Yes. A commercial cleaning company arrives with what it needs — chemicals, cloths, vacuums, mops, floor machines — and the price you were quoted includes them. What it usually does not buy is your consumables: restroom paper, hand soap, can liners. That split is the whole answer, and it belongs in writing.
Nearly every month-two argument comes from treating those two things as one thing. They are separate budgets: one is the vendor’s cost of doing business, the other is your building’s inventory. The useful question is not “do they bring their own stuff?” but “which line of the scope says who buys what?”
Products and equipment: the vendor’s, inside the price
Products and machines belong to the vendor because their cost spreads across every client. A vacuum, a microfiber mop or a bottle of glass cleaner covers many visits, so billing you a shopping list every month would make sense to nobody. The office cleaning page answers it in one line: asked “Do you bring your own supplies and equipment?”, it says “Yes, we bring everything — eco-friendly products by default, fragrance-free on request, plus quiet vacuums and HEPA-filter equipment for sensitive workplaces.” That already sits inside the quoted figure: JAS commercial work starts at $225 per weekly visit for spaces up to 1,000 sq ft, and the full ladder by size lives on that same page.
So ask which model you are being quoted. A vendor that asks you to supply the chemicals and the vacuum is not quoting a cleaning — it is quoting labor, and the gap against another bid is not a discount, it is two different products side by side. Get it explicit in the proposal, not verbally.
Consumables: the building’s, and that is the forgotten line
Restroom paper, hand towels, soap, air freshener and can liners get used at the speed of your traffic, not of the vendor’s work. In an office building the owner or property manager normally buys them and the vendor restocks them. Watch the verb: restock is not buy. The janitorial services page lists “Restrooms disinfected, restocked, and mopped” as an every-visit task — labor inside the scope, not a purchase order.
Some vendors offer to buy them and invoice separately, with or without a markup. Either arrangement works; the one that fails is the one nobody wrote down. JAS settles it inside the written scope: the commercial step of the booking form carries a field labelled “Waste, recycling, or consumables notes (optional)”, and what you put there goes into the quote before a first visit exists.
And one more line almost nobody includes: who raises the flag. An empty closet on a Friday afternoon is not a cleaning problem, it is a notice problem. Agree how far ahead you are told that two cases are left, and who gets told — the property manager, not whichever employee happened to walk past.
Can we ask for a specific product?
Yes, and on commercial work it is usually a whole-floor request rather than a one-desk one. The published JAS answer is the same line from the office page: fragrance-free on request, and “If your industry needs specific products, like EPA-list disinfectants for medical suites, we build that into your floor checklist.” Landing it in the checklist is the part that matters: a request written into the scope survives a change of crew; a request made in a corridor does not.
What you will not find here is a comparison between one product and another. We do not publish what kills what, in how long, or with what result: the product’s registered label says that and nothing else does, and it is the only honest source when your decision turns on it. If you suspect mold, this is not the thing you are looking for either: the Terms reserve “the right to refuse or stop service where conditions are unsafe for our team — such as mold, infestation, biohazards, or abusive behavior”. A cleaning visit is not remediation, and no product turns it into one.
Equipment: whose it is, and who repairs it
On a recurring scope, equipment ownership decides more than it looks like it should. If the machines are the vendor’s, then maintenance, replacement and the vacuum that dies on a Tuesday are the vendor’s: your service does not stop and your budget does not move. If you supply them, you have just bought a maintenance program — and when you change vendors you are left holding machines nobody on the new crew may be trained on.
The flip side: if the equipment is yours, it is yours. Some buildings prefer exactly that — a burnisher that lives in the basement and does not depend on who holds the contract this year. It is a legitimate choice; it just has to be written down, with who repairs what. And if the vendor stores anything on your property, name where: almost no building wants to discover an unlabeled jug in a shared closet.
What Miami adds to the list
Access comes before product. In a Brickell tower or a board-run condo, a crew does not roll a cart through the front door at six in the evening: there is a freight elevator to book and a vendor file to clear. The janitorial page states the flow plainly — keys, alarm codes, freight elevators and lobby access are coordinated with your office or property manager before the first visit, and the 6pm–10pm evening shift is the default. Bringing everything matters little if it cannot get upstairs.
Hard water and salt air pick the list. Restroom fixtures and glass here pick up mineral buildup faster than in almost any other market, and coastal hardware shows it sooner. Our office add-on catalog names it “mineral buildup treatment on reachable restroom fixtures and glass” precisely because it is not a daily wipe: decide whether it rides the monthly rotation or gets re-quoted separately. And with year-round pollen and no slow season for humidity, vents and sills cannot live under “as needed”.
June through November the calendar moves. A named storm closes buildings and deletes visits. The Terms put it this way: “We may need to reschedule for weather, safety, or staffing reasons — we will tell you as soon as we know, and you never pay a fee for a reschedule we initiate.” That is where the billing model outweighs the product list: the janitorial page carries no long-term lock-in and invoices after each completed visit, so a lost week costs nothing instead of a quarter of a prepaid month. The reopening week is its own conversation — it is heavier than maintenance and should be re-quoted, and the Terms already promise to re-quote “before doing extra work — never silently”.
Four lines for the written scope
None of these four needs a lawyer. They need to be written before the first visit, which is exactly when the janitorial page promises you the exact task list.
- 1. Products and equipment: whose, and included in the visit price or billed on top
- 2. Consumables: who buys the paper, soap and liners, and who restocks the dispensers
- 3. Low stock: who tells you the closet is empty, and how far ahead
- 4. Requests and storage: named products for your floor, and where anything is kept
That is how it gets bought without surprises: the Terms describe the order — “We price before you commit: you request a quote, see it, and then request a time” — and the walkthrough ends in a scope of work and a price in writing. Nothing starts until you approve it.
The short version
Products and equipment come from the company and are already inside the visit price. Consumables get consumed by your building, so your building usually buys them — and the scope has to say who restocks them and who flags them running out. A specific-product request gets written into the floor checklist; a label is the only source on what that product does. Cleaning a home rather than an office? That conversation runs differently — we take it in do house cleaners bring their own supplies? Already drafting the document? Carry on with what a commercial cleaning contract should include.
Part of the JAS operating playbook, not legal advice: how we split products, equipment and consumables before a first visit.