How to use the profit calculator
- Pick a view. Per job shows the profit on one typical job and what that adds up to over a month and a year. Route / day looks at one crew's whole day — several jobs plus the driving between them.
- Enter the job or the route. Price, labor hours, supplies and travel for a job; or jobs per day, time on site, drive time and miles for a route.
- Add your costs. Hourly pay, payroll costs as a percentage of wages, card fees and your monthly overhead.
- Read the result. Profit and margin update instantly, with a breakdown of where every dollar of the price goes. Copy the result to share it or keep it with your notes.
How profit is calculated
Labor = labor hours × pay × (1 + payroll costs %)Direct costs = labor + supplies + travel + payment feesGross profit = price − direct costsOverhead per job = monthly overhead ÷ jobs per monthNet profit = gross profit − overhead per job
Gross profit tells you whether a job pays for itself. Net profit tells you whether it also pays its share of insurance, software, marketing and the office. A job can look fine on gross profit and still lose money once overhead is counted.
In the route view, labor covers the time on site plus drive time (if you pay for it) for every cleaner in the crew. Vehicle cost is miles × cost per mile, and overhead is spread over your working days. The result is the profit one crew makes in one day.
Typical profit ranges for cleaning businesses
These are typical ranges for residential and light commercial cleaning in the US and Canada. They vary with prices, wages and how lean the business runs — use them as a sanity check, not a target someone else set for you.
| Measure | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Labor as a share of the price | often 40–55% |
| Supplies | usually 3–8% of the price |
| Gross profit per job (before overhead) | often 35–55% |
| Net profit margin, company with employees | often 10–20%, well-run 20%+ |
| Net margin, owner-operator doing the cleaning | higher on paper, but it includes the owner's own wage |
| Drive time in a crew's day | often 10–25% — under 15% is a tight route |
Worked example
A $190 standard clean takes 4 labor-hours. Cleaners earn $20 an hour plus 12% payroll costs. Supplies $10, travel $12, card fees 3%. The company does 80 jobs a month and has $2,500 of monthly overhead.
- Labor: 4 × $20 × 1.12 = $89.60.
- Direct costs: $89.60 + $10 + $12 + $5.70 fees = $117.30.
- Gross profit: $190 − $117.30 = $72.70.
- Overhead per job: $2,500 ÷ 80 = $31.25.
- Net profit: $72.70 − $31.25 = $41.45 per job, a 22% margin.
- Over a month: 80 × $41.45 ≈ $3,316; over a year ≈ $39,800.
Switch to the route view and the same company might run a crew of two through 4 jobs at $170, 1 h 45 min each, with 20 minutes of driving before each one. That's an 8 h 20 min day and about $99 profit per day after overhead — roughly $2,080 a month from one crew. Cut the drive to 10 minutes per job and the crew is paid for 40 fewer minutes each — about $30 more profit a day, or over $600 a month, without touching prices.
5 ways to raise profit per job
- Price from cost, not from competitorsKnow your labor, supplies, travel and overhead per job, then add your margin. The pricing calculator does this for you.
- Track actual hours, not estimatesA job quoted at 3 hours that takes 4 quietly loses a third of its profit. Compare estimated and actual time every week.
- Tighten routesGroup jobs by neighborhood. Every 15 minutes of driving saved per job is paid time your crew can spend cleaning.
- Charge for add-onsInside the oven, fridge, interior windows, heavy pet hair — small extras with high margins that clients expect to pay for.
- Watch overhead per jobOverhead is fixed, so more jobs per month make every job more profitable. Filling empty slots often beats raising prices.