Ask for four things before you ask about price: a certificate of insurance naming your building, the names of who actually badges in at night, a walkthrough before anyone gives you a number, and a written scope with a frequency next to every task. A vendor who answers all four in one email has done this before.
Almost every checklist that ranks for this query stops at the question. The question is the easy half — any vendor can say yes to all eleven below. What separates them is the shape of the answer: a specific interval, a document, a name, a page you can open. Vague enthusiasm where a fact belongs is itself the finding. Here are eleven, grouped by when to ask them, with what a good answer sounds like and the JAS answer beside it.
Before anyone quotes you: the paperwork
1. “Can you send a COI naming my building — and how long does it take?”
Ask for a certificate of insurance with your building or association listed as certificate holder — not a PDF of their policy, the certificate in your name. Then ask the second half, which is the half that actually tells you something: how long. A vendor who has been through a building’s vendor onboarding answers in hours. One who has not says they will check with their agent. JAS publishes the answer instead of saying it on a call: $2,000,000 general liability coverage, every cleaner background-checked, a certificate available on request, and most returned within 2 business hours. A W-9 is on request too, because it is the second thing accounting asks for. How to verify each of those claims is on our transparency page.
Notice what is not on this list: we are not going to tell you what “licensed” means in Florida. Licensing and registration requirements are set by the county and the state, and the right source for them is the office that issues them — not a cleaning company’s marketing page. What you can demand in writing today is the certificate.
2. “Who actually badges in — and who gets background-checked?”
A background check on the owner is not a background check on the two people standing in your server room at 8pm. Ask whether crews are employees or subcontracted, ask who is screened, and ask what happens when the regular crew cannot make it. On the JAS side: every cleaner passes a background check. If a property manager wants the vendor file before work starts, that is a normal request and it should be handled without drama.
3. “Will the crew and my team speak the same language?”
This one is on almost no national checklist and it is a daily reality in Miami-Dade. Your office manager gives access instructions; night security gives different ones; the crew reports something they found. If those three conversations need a translator, they do not happen — and the thing that goes unreported is usually the leak under the sink. JAS runs bilingual EN/ES crews and answers in either language.
Before you compare prices: the work
4. “Can I see a starting number before I talk to anyone?”
Most commercial cleaners answer “every space is different” and route you to a proposal form. Every space is different, and a starting range is still publishable: what changes is footage, layout, restroom count, and frequency, not magic. JAS publishes the table — office cleaning starts at $225 per weekly visit for spaces up to 1,000 sq ft, and the full range through 8,000 sq ft and beyond is on the office cleaning page, which is the source that gets updated. The whole arithmetic, including why per-square-foot pricing stops making sense on a small suite, is in our office cleaning cost guide.
5. “Will someone walk the space before quoting?”
A price given over the phone is a guess, and the guess gets corrected later by quietly shortening the visit. Ask what the walkthrough measures: square footage, layout, restroom and kitchenette count, floor types, access rules, and the hours that work for your team. Then ask what you get at the end of it. JAS comes back with a scope of work and a price in writing, usually within one business day, and nothing starts until you approve it.
6. “Does the scope put a frequency next to every task?”
“Keep it clean” is not a scope of work. You want the task list, and next to every line, how often: every visit, weekly, monthly. That one column is what turns “is it being done?” from an argument into a lookup. It is also the fastest way to compare two quotes that look identical on price and are not — the cheap one is usually cheap because nothing is written next to “baseboards”. The long version of that comparison, including whether what you are buying is janitorial or project work, is in commercial cleaning vs. janitorial services.
The Miami questions no national checklist asks
7. “What is your access plan after 6pm — in my building?”
