Commercial Cleaning & Janitorial KPIs Worth Tracking Every Month
By PlainSight — Insightful Actions · Updated September 2026 · ~8 min read
A cleaning company is paid the same amount every month to clean the same buildings, and it pays people by the hour to do it. Field labor is more than half of revenue at most contractors, so a building that took four hours a night when you priced it and takes five now has quietly stopped paying. The numbers worth watching tell you, building by building, whether each contract still pays, whether its price is keeping up with wages, and whether you are keeping the accounts you have. These are the numbers to read every month.
Where your numbers live
Your accounting software (QuickBooks, Xero and the like) or your cleaning-business software can export invoices to CSV or Excel. You want one row per invoice line, with the date, the account (the customer or building), the service (nightly cleaning, day porter, floors, carpet, windows, consumables, a credit) and the amount. Add a sector column (office, medical, government) and every cut below comes out of the same file.
For labor per building you also need hours: your payroll or time-clock export, by building. You don't need names on either file.
The numbers that tell you the buildings still pay
1. Recurring share: contracts against one-off work
What good looks like: most of the year billed on contract, the same every month, with periodic and one-off work on top.
Add nightly contracts, day porters and consumables, and divide by everything you billed. That is the share of next month that is already signed. It is what makes a cleaning company steady, and what makes it worth something to a buyer. Watch the direction: a share that falls while revenue rises means you are growing on one-off jobs, which have to be won again every time.
2. Labor as a share of each contract's price
What good looks like: known for every building, and steady from month to month.
For each account, divide the month's labor cost (hours on site times the loaded wage) by the month's contract price. In the ISSA/BSCAI benchmarking survey, field labor was more than half of revenue at 72% of contractors and more than 60% at 41% of them. Your book-wide figure hides the building that runs over, and that building is the one to reprice, re-scope or re-crew. ISSA publishes time standards for cleaning tasks, so an estimate can be checked against the minutes the work should take.
3. Price adjustments: contracts that haven't moved
What good looks like: every contract adjusted once a year, on its anniversary, in writing.
List every contract's monthly price now and a year ago. Any contract that has not moved is carrying last year's wages. Wages move every year, so a contract with no adjustment clause gets a little less profitable every year it runs. Write a yearly adjustment into every new contract and every renewal, as a fixed percentage or tied to wages, and send the notice on the anniversary.
An example, to show the arithmetic (not a benchmark)
| Contract | Monthly price, three years ago | Monthly price now | At 3% a year, it would be |
|---|
| Law office (no clause) | $3,200 | $3,200 | $3,497 |
|---|
| Credit union, 3 branches (no clause) | $4,300 | $4,300 | $4,699 |
|---|
| Office tower (3% clause) | $8,968 | $9,800 | $9,800 |
|---|
4. Account retention
What good looks like: fewer than one account in ten lost in a year.
Count the accounts you had twelve months ago and how many of them are still with you. In BSCAI's 2024 survey, as reported by Level, 73% of contractors lose fewer than 10% of their accounts a year. Write down why each lost account left: a rebid lost on price, a tenant that moved, or a complaint that went unfixed. Only the last one is fully in your hands, and it is usually the most common.
5. Your biggest account's share
What good looks like: no single account above about a fifth of the year.
Divide your largest account's billing by the total. A big building is a good thing to have. It is also a crew you would have to lay off if it went to someone else at the rebid. Government contracts in particular are rebid on a schedule, so know when each one comes up, and start preparing well before it does.
6. Periodic work per account
What good looks like: floors, carpets, windows and pressure washing scheduled in every building that needs them, not sold one call at a time.
Periodic work is priced by the square foot and grows with every contract you add. ISSA's December 2025 ranges are $0.20 to $0.40 a square foot to scrub and recoat a floor, $0.30 to $0.60 to strip and refinish it, and $0.08 to $0.25 for carpet extraction. Divide each account's periodic billing by its contract: a building with none is either a floor nobody is caring for or a sale nobody asked for. Build-outs are the same idea: Level puts post-construction cleanup at 1.5 to 3 times the rate of routine cleaning, and the property manager calls the company already in the building.
7. Credits and complaints
What good looks like: rare, and never twice in a row at the same building.
Track every credit issued for a missed night or a complaint, by building. One credit is a bad night. Two at the same building in a quarter is a crew, a schedule or a scope that doesn't fit, and it is how accounts are lost months before anybody says so. A weekly walk-through of every building, with a checklist, catches most of these before the tenant does.
