Commercial cleaning price increase letter: choose the buildings, the date and the reason before writing a word

Step one: choose the buildings, and separate the rate from the hours

Repricing every account by the same percentage is the simple way to do it and the least defensible one. Some buildings have drifted far from their bid; some were bid last year and still fit. Build one row per building from three exports: the payroll hours by job or building code for the last full quarter, the bid sheet the price came from, and the recurring invoice history.

• The monthly price, and the date it last changed. The invoice history shows it; the contract only shows what was allowed.
• The hours a week the bid assumed, against the hours a week payroll actually paid on that building last quarter, supervisor cover for call-offs included.
• The average hourly rate paid on that building when it was bid, against the rate paid now.
• Work done outside the spec in the same quarter with no price on it: the strip and wax, the post-move clean, the extra restroom.
• Open complaints. Tong’s column advises resolving service problems before asking for an increase, and a building with complaints in the log is the wrong place to start.

Illustrative example: a building was bid three years ago at 80 hours a week and $9,000 a month, when the crew earned about $13 an hour. Last quarter payroll paid about 92 hours a week there, and the rate on that crew is now about $15. That is roughly 347 hours a month at $13, about $4,510, against roughly 399 hours at $15, about $5,980: close to $1,470 a month more in wages alone, before payroll taxes and workers’ comp, on a price that never moved. That example holds two problems, and they need two conversations. The rate rose because the labor market and the wage floor moved: a price question a letter can carry. The hours rose because the building changed or the bid was thin — a tenant’s fitness room, two more restrooms for the day porter, a longer trash run: a scope question for a walkthrough and a revised spec. Folding both into one bigger percentage makes the letter harder to defend, and the scope conversation is easier before the price letter lands than after it. The numbers are invented for the example; the company’s own rows are the only ones that count.

Step two: choose the date

Three calendars decide when a letter can work. The first is the contract. Read each signed agreement for the price-change terms, the notice it requires, the anniversary date, and whether either side can end it on short notice. A contract that allows an annual adjustment on the anniversary gives the date; a contract that is silent, or that the client can cancel on 30 days’ notice, makes the conversation matter more than the paper. Whether a mid-term increase is allowed under a particular contract is a question for the company’s attorney.

The second calendar is the client’s budget. Tong’s advice is to find out when the client prepares its annual budget and present the repricing one to two months before that season. A letter that arrives after the budget is set asks the property manager to find money that has already been allocated.

The third calendar is the wage floor. The Florida Department of Commerce states that “Effective September 30, 2026, the Florida minimum wage will be $15.00 per hour,” and that the rate runs to December 31, 2027. The U.S. Department of Labor’s state table, updated July 1, 2026, still showed Florida at $14.00, the rate before the step, which is a reminder that the federal summary can lag the state’s own page. The same table lists California at $16.90, Washington at $17.13, New Jersey at $15.92, Arizona at $15.15, Colorado at $15.16 and Illinois at $15.00, with New York at $17.00 in New York City and Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester counties and $16.00 elsewhere. It says the Michigan minimum wage “is scheduled to increase on January 1, 2027 to $15.00 per hour.” These tables list state rates only. Which rate applies to which employee, and from which date, is a question for the payroll provider or the company’s attorney.

• Contract anniversary and notice terms, from the signed PDF, not memory
• The client’s budget season, asked for directly at the next site visit
• The next wage-floor date in the state, from the state agency’s own page
• The pay raises the company has decided to give above the floor, if it keeps the gap between new and experienced cleaners

Step three: a reason the property manager can check

The strongest reason is the one closest to the building. If the crew on that building earned $14 an hour before September 30 and earns $15 now because of the Florida law, the letter can say exactly that, with the date and the state page behind it. If the scope grew, the letter can point to the revised spec the property manager already walked.

A published index helps when the contract names one, or when the company wants an outside measure of what the market did. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a producer price index for janitorial services, which measures the change in the selling prices janitorial firms receive for their work. On the series as published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the index stood at 178.083 in September 2025 and 188.158 in September 2026, a rise of about 5.7 percent; BLS publishes the latest months as preliminary, so re-read the figure before quoting it. If a contract names a different index, such as a consumer price index, the contract’s index governs. Quoting an index is not a recommendation to raise any price by that amount.

Do not borrow a reason that is not true for the building. A wage-law paragraph on an account whose crew already earned well above the new floor invites the obvious question, and the answer weakens every other letter that client receives.

Writing the commercial cleaning price increase letter

Keep it to one page, and send it after a phone call or a visit, never instead of one. The letter confirms a conversation; it should not be the first the property manager hears of it.

Sample, to adapt and have reviewed: “Dear [name], under our agreement for [building] dated [date], the monthly price will change from $[current] to $[new] starting [date]. Florida’s minimum wage rose to $15.00 an hour on September 30, 2026, and the wages we pay on your building rose with it. The scope, the schedule and the crew stay the same. If the new price does not fit this year’s budget, we can walk the building with you and price a reduced frequency instead. [Name, title, phone].”

• Addressed to the person who signs the contract, copied to the person who approves the budget if the client asks
• The building name and the agreement date, so it cannot be confused with another account
• The effective date, consistent with the notice terms in the contract
• The current and the new monthly price in dollars, not only a percentage
• One paragraph of reason specific to the building, with its public source where there is one
• What stays the same: scope, frequency, crew, supervisor
• An alternative that is not a rebid: a lower frequency, a seasonal schedule, or a periodic moved to a different cycle

When the answer is “we will have to bid this out”

Know the building’s floor before the meeting: the monthly price at which it pays its labor, payroll taxes, workers’ comp, supplies and supervision and still contributes something. Step one already built most of that number. Above the floor there is room to talk; below it, the building costs the company money at the current price, and losing it in a rebid is not the loss it feels like.

A rebid is also work for the client: a new round of walkthroughs, proposals to compare, a transition and a new crew learning the building. Saying so calmly, with the building’s numbers in hand, is different from saying it as a threat. Offer the alternative in the letter again, and record the outcome for each building — accepted, accepted with a scope change, rebid, lost — so next year’s round starts from what happened rather than from memory.

When this does not need outside help

A company with a handful of buildings, an owner who knows each crew’s hours, and contracts that were repriced on their anniversaries does not need anyone to run this. The three exports and an afternoon are enough. The same is true if every contract already carries an annual adjustment the office applies on schedule.

An outside review earns its fee when the price question is one leak among several and the records do not connect: payroll hours with no building code, extras done on a hallway request and never invoiced, anniversaries that passed with no review, payroll due weeks before the client pays. Our Revenue Review takes two weeks. It reads the company’s own payroll, bid sheets, contracts and invoices, read-only, and prices each building’s gap as a monthly dollar figure where the records support one. It writes no letters to clients, contacts no client, gives no wage-law or legal advice, and leaves every pricing decision with the owner. We do not run a cleaning company, and there are no client case studies on this site yet.

If it is unclear whether any of this is worth a fee, start with a free 20-minute call, where a company too small for the arithmetic is told so.