Cleaning & Laundry

Cleaning businesses where travel time eats margins and laundromats with daily cash reconciliation needs.

The Industry

Most cleaning businesses underestimate how much travel time costs them. You’re billing for hours spent cleaning but not the 15 minutes driving between the office building and the next house. Over a week, that’s 5-7 unbillable hours your crew is on the clock. Supply costs get ignored because nobody’s tracking how much solution actually goes into each job. A client paying $150 monthly looks profitable until you realize the route inefficiency and actual supply usage leaves you with $40 after labor and expenses.

Laundromats generate cash daily from machines. That sounds simple until you’re trying to reconcile coin counts with machine meters while tracking which washers need constant repair. Dry cleaners deal with chemical inventory, equipment depreciation on expensive pressing machines, and customer pickup timing that creates revenue recognition questions. These businesses look straightforward but the accounting needs to track things most service businesses don’t deal with.

Who This Covers

Residential cleaning, commercial janitorial, window cleaning, carpet cleaning, dry cleaners, laundromats. Cleaning and laundry businesses across Phoenix dealing with recurring contracts, equipment costs, or supply tracking.

What Complicates It

Unbillable travel time between jobs. Supplies used per job that need allocation not bulk expensing. Recurring monthly contracts paid in advance. Commercial clients on net 30 terms. Equipment-heavy operations like laundromats and dry cleaners. Daily cash handling and reconciliation. Crew scheduling across multiple locations.

What We Handle

Job costing separates billable cleaning time from travel and shows supply costs per client. You can finally see which accounts make money after accounting for drive time and actual chemical usage. Monthly recurring contracts get revenue recognized over the service period instead of all upfront when prepaid. Commercial janitorial with net 30 payment terms needs receivables tracking so you know what’s outstanding and follow up before accounts age past 60 days.

Laundromats need systems for daily cash counts that reconcile to machine meters. Equipment maintenance gets tracked per machine to identify which units cost more to fix than they generate. Payroll handles varying crew schedules and locations. Tax prep should capture vehicle expenses for mobile cleaning crews, equipment depreciation for laundromats and dry cleaners, and supply costs that businesses routinely underestimate.

Profitability by Client and Route

Job costing shows labor, travel time, and supply costs per account. Route analysis identifies which geographic areas are profitable and which involve too much driving. Supply inventory tracked so costs get allocated to jobs instead of expensed when purchased. QuickBooks configured to track recurring contracts and job-level profitability.

Cash and Receivables Management

Daily cash reconciliation for laundromats preventing discrepancies from accumulating. Accounts receivable tracking for commercial contracts with systematic follow-up on aging balances. Payroll for cleaning crews with multiple locations and schedules. Tax returns capturing vehicle depreciation, equipment costs, and supply expenses often missed or understated.

What Goes Wrong

Travel time disappears from profitability calculations. You know how long the job took but not how long getting there and back consumed. A cleaning route with six stops might include an hour of unbillable driving that nobody accounts for when calculating whether the route is profitable. Supplies get purchased in bulk and expensed immediately instead of allocated per job. You think margins are 45% but they’re actually 28% once you properly account for solution, paper products, and equipment wear per client.

Prepaid annual janitorial contracts get recorded as revenue in January when the check arrives. The next 11 months show artificially low income even though you’re performing the same service. Cash flow looks great in January, terrible in July, and nobody can tell if the business is actually growing or declining. Laundromat owners skip daily reconciliation and realize six months later that cash deposits don’t match what the machines should have generated. The discrepancy could be theft, machine malfunction, or accounting error - but without daily tracking, you’ll never know which.

Costs Not Allocated Properly

Supply expenses hit when purchased not when used on jobs. Travel time and vehicle costs ignored in profitability analysis. What looks like a 40% margin client becomes a 22% margin client when you properly allocate all costs including unbillable time and actual supply consumption per visit.

Revenue Recognition Distorts Performance

Prepaid contracts counted as income when received creating income spikes that hide actual trends. Commercial clients paying net 60 create cash gaps during payroll weeks. Laundromat cash not reconciled daily allowing small discrepancies to compound into significant losses before anyone notices the problem.

What Changes

Every client shows true profitability after labor, travel, and supplies. Routes get evaluated for efficiency - too much drive time relative to billable hours gets flagged. Supply costs tracked per job reveal which clients use more chemicals than pricing accounts for. You can raise rates on high-supply accounts or drop clients who aren’t profitable after proper cost allocation.

Revenue gets recognized as services are performed not when cash arrives. Monthly financials show consistent performance instead of wild swings based on prepayment timing. Commercial receivables get aged and followed up on systematically. Laundromat cash reconciled daily catches problems while they’re small. Tax returns prepared by someone familiar with cleaning business operations who captures vehicle costs, equipment depreciation, and supply expenses that often get overlooked or understated.

Route Optimization Based on Real Data

Job-level profitability shows which accounts and geographic areas make money. Routes get planned around maximizing billable time and minimizing drive time. Unprofitable clients get repriced or dropped. Supply usage tracked so jobs get priced based on actual consumption not guesswork.

Reliable Financial Picture

Revenue recognized when earned showing actual monthly performance. Commercial contracts managed with follow-up before accounts age past 60 days. Laundromat cash handled with daily reconciliation catching discrepancies immediately. Financial statements you can use to make decisions instead of numbers distorted by timing of prepayments or collection delays.

The Valley's Trusted Accounting Firm