What every cleaning quote should include (and what to leave off)

A cleaning quote does two jobs, and most quotes are only built for the first one.

The first job is to win the work: be clear, look professional, arrive fast. The second job happens weeks later, when someone says "I thought the windows were included." A quote that wins the job but can't settle that conversation isn't finished — it just hasn't been tested yet.

Here's the checklist. Eleven items; none of them takes long.

1. Who you are, in a way that can be verified

Business name, phone, email, address, and your license or insurance numbers if your state or your client type expects them. Property managers and facility managers routinely file quotes for comparison — yours should be identifiable three months later without a reply-all.

2. A quote number and a date

Not decoration. The quote number is how a customer refers to the document, how you find it, and how an invoice ties back to what was agreed. The date is the anchor for everything about validity below.

3. The property, not just the customer

The service address, the type of property, and the size you priced against — square footage, bed/bath count, floors, or number of offices. This is the single most useful line when a job comes back different from what you quoted: you priced 3 bed, 2 bath, 1,800 sq ft, and what you arrived at was not that.

4. The type of clean, named

Standard, deep, move-out, post-construction, recurring janitorial. These words mean different things to different people, which is exactly why the next item exists.

5. Scope, room by room and task by task

The heart of it. Not "whole-home cleaning" but the actual rooms and the actual tasks:

Kitchen — counters and cabinet fronts, sink and faucets, exterior of appliances, inside microwave, floor vacuumed and mopped, trash out

Bathrooms (2) — shower and tub scrubbed, toilet, sink and counter, mirrors, floor, fixtures wiped

Two reasons. It's the only way a customer can compare your bid to a cheaper one honestly, and it's the document that answers "was that included?" without anyone's memory being involved.

6. Exclusions, stated out loud

Everything an ordinary person might reasonably assume is included and isn't. Usually: interior of the oven and fridge, interior/exterior windows, blinds, walls, garage, balcony, laundry, dishes, pet waste, biohazards, moving furniture, anything above a two-step ladder.

Writing these down feels negative. It isn't — it's the single highest-value paragraph on the page, and the customer who wants those things now knows to ask.

7. The price, broken into pieces

Subtotal, any fees (travel, supplies, first-visit surcharge), discounts, tax, and the total. One undifferentiated number invites suspicion; a breakdown invites questions you can answer.

If the job is recurring and priced per visit, put the frequency menu on the quote: one-time, weekly, every two weeks, monthly, each at its per-visit price. Customers who see the weekly rate next to the one-time rate frequently talk themselves into weekly. A janitorial contract is a different document — one monthly amount, with each task line carrying its own frequency — and the menu doesn't belong on it.

8. Crew size and time on site

"Two cleaners, approximately 3.5 hours." It sets expectations for the day and it quietly justifies the price — the customer isn't buying a mysterious number, they're buying seven labor hours.

9. What happens if the job isn't what you were told

One sentence: Pricing assumes standard condition as described. Significant additional soil or scope will be re-quoted before work begins. This line, and the exclusions above, prevent more disputes than everything else on the page put together.

10. Validity, terms and how to say yes

• Valid until a real date — 14 or 30 days. Prices move; an unlimited quote is an unlimited liability.
• Payment terms: due on completion, net 15, deposit for large one-offs, accepted methods.
• Cancellation policy: your notice window, and the fee for a lockout or same-day cancel.
• A way to accept that takes one tap. Every extra step between "yes" and yes costs you jobs — especially against a competitor whose quote can be accepted from a phone on a lunch break.

11. Nothing else

Leave off the internal hourly rate, your crew's individual wages, per-task minute counts, and apologetic hedging. Leave off the three-page terms wall for a $220 house clean. The quote should be readable on a phone in under a minute and complete enough to settle an argument.

The version that also arrives on time

Every item above is the difference between a quote and a receipt for an argument — and writing all of it by hand, tonight, for six properties, is why so many quotes go out as a number in a text message instead.

BlastoClean builds this document as a by-product of estimating. Ticking tasks during the walkthrough produces the room-by-room scope in item 5, because the scope is the estimate. Fees, discount and tax are separate lines by construction. The crew size you set prints the time on site. Frequency options render as the menu in item 7. Your logo, your tax rate, your quote numbering and your expiry window come from your company settings, so item 2 and the validity date in item 10 are on every quote without being retyped — the payment and cancellation wording is yours to write, and commercial quotes get a contract terms card of their own (length, auto-renewal, escalation, notice period).

Then it goes out as a private link — email, a branded PDF, or a text message if you're on Pro or Business and that number has opted in — and the customer accepts in one tap with no account to create, picking their visit frequency as they do. Switch signatures on when a job wants more than a click and accepting instead asks them to type their name and tick that they agree, with the drawn mark as the optional part, so a stiff trackpad never costs you the acceptance. Switch automatic follow-ups on and a customer who goes quiet gets a nudge after the number of days you chose, plus a warning before the quote expires. You find out the moment they open it.

Write the quote once, properly. It'll still be doing its job long after the job is done.