Roxanne,

Thanks for joining Aspire’s “Clean Group” Community!  I’m eager to see others’ replies on how they have structured their janitorial contracts so we can share best practices and learn from each other. 

This "Commercial Clean Estimating - Contract Setup" KB Video is great starting reference.

In the meantime, we’re sharing some high-level Aspire best practices below as it relates to janitorial contracts.

• Service Breakdown:  Services drive several important downstream outcomes and workstreams within Aspire, and all are important to consider when structuring your estimate.  Many companies will break out services on the estimate to match the services called out in your RFP scope (which drive detailed job cost reporting, but result in more work ticket management), and others keep it very generalized (having only general day shift janitorial and night shift janitorial services for minimal job cost breakdown and reduced work ticket management).  The more generalized you keep the services on your estimate, the more you may need to use service operation or work ticket notes to communicate tasks frequencies, etc.  Some considerations for service breakout:
  • Pricing Markups:  If you need to markup and price various services in different ways, break them out into separate services, tie them to different pricing markups in Admin, and then let the system do the calculations for you on the estimate.  "Pricing in Aspire" KB Video
  • Reporting:  All costs and revenue--estimated and actual--roll up to the service level for job costing.  Consider how you’d like to see different services broken out on work ticket lists, P&L reports, and more.
  • Invoicing:  Do you need to invoice services in different ways?  For example, if you have some services that roll into Fixed Payment/recurring monthly pricing, but others that are done Per Service, you’ll need to break those services out so you can manage the invoicing at different cadences, etc.
  • Scheduling & Work Tickets:  Do you need to have separate work tickets to schedule for day shift vs. night shift?  Do you have different cleaners or crews that complete certain services and need to be scheduled independently of other services?  Are some services only performed on an “as needed” basis?  These are three common examples why you may need to break out services and work tickets for scheduling needs.
  • Cleaner Communication:  Do some services require different task completion than others?  If you break those services out on your estimate, you are able to set up service operation notes that are unique to that specific service and set of work tickets.  "Using Notes in Aspire" KB Article

• Frequencies:  Your estimate should reflect the same service occurrence frequency as called out your RFP scope.  For example, quarterly window washing has a service with OCC of 4, and weekly janitorial services will have OCC of 52 or more.  For the general janitorial services, companies will either utilize “weekly” or “daily” work ticket management, which ties to the service OCC numbers you use:
  • Weekly:  If you want one work ticket per week--reused each day you visit in the week--enter OCC of 52.  This reduces work ticket management, but does not provide you with the daily drive vs. onsite time data you may desire.  The Work Ticket Visit Report (Reports module) can offers some supplemental, daily visit analysis if needed.
  • Daily:  If you want one work ticket per day, you would enter the same number of service OCC for every day you’re expected to visit the site.  For example, a Monday-Friday frequency would have 260 OCC (representing 260 days) for an annual term.  The benefit of this tactic is that you can derive deeper, daily analysis of drive vs. onsite time and gauge if your team is more efficient on certain days of the week at some buildings.  The larger amount of work tickets can be streamlined with custom-built and -managed lists.

• Material Costs: 
  • Indirect:  Some materials may be considered overhead (such as floor cleaning chemicals you purchase in bulk, or micro-fiber rags); these would be considered “indirect” costs that are not run through Aspire and should be included in your pricing markup percentages to ensure you’re recovering your overhead in your general pricing.
  • Direct (Job Costed):  For any materials that you need to directly cost to the job or separately charge your customers for, you’ll want to have specific items created in your Item Catalog and estimated on the opportunity.  
  • Consumables:  Consumables that are invoiced to your customer should be included in your estimate that matches the way you need to invoice them.  Oftentimes, these are broken out into a separate T&M “as needed” service so you have work tickets available at your fingertips--with the unit pricing you agreed to with your customer.  "Managing Consumables for Commercial Clean" KB Article

• General Condition Pricing:  Do you have other costs that you want to cover in your pricing but not call out in a specific service or item?  (For example, perhaps you have purchased a special piece of equipment for this job?)  In those cases for work order estimates, consider using the general conditions feature, which markups up your costs and then spreads that pricing across all estimated services for a blanketed approach.  Check out this "General Conditions Screen" User Guide Article to learn more, and catch the other articles regarding GCs on the left navigation pane once you access this article.

Don’t forget to create all the kits you need to utilize your production factors and do the estimating math for you!  This "Creating a Kit in Your Item Catalog for Commercial Clean" KB Article is a good starting point to see how you can build a simple kit--but the sky is the limit for how complex you need to build some of these.

We hope these nuggets of info get your juices rolling for janitorial contract estimating!

Ok!    Calling all Commercial Clean companies out there!    How do you structure your janitorial contract estimates?  Any best practices that have worked well for you?