Not the person to weigh in on the actual time formula, real hands-on expertise. But something worth adding to the conversation: the businesses that get quoting most accurate aren't necessarily the ones with the best formula, they're the ones who turn condition into something measurable instead of a gut feeling.
A simple version of this: build a quick 1-5 scale for the hidden factors, buildup, clutter, pet presence, bathroom condition, and actually score each new property against it during your walkthrough or video call, before you quote. Over time, you start seeing real patterns: condition score 4+ properties run 40% longer than I initially guess, which turns a vague feeling into something you can actually adjust for.
The other habit worth building: after the job's done, jot down actual time next to the quoted time, even just in a notes app. Most people never close that loop, so the same misjudgment (say, always underestimating pet homes) repeats forever instead of getting corrected. A few months of that data and your gut feel starts getting genuinely sharper, because it's being trained on real outcomes, not just experience. Hope this helps nuttapat1974
Thanks — the estimate-vs-actual tracking part is really interesting.
When you track several jobs, how do you actually use that history when quoting the next similar job? Do you keep it in a spreadsheet/software, or mostly rely on experience?
And what’s the most annoying part of that process?
Good questions. To be upfront, I don't quote cleaning jobs myself. I work on the systems side with service businesses, so this is what I see the ones who do it well doing. And the 40% in my earlier comment was an example of the kind of pattern that can show up, not a real figure. Yours will be your own.
Using the history: the best setups keep one simple record per job property size, condition score, quoted hours, actual hours. Before quoting a new property, they pull up the last few jobs with a similar size and score, check the average gap between quoted and actual, and adjust the new estimate by that. That can live in a spreadsheet or in your job software. What matters is that you look at it before you quote, not just record it afterward.
The most annoying part, from what I hear, is consistency. Recording actual time is easy to skip on a busy day, and one missed job makes the data less trustworthy. It also takes a few dozen jobs before the pattern is reliable, so it feels like effort with no payoff at first.
Do you have how you handle it on your end?. nuttapat1974
