Is this too steep?

[Blake - Chimera Cleaning]

How do you price your labor hours for commercial businesses?

[tcs]

Probably depends on the area and the condition of the building, as well as any extras they expect you to provide. I have a commercial building contract based on square footage and it works out to about $28-$30/hour. And that includes supplies, not strictly labor.

[logan5127]

My rate varies according to how many hours they need us a week. If it is only an hour than I might charge $50 per that hour , but if its say 40 hours a week, I go down to around $22 to $25 per man hour. I always have them furnish supplies. To me that is the area where you can really loose money. Paper supplies can go up and down on price and you also have to figure in what is stolen or wasted. No way to know all that for sure. Also what type of equipment that you furnish should also be relected in the price. To me it does not matter what condition the building is in if I am getting paid a certain amount per her. Again the volume of hours is what I look at. I will never bid for hourly work by the foot. That is just my way of doing business and keeps me from loosing money. Sure it is simple to say and figure by the foot, but there are to many varibles to do this and be safe.

[tcs]

That all is true, but because I knew how many hours per night the job would take, I knew the square footage price was totally acceptable to me. The company that hired me only works on a square footage basis, plus I have fantastic employees who finish the job at least 1 hour sooner than the time I calculated it should take. If they go over once in a while, that's fine with me, because I get paid for legal holidays when we don't actually have to work. And the paper supplies are a gamble, but I struck a great deal with a paper company and it costs me less than a quarter of what they pay me for paper supplies per month. I guess it depends on the job, but for my building it results in a profit margin way above the norm. It gave me a great benchmark on how long it takes to do what for bidding on future work at a per hour basis and there is never any question how long it takes me to do something because they really don't care as long as the job gets done. I guess I got lucky with this one.

[logan5127]

tcs; Sounds like you have a great contract on this job. You did not get lucky though. You said you calculated the hours. You did your math. You made yourself available for this job. You got your name in front of them when they needed someone. You are above the norm. That is great. Some clients do want a per sq foot price and we can calculate a job and convert it ourselves to see if the figures work out and then if so requested we can convert it into sq ft price on paper. Keep up the great work.