Why storefront cleaners quote per pane per side
Storefront work is sold per pane per side because a pane is roughly a fixed amount of pole and squeegee time, and the customer can count them. About two dollars per side for an average storefront pane or door is a common recurring price, with more for big 5x8 or 5x10 glass and less for small garage-door lites at auto shops.
Other owners get to a similar place differently. Some skip counting and use price points: a small storefront at $25 a month inside and out, medium at $50, large at $75 and up. Others price by time, so a storefront section that takes 10 to 15 minutes is about $20. The per-pane number is a check; the time behind it is what you are really selling.
What 40 to 45 working weeks does to your hourly rate
In our example company, an owner and one technician, each billable hour on the glass has to bring in $57.42 before profit, about 96 cents for every minute on site. That covers both wages with payroll taxes and workers' comp, the van and pole system, and $13,600 a year of overhead, mostly insurance, marketing and software.
The rate is higher than the wage because weather takes a big bite of the year. Depending on where you live, you might only work 40 to 45 weeks. A $50,000 salary earned in 40 working weeks is $1,250 a week, and once comp and payroll taxes are added that is about $35 for every hour of a 40 hour week, before insurance, the van or profit.
Run your own weeks and hours through the free true hourly rate calculator; the method is in the true hourly rate guide.
The worked stop: a restaurant's 14 panes and 2 doors every 2 weeks
The example is a recurring restaurant: 14 panes and 2 entry doors, inside and out, frames and sills wiped and fingerprints off the doors, one tech with a water-fed pole outside and a mop and squeegee inside. It is quoted every 2 weeks because restaurants get dirty fast and rarely want less.
The whole visit, drive and small extras included, is under three-quarters of an hour of labour. Supplies are cents per visit. What moves the price is minutes, which is why the drive from the last stop is entered for every stop, not as an average.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Restaurant storefront, per visit | Amount |
| 2 | Glass time, supplies and the drive | $41.39 |
| 3 | Small jobs around the visit | $9.51 |
| 4 | Cushion and profit | $14.01 |
| 5 | Price per visit | $64.91 |
| 6 | Per month at every 2 weeks | $140.86 |
That is about $1,690 a year from one restaurant. The $14.01 is 21.6% of the price, kept after both people are paid, and the stop earns about $76 per labour hour against the $57.42 break-even. The first visit also carries a one-time $92.95 start-up charge for build-up, stickers, counting the glass and sending the certificate of insurance; a first clean at about one and a half to two times the monthly price is common.
A quick check some owners use is that about a third of revenue should go to wages. On this stop, the tech's pay for the visit is a little under a third of $64.91. How that 21.6% compares with a markup on cost is in markup vs margin.
Should weekly glass cost less than monthly glass?
No: many storefront cleaners keep the visit price the same up to monthly and only raise it when visits are further apart.
Glass cleaned weekly takes less time than glass left for two months. Our example adds extra time to monthly and every-two-months visits for that reason.
The easiest way to grow a route is to move customers to a higher frequency: a weekly restaurant brings in about twice what a bi-weekly one does, with no new selling. Some owners drop to $3 or $4 per pane per side for weekly commercial work, which works only because the stop is quick and close to others.
Per pane, per storefront, per square foot: prices owners charge
These are single owners' prices, not averages, and each one comes with that owner's market and speed built in.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | What was priced | Price heard |
| 2 | Recurring storefront, average pane or door | about $2 per side |
| 3 | Large 5x8 or 5x10 storefront pane | about $3 to $4 per side |
| 4 | Small / medium / large storefront, monthly | $25 / $50 / $75 and up |
| 5 | Storefront section, 10 to 15 minutes | about $20 |
| 6 | Commercial, first time / monthly | about $10 / $5 per pane per side |
| 7 | Houses, inside and out | about 14 cents per sq ft |
Post-construction glass is its own job. A common rule is two times the normal price for a mild clean and three times for heavy, or switching to an hourly rate, because even three times the price doesn't always cover the scraping.
Houses: 14 cents a square foot or $8 to $10 a window?
Both work, as long as you check them against your own time. In one Texas owner's example, a 4,070 sq ft house came to 13 cents per sq ft, $528 for about 4 hours inside and out, and 7 cents for outside only, $284 for about 2 hours 15 minutes.
Per-window pricing of $8 to $10 for a basic ground-floor window inside and out is also common, with sills, tracks, screens and upper storeys extra. When a homeowner counts windows over the phone, add three to five, because people forget some, and about 20% more for glass not cleaned in five years. Bushes, a second storey or a steep yard all add minutes that a flat per-window price won't see.
Signs, grease and the COI: what storefront quotes leave out
On our restaurant stop, the small jobs around the glass add $9.51 a visit; drop them all and the same rules price the stop about $12 lower, roughly $312 a year from one customer. None of it is glass, so it never shows up in a pane count.
The walk-through and sign-off. Saying hello, walking the glass with whoever runs the place and getting the OK at the end, on every visit of the year.
Signs and displays. Small suction-cup signs are a few seconds. A store with a window full of signs is a real chunk of time, and it belongs in the estimate. Wired or hanging signs are different again: our example terms skip that glass until the customer moves them.
Restaurant grease and fingerprints. Come ready to take fingerprints off the doors every visit. A restaurant and the clothing store next door can have the same glass count and very different time.
Wear on the pure water system and pole brush. Bought in big, rare purchases, so it feels like a one-off rather than a cost of every stop.
Monthly billing. Storefronts are billed monthly, which is also why a $20 minimum works: the customer sees one bigger bill.
The certificate of insurance. Commercial customers and landlords will ask for your COI, and the time to send it belongs in the start-up charge, with the premium itself in overhead.
Hard water, construction dust and lifts are never regular cleaning
Anything that takes many times longer than a normal pane gets its own price, agreed before you start. About double per pane for hard water stains or heavy oxidation is a common rule, and commercial glass often gets the worst of it because sprinklers and planters sit right by the windows.
Lifts are the easy one: if the job needs a scissor lift or boom, the customer pays for it, every time. Show the customer the stains, quote them per pane and write it down as a small change order. If you are pricing from photos before a site visit, say whether the number is a quote or an estimate.
The $5 strip-mall pane and other ways window cleaners underprice
The biggest one is chasing the lowest bid. Some crews work whole strip malls for about five dollars a store, and a cleaner who matches that is working for the drive. When a manager tells you what the last company charged and it's that low, leave a card and walk away.
No minimum charge. A job of two or three windows loses money once gas, time and equipment are counted. Minimums of $15 to $20 on storefronts are common, and far higher on houses.
Copying another city's price. Weather, labour and working days differ by region, so figure out what it costs you to do business and work back from there.
Taking a cheap weekly chain without timing it. In our example Job Log, a weekly chicken restaurant at $45 a visit ran well over its hours and lost money every month, while a dental office on a monthly plan made money. Comparing quoted and real hours is job costing.
Counting overhead as a percentage. Insurance, software and marketing cost the same whether the glass is big or small; spread them over billable hours, as in overhead and profit.
Build your next storefront quote in the spreadsheet
The Window Cleaning Pricing Calculator does this page's math in Excel or Google Sheets: your break-even rate, glass time and drive per stop, every small job answered, weekly to every-two-months prices side by side, the start-up charge and a one-page customer quote.