CarpetBossPro Blog — Estimates & Quotes

How to Price Your Own Carpet Cleaning Services Without Borrowing Someone Else's Numbers

Every new carpet cleaning owner looks up what others charge. That is a reasonable start, but it is a bad finish. Someone else's prices are built on their van payment, their drive times, their crew and their customers. Yours should be built on yours. Here is a practical way to get there.

Prices Show Up in Every Conversation

Every text and phone call about a quote comes back to price, as covered in Texting Customers About Their Carpet Cleaning Estimate. Confident answers come from prices you understand. If you know why a room costs what it does, you can explain it, defend it and change it when you need to.

Start With What a Day Costs

Before pricing a single room, add up what it costs to run a van for one working day:

• The van and equipment. Payment or depreciation, insurance, maintenance, divided over the days you work.
• Fuel. For the van and, if you run one, the truck-mount.
• Labor. Your tech's wages and taxes for the day, or what you need to pay yourself.
• Solutions and supplies. Pre-sprays, protector, deodorizer, hoses and wands that wear out.
• Overhead. Phone, software, marketing, office time, divided over working days.

This number is your floor. Every working day has to bring in at least this much before you make anything.

Then Figure Out What a Day Can Hold

Next, look at how many jobs and rooms a van can realistically do in a day in your area. Think about drive time between jobs, setup and teardown, the walk-through and the final walk-through with dry time explained. A dense suburb fits more stops than a spread-out rural area.

Divide what the day needs to bring in, plus the profit you want, by what the day can hold. That gives you a rough target per job and per room. It will not be exact, but it is yours.

Real numbers beat guesses. Techs clock in and out on the tech app's time clock, so after a few months of real jobs you have a better sense of how much work a day actually holds. Adjust your target when the real days tell a different story.

Price Each Service From Time and Materials

With a per-room target, price the rest relative to it:

• Stairs and hallways by the time they take compared to a room.
• Upholstery by the piece, based on time and the extra care fabrics need.
• Area rugs and tile & grout by the square foot.
• Add-ons like pet odor treatment and protector by the materials plus the extra time.
• A minimum that covers the cost of showing up at all, as covered in Room Minimums: Setting a Floor Under Every Carpet Cleaning Quote.

Example prices like $189 for three rooms, $129 for a sofa or $25 a room for pet odor treatment are only examples. Your numbers depend on your costs and your market.

Check Against Your Market, Then Decide

Now look at what others in your area charge, as a check rather than a starting point. If your numbers are much higher, ask whether you are offering more, such as a truck-mount, better scheduling, before/after photos and clear communication, and say so. If your numbers are much lower, ask whether you are leaving money on the table.

Racing to the bottom on price is a hard way to run a carpet cleaning company. A low advertised price that grows once the tech is inside the house wins a job and loses a customer. Clear, honest pricing with no surprises on the day is easier to explain and easier to stand behind.

Put It on the Service List and Review Yearly

Once you have your prices, put them on your CarpetBossPro service list with clear names and short descriptions. Every estimate then uses the same numbers, whether you or someone in the office builds it. Services can be priced off the property's measurements, such as square feet or rooms, so per-square-foot prices do the math automatically.

Review the list once a year. Costs go up. If fuel, wages or supplies moved, your prices should too. Changing a price on the list updates it for new estimates going forward.

Your Prices, Your Business

The right price for your carpet cleaning company is the one that covers your costs, pays you fairly and that your customers accept. Build it from your own numbers, check it against your market, put it on the service list and revisit it every year. To see how your service list drives every estimate, visit the carpet cleaning estimate software page.