks wrong in month three there is nothing to point at.

02Scope: square footage, and what is excluded

The proposal should state the areas covered and, just as importantly, what is not. Common exclusions that surprise people later:

• Exterior glass above ground level.
• Warehouse or production floors, when the quote was priced on office space.
• Server rooms and secure areas (often excluded for access reasons, sometimes reasonably).
• Biohazard, mould remediation, pest issues and animal waste.
• Moving furniture or appliances above a stated weight.
• Specialist floor treatment — machine scrubbing, strip and wax, carpet extraction. These are almost always separate from routine service, and should be.

That last one is the biggest single source of "I thought that was included." Floor care is equipment-and-labour heavy — our own specialised floor treatment starts at $150 and strip-and-wax on VCT starts around $850 depending on the floor — so a routine nightly rate that appeared to include it was never going to.

03Consumables: the line that quietly doubles

Who buys the trash liners, hand soap, paper towels, toilet paper, hand sanitiser and gloves?

For a mid-size office this is a real monthly number, and the two models are both legitimate:

• Client supplies. Lower cleaning rate. You control the brands and the spend, and you notice immediately if usage climbs.
• Cleaner supplies. Higher rate, one invoice, nothing to think about. Fine — as long as the proposal says which products and what happens if consumption runs above the assumption.

E&L supplies the equipment and the cleaning materials as standard, and the client supplies the building consumables, unless the proposal says otherwise. Whatever the arrangement, it should be written down. A quote that does not mention consumables at all is a quote that will be renegotiated.

04Four more lines worth thirty seconds each

• Insurance and bonding. Ask for the certificate, not the claim. We carry $2,000,000 in liability coverage, are bonded, and background-check every cleaner.
• Workers' compensation. If the company is not carrying it, an injury in your building can become your problem.
• Termination. Thirty days' written notice either way is normal and fair. A twelve-month lock-in with no exit is not.
• Who you actually call. One named point of contact, and what the response time is when something is wrong at 7am.

05And the payment terms

Since we are being straightforward about our own paperwork: invoices are due on completion. We offer Net 30 only to commercial accounts we service five or more days a week, and those accounts can take 2% off an invoice paid in full within ten days. A past-due invoice carries a one-time late charge of 5% of the unpaid balance, minimum $25, then 1.5% a month.

We publish that rather than bury it because payment terms in this industry are frequently vague until the moment they are not.

06The short version

Put two quotes side by side and fill in three blanks for each: visits per month, what happens on which visit, and who buys the consumables. Nine times out of ten the price difference explains itself and the actual decision becomes about reliability instead.