A full schedule feels like success until you realize some of your contracts are barely breaking even. The only way to know which accounts actually make money is to track the numbers by client.

Start by setting up each recurring contract as its own class or project in QuickBooks Online. When revenue comes in and expenses go out, assign them to the right client. This gives you a profit and loss report for each account instead of just the business overall.

Revenue is the easy part. Set up recurring invoices for your monthly or weekly contracts, and they flow into the right bucket automatically.

Labor is where most cleaning business owners lose track. You need the actual hours worked on each account, including drive time, multiplied by the fully loaded labor cost. That means the hourly wage plus employer payroll taxes plus workers comp. A $15 per hour employee actually costs you closer to $18 or $19 when you add everything in. If a three-hour job takes four hours including drive time, your labor cost just jumped by 33 percent.

Supplies matter more than you’d think. Some accounts burn through more product because of the floor type, the amount of glass, or just how dirty the space gets. Track what you use or estimate based on square footage and frequency. Even a rough allocation is better than ignoring it.

Once you have revenue, labor, and supplies by client, you can calculate the gross profit margin. If a contract brings in $800 a month but costs $700 in direct labor and supplies, that 12.5 percent margin is too thin to survive a price increase on supplies or a sick day that requires overtime coverage. Healthy margins for recurring cleaning contracts typically run 25 to 40 percent on the gross profit line.

This is where route costing comes in. Two accounts might look similar on paper, but if one is 30 minutes from your other jobs and the other is on the way, the drive time changes everything. Grouping clients by geography and tracking labor by route can show you that a high-paying contract is actually unprofitable once you factor in the windshield time.

With this data in hand, you can make real decisions. Raise prices on accounts where the margin is too low. Let go of contracts that cannot be fixed. Price new work accurately instead of guessing.

Setting up this tracking takes work upfront, but small business bookkeeping services can build it into your monthly books so the numbers are there when you need them. For owners who are scaling up and want deeper analysis on pricing, route optimization, or whether to hire, a controller or fractional CFO engagement can take the data further.

If you are not sure which of your contracts are actually profitable, reach out for a consultation and we can look at your situation together.