8. Government contracts: payment days, wage determinations and September
What good looks like: invoices paid inside 30 days, wages and fringe matching the current determination, and a crew ready for the end of the fiscal year.
Under the Prompt Payment Act a federal agency generally has 30 days after a proper invoice to pay, and owes interest after that: 4.75% a year for July to December 2026. Track days to payment by agency; a late one is usually an invoice that wasn't "proper". On Service Contract Act work, a new wage determination reaches your contract when it is added, usually at the option year, and FAR 52.222-43 generally entitles you to the price adjustment that goes with it. From August 10, 2026 the health and welfare rate in new determinations is $5.92 an hour, up from $5.55. And the federal fiscal year ends September 30: agencies spend about 4.9 times a normal week's amount in its last week (Liebman & Mahoney, 2017), so September brings one-time projects to the contractors already in the building.
9. Staff turnover
What good looks like: lower than last year, and not concentrated in one building or one shift.
Divide the people who left in a year by your average headcount. In the 2017 ISSA/BSCAI survey, 41% of contractors had turnover of 50% or more a year, and only 20% were under 10%. (The 200% figure that is often quoted has no source anyone has traced.) Every departure costs you hiring, training and a building cleaned by someone new. When turnover clusters in one building, the building is usually priced too thin for the time the work takes.
Warning signs worth acting on
- A contract whose price hasn't changed in two years — the same work has cost you more to deliver in each of them.
- One building where labor runs well above the rest of your book — the bid was wrong or the scope grew, and either way it gets fixed at renewal or it keeps costing you every month.
- One account above a fifth of revenue — especially a government one with a rebid coming.
- Credits at the same building two months running — a crew or scope problem, and the first sign of an account you are about to lose.
- Recurring share falling while revenue grows — growth that has to be won again next month.
- Cleaners paid as independent contractors — people who work your schedule, in your buildings, with your supplies are almost always employees, and the back taxes and penalties land on you.
Make it a monthly rhythm
Export your invoices and hours once a month and read these numbers building by building, not just in total. Then pick the one with the widest gap between where you are and where you could plausibly be. It is usually a contract that hasn't been repriced, or a building where labor has crept up. Put every renewal date on a calendar, with the price notice due a month before it.
Let PlainSight read your invoices
Upload an invoice export and PlainSight breaks your billing down by account, sector and service, shows how much of the year is on contract, finds the contracts whose price hasn't moved, and writes the specific next steps. Everything runs in your browser — your customers' data never leaves your device.
See it on a live example →
Starting or growing a cleaning company? Read the free handbook for running a commercial cleaning company — the market, the stages a company moves through, how each kind of work pays, and what to do first. No account needed.
Frequently asked questions
- What file does PlainSight need from a cleaning company?
- An invoice export with a date, the account, the service and the amount. A sector column (office, medical, government) adds the sector cut. No employee or customer contact details are needed.
- Is my customers' data safe if I use PlainSight?
- Yes. Files are processed entirely in your browser and never uploaded. Optional AI features send only anonymized summary totals, never names or raw rows.
- How much history do I need?
- One month shows billing by account and service. Twelve months or more shows the yearly price adjustments, the periodic work that comes once or twice a year, and September's government projects.
- Is this legal or tax advice?
- No. Cleaning companies carry real rules: who counts as an employee, OSHA's Hazard Communication standard for chemicals, sales tax on janitorial services in some states, and the Service Contract Act on federal work. Take advice from an accountant and an employment attorney who know your state.
Sources
- ISSA and BSCAI, 2017 Building Service Contractor Benchmarking Study (64 firms): field labor as a share of revenue, staff turnover.
- RapidEye, “Cleaning Industry Employee Turnover Statistics”: on the untraceable 200% figure.
- ISSA, “Commercial Cleaning Rates per Square Foot”, December 2025, and “How to Calculate Cleaning Times”.
- Level, cleaning-business benchmarks: BSCAI's 2024 retention figures and post-construction pricing.
- Bureau of the Fiscal Service, Prompt Payment: the interest rate for July–December 2026.
- PilieroMazza, “2026 Newly Increased Health and Welfare Rates on SCA Government Contracts”, August 17, 2026.
- Jeffrey B. Liebman and Neale Mahoney, “Do Expiring Budgets Lead to Wasteful Year-End Spending? Evidence from Federal Procurement”, American Economic Review, 2017.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Janitors and Building Cleaners.
This guide is general information for cleaning-company owners and managers, not financial, tax, or legal advice. Figures described as “typical” are survey results and rules of thumb, not standards — always read your own numbers in context.