There are dozens of companies that offer Van Nuys janitorial services for their commercial and institutional facilities. But there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to their pricing structures sometimes — so how can you know which of them are inexpensive but valuable, and which are simply cheap?

Fixed Elements
Every janitorial service has elements of their bill that are fixed, and elements that vary from job to job. The fixed elements, you can probably largely assume based on your own business’ similar costs. They include payroll, material costs, labor, management, and profit. These elements tend to be roughly similar across similar businesses, though if one janitorial service has an ‘in’ at a particular vendor, for example, they might be able to get lower material costs than others.

Variable Elements
The variable elements, ironically, are the ones that from your perspective are fixed. That’s because they’re based on the size and complexity of the specific job you’re asking for. Variable costs are usually determined by the service by looking at:

• The square footage of the area you want cleaned,
• The number of restrooms and kitchens involved,
• The nature of the things that happen in the area (i.e. you’ll pay more for a gymnasium or children’s classroom, much more for a medical facility), and
• The time that you need the cleaning performed (it’s generally less expensive to get something cleaned in the middle of the workday than it is to get it cleaned overnight.)

Matching the Variables
One of the easiest ways to maximize your RoI on Van Nuys janitorial services is to pick a service that is proportionally sized to your business. For example, if you have a three-person operation running out of a cheap rented storefront, you’ll generally get better value-per-dollar by hiring a lone janitor to come in and clean up occasionally than you will by hiring a multinational janitorial superpower. If you run three office buildings out of the same industrial complex off Raymer Street, you probably want to hire a mid-sized, well-manned, full-service company like MegaJanitorial.

By and large, if you hire a janitorial service that’s too small, you’ll end up paying extra for them to get the materials and tools they need to handle your job — and possibly some overtime on the side. Hire one that’s too big, and you’re paying for equipment and manpower you don’t actually need. Find the Goldilocks Point, and everything will end up just right.