Put the bids in four columns — monthly total, visit frequency, the written task list, and what is excluded — and compare nothing until all four are filled in. The cheapest bid is not automatically a red flag. A bid that is dramatically cheaper with no visibly smaller scope usually is, because in cleaning that difference has to come out of hours worked on your floor.
Why one bid can be half the price of another
Two commercial bids rarely describe the same purchase. One prices per square foot, another per hour, a third per visit — and each unit hides its own assumptions; when the industry uses each model, and how to convert them into one monthly number, is covered in how commercial cleaning is priced. One bid assumes five nights a week; another, two. One includes restroom consumables; another leaves paper and soap as a line you meet in month two. Until everything is restated as one month of service, at one frequency, against one task list, “half the price” is not information. It may simply be half the service.
Read the scope of work, not the adjectives
A serious commercial bid is a scope of work with a price attached — not a price with adjectives attached. Our commercial page describes the deliverable in one sentence: “You get a scope of work and a price in writing — the task list, the frequency of each task, and what it costs. Nothing starts until you approve it, and the price you approve is the price you pay.” Hold every bid on the table to that shape, ours included. If a proposal cannot say how often the restrooms are disinfected, or whether interior glass lives inside the visit or on a monthly rotation, it cannot be compared with one that can — only gambled on.
Adjectives are the tell. “Thorough”, “complete”, “as needed” cannot be audited; frequencies can. “Restrooms disinfected and restocked every visit, baseboards on monthly rotation” can be checked on any given Tuesday. A “comprehensive sanitation program” cannot — and a vague scope is exactly where a low bid stores its future shortcuts. What the signed document should say, clause by clause, we walk through in what belongs in a commercial cleaning contract.
The labor math a half-price bid has to survive
Commercial cleaning is a labor business. The crew’s hours, supervision, payroll taxes, insurance, products, equipment, and the drive between buildings — almost all of it scales with time spent on your floor. Two bids for the same footage, the same frequency, and the same task list are bidding roughly the same hours. If one is dramatically cheaper, the first honest question is: where did the hours go?
There are legitimate answers: a smaller scope, a lower frequency, a route that already has crews near your building. But when the scope reads the same and the number is half, the common answer is that those hours were never going to be worked. The bid funds fewer hours than the task list takes, and the gap closes itself quietly — rotation tasks disappear first, then the restrooms get faster, and by month three the standard is whatever you stopped checking. You did not buy a cheaper service; you bought a shorter one without being told.
“The red flag is never the price by itself. It is a price the written scope cannot explain.”
Hidden costs that surface after you sign
Four lines to find — or to notice missing — before any signature:
- Consumables. Trash liners, paper, soap: restocked inside the price, or billed as they run out? A bid that is silent on this is cheaper on paper only.
- The first visit. A space coming off a vendor who stopped showing up needs a reset visit that costs more than maintenance. A bid that prices month one like month six either bills you the difference later or never does the reset. For contrast, our Terms commit to this when a space turns out different from described: “If the scope on arrival is materially different (for example, additional rooms or heavy build-up), we will re-quote with you before doing extra work — never silently.”
- Payment shape. Prepaying a quarter is a very different risk from being invoiced per visit. JAS’s Terms put it this way: “There is no payment at booking. After each completed visit, we issue an invoice for the quoted amount” — plus applicable taxes and any re-quoted additions you approved. In any bid, look for the moment your money leaves before the work does.
- The exit. Auto-renewal clauses, notice periods, early-termination fees. The cheaper the month, the longer the lock-in tends to run — read for the clause that keeps you after the standard slips.
The paperwork that decides the bid in Miami
In Miami-Dade, which bid you can accept is often decided by your building before it is decided by you. Property managers in Brickell and downtown towers ask for a certificate of insurance naming the building before a vendor badges in; condo associations add vendor rules, freight-elevator windows, and evening-access policies. So the vendor file belongs in the comparison table, next to the price: liability limit, COI turnaround, W-9. JAS publishes its own — “$2,000,000 general liability coverage · every cleaner background-checked”, with most certificates returned within 2 business hours; the exact wording is in the insurance section of our legal page and how to verify it is on transparency. A bidder who cannot produce the certificate before the contract will not produce it faster after.
One more line worth finding, because this is South Florida: what happens when the vendor reschedules on you. Hurricane season runs June through November, and one storm week can wipe a calendar. Our Terms answer it in writing: “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.” Every bid you compare should answer the same question somewhere.
When the cheapest bid is the honest one
Cheap is not a character flaw, and this is not an argument for picking the biggest number. The cheapest bid is often simply the smallest honest scope: two evenings a week instead of five, trash-and-restrooms instead of full detail, a suite compact enough to sit at a per-visit minimum. If the scope is smaller because you chose a smaller scope, the low number is the right number. Compare processes, not people: ask every bidder the same questions, and keep the one whose paperwork answers them.
Use a published number as your anchor
Bid comparison feels like guesswork because almost nobody in this market shows a number before the proposal meeting. We publish ours: office cleaning “starts at $225 per weekly visit for spaces up to 1,000 sq ft”, and the full size table — through 8,000 sq ft and beyond — lives on the office cleaning in Miami page. Those are starting estimates per weekly visit, and “biweekly, monthly, and one-time visits start from a different base”. You can use that anchor without ever calling us: when a bid for a comparable space and frequency lands far below any number anyone will put in writing, the scope reading above is where you will find the reason.
And because the real comparison is not month one’s price but month six’s standard, ask every bidder how you will know the work happened without walking the floor. On eligible completed visits, JAS sends a CleanCheck report — that visit’s checklist status with customer-safe photos — so the scope you signed stays checkable for as long as you pay for it.
The short version
Normalize every bid to one monthly total, at one frequency, against one written task list. Strike the adjectives; keep the frequencies. Count the consumables, the first visit, the payment shape, and the exit clause. Put the vendor file in the table next to the price. Then, if the cheapest bid still explains itself, take it with a clear conscience. If it cannot, you have found where the discount comes from: your own floor.
This guide is part of the JAS operating playbook — written so the bid we hand you can be read with exactly the scrutiny it recommends.