Should a cleaning company walk the building before quoting?

Yes, and I would not sign with one that refuses. A walkthrough is where the real scope shows up: the vinyl that needs stripping rather than buffing, the restroom count that does not match the floor plan, the loading dock nobody mentioned. A quote produced from square footage and a phone call is a guess dressed up as a price, and the correction arrives later as a change order.

Why do three cleaning quotes for the same building come back at different prices?

Almost always because they are quoting three different jobs. One included periodic floor work, one assumed you supply paper goods, one priced four nights a week instead of five. Until you put all three against one written scope, you are not comparing prices at all. Once you do, the spread usually collapses and the outlier becomes obvious.

Who supplies paper towels and soap under a cleaning contract?

Whoever the contract says, and it varies more than people expect. Some contracts include consumables in the monthly rate, some bill them at cost plus a handling fee, and some leave them entirely with the building. All three are legitimate. What causes the argument is a proposal that says 'supplies included' without naming which supplies, so liners and restroom paper are covered but the hand soap is not.

What Should a Commercial Cleaning Estimate Include?

Q: What should a commercial cleaning estimate include?

Four things, in writing: the areas covered, the tasks performed in each area, how often each task happens, and who supplies the consumables. Anything less is a number, not an estimate. A complete proposal also names the crew size and the service window, because those are what you are actually buying. If a line says 'general office cleaning' with no task list under it, that line can mean almost anything once the contract is signed.

A commercial cleaning estimate should name four things: the areas covered, the tasks performed in each one, how often each task happens, and who buys the consumables. If your quote is a square footage number and a monthly price, you do not have an estimate. You have a guess with a dollar sign on it. Everything below is how to tell the difference before you sign, not after.

I have been writing these proposals for years, and the pattern almost never changes. The buildings that end up unhappy with their cleaning company are rarely the ones that picked the wrong price. They are the ones that picked a price that was never attached to a scope.

The Walkthrough Is the Estimate

The single most useful thing you can do is make the estimator walk the building. Not the lobby. The whole thing.

We picked up a medical office buildout in Monmouth County on a post-construction final clean, scheduled right before the certificate of occupancy inspection. On paper it was a straightforward square footage. Walking it took about forty minutes and changed the quote twice. There was drywall dust sitting inside every supply register, which is a separate labor line and not something you catch from a floor plan. There were two restrooms the drawings showed as one. And the flooring had been installed the week before, so the protective film still had to come up before anything else could happen, which reorders the entire sequence of the job.

None of that is exotic. It is just the difference between looking at a building and reading about one. An estimator who has not walked your space is pricing an average building, and your building is not average.

So here is the opinion I will defend: a quote written without a walkthrough is worth almost nothing, and you should treat a company that offers one as having told you something important about how they work.

The Line Items Your Estimate Should Name

A proposal you can actually hold someone to reads like an operations document, not a sales sheet. It should name:

Areas. Every space by name. Offices, restrooms, break room, lobby, stairwells, elevators, loading dock, exterior entry. The ones left off the list are the ones that will not get cleaned.
Tasks, per area. Not "clean restrooms." Fixtures, partitions, mirrors, dispensers restocked, floors mopped with what. The task list is the contract.
Frequency, per task. Nightly, weekly, monthly, quarterly. Trash is nightly. Baseboards are not. Both belong in writing.
Periodic work, separately. Floor stripping and waxing, carpet extraction, window cleaning, high dusting. These are scheduled scopes with their own prices, and folding them into a monthly rate without naming them is how they quietly stop happening in month seven.
Supplies. Who buys liners, paper, soap. Say it plainly.
Crew and window. How many people, what hours. This is what you are buying.

If you want a deeper walk through the contract language itself, we wrote one on what an office cleaning contract should include.

Square Footage Is an Input, Not a Price

Square footage matters. It is just not the thing being priced.

Two buildings at the same footprint can differ by a wide margin in real cost, because cost follows fixture count, floor type, traffic and access. A 12,000 square foot open office with sealed concrete and two restrooms is not the same job as a 12,000 square foot medical suite with twelve exam rooms, hard flooring, and a disinfection protocol. The second one has more stops, more surfaces, more product, and more time.

Traffic drives it further. A building with heavy public footfall needs restrooms serviced on a different frequency than a quiet back office of the same size, and no square footage formula catches that. Neither does it catch a third-floor walkup with no service elevator.

Anyone who prices your building straight off a per-foot rate is telling you they have not thought about your building.

Why Three Quotes Come Back at Three Different Numbers

This is the question I get most, and the answer is almost always boring. The three companies quoted three different jobs.

One priced five nights, another priced four. The second included quarterly floor work and the third never mentioned floors at all. Somebody assumed the building supplies its own paper goods. Each proposal was internally honest. None of them were comparable.

The fix is to write the scope yourself first, even roughly, and hand the same sheet to everyone. Areas, tasks, frequency, supplies. Then the quotes describe the same work and the numbers mean something. Until you put all three bidders against one written scope, you are comparing three different jobs, and the cheapest one is almost always the one that quietly left something out.

When the spread stays wide after that, it is usually labor hours, and that is a fair thing to ask about directly. Our guide to choosing a commercial cleaning company in NJ goes further into vetting, and the NJ pricing guide covers what the ranges actually look like.

Ask These While the Estimator Is Still Standing There

The walkthrough is the best chance you get to find this stuff out. Use it:

Who is actually cleaning my building, your employees or a subcontractor?
What happens the night somebody calls out?
Who do I call at 7pm when a toilet overflows, and does that number reach a person?
What is not in this price?
What would you add if this were your building?

That last one is worth more than the other four. A good estimator has already noticed the thing that will become a problem, and most will tell you if you ask plainly.