Commercial work here happens in the evening: for offices, the JAS default is the 6pm–10pm shift, so nobody works around a vacuum. But “we clean at night” and “we can get in at night” are two different claims in a Miami-Dade tower. Ask how they handle a security-desk sign-in, a reserved freight-elevator window, a loading-dock cutoff, and a condo or HOA board that requires an approved vendor file — with the association named as certificate holder — before anyone touches a mop. The vendor who asks you these questions first is the one who has been turned away at a lobby before. JAS coordinates keys, alarm codes, or lobby access directly with your office manager.
8. “What happens to my schedule during hurricane season?”
June through November is on the calendar every single year, and a named storm does not cancel a week of work so much as move it. Ask three things. What happens to a visit in a storm week. How they tell you it changed. And whether you pay for a visit that did not happen. That last one has a structural answer or it has none: JAS invoices after each completed visit rather than for a prepaid term, so a visit that did not happen is not a visit you paid for. Ask what happens after, too — a building that was sealed and reopened, with the water back on and the A/C catching up, is often not the maintenance visit sitting on the schedule, and it should be quoted as what it actually is.
9. “What do you do when it stops being a cleaning problem?”
Year-round humidity with year-round A/C is why restrooms and the break room are the first rooms in South Florida to give away a thin cadence: grout lines, drains, the underside of sinks, the fridge gasket, the drip tray under the coffee setup. That is a frequency argument, not a product argument, and a vendor who answers it by naming a chemical is selling you something else. Two more local ones, a line each: entry glass and door hardware near the water take salt air, and pollen comes in all year through a lobby door that never stops opening. Those are cadence questions too.
Then ask the hard version: what do they do when they find something a cleaning visit cannot fix? The honest answer is that they stop and tell you. The JAS Terms say it plainly: “We 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 on what a product does or does not do, the only honest source is its label: we make no efficacy claim, no dwell time, no pathogen named as a promise. A vendor who quotes around active mold instead of naming it is a vendor who will quote around other things.
Before you sign: the contract
10. “What arrives after each visit without me chasing it?”
The problem with a cleaning contract is never month one. It is month six, when the vendor starts trimming and nobody notices until a tenant, an audit, or your boss does. Ask what lands in your inbox after a visit. On eligible completed visits, JAS sends a CleanCheck report: that visit’s checklist status, customer-safe photos, and the team’s notes. “Were the restrooms done Tuesday?” should be answerable with a file.
11. “What am I locked into, and when do I pay?”
Ask for the term, the notice period, and the billing moment in one question, because those three together are the entire commercial relationship. JAS invoices after each completed visit rather than for a prepaid term — which is why there is no long-term lock-in here, and it is also why the answer to question 8 works the way it does. We earn the contract every visit.
“The question is the easy half. What separates one vendor from another is whether the answer comes with an interval, a document, or a name — or only enthusiasm.”
Two questions that sound useful and are not
“Do you guarantee your work?” Everybody says yes. Ask for the window and the evidence instead: JAS asks you to make contact within 24 hours and to include your CleanCheck when available, so the request can be reviewed under the reclean guarantee. A deadline and a document beat a promise.
“What is your price per square foot?” It is the unit the industry speaks in, and it misleads below a few thousand feet: a small suite still needs a crew, a drive, and a full restroom disinfected, and that work does not shrink with the footage. Ask for the per-visit number for your actual space instead.
Quick answers
What is the single most useful question to ask a commercial cleaning company?
How long does a certificate of insurance naming my building take? It is one question that tests three things at once — whether they carry the coverage, whether their paperwork is organized, and whether they have been through a building vendor onboarding before. A company that answers in hours has done it. A company that has to check with its agent and call you back has not, and that is worth knowing before they have your alarm code. JAS publishes the answer instead of saying it on a call: $2,000,000 general liability coverage, every cleaner background-checked, and most certificates returned within 2 business hours.
Should I ask a Miami cleaning company for references?
Ask, but ask precisely: a reference in your building type and your access window is worth ten generic ones. A vendor who cleans ground-floor retail at 7am has not solved a twenty-third-floor evening entry with a security desk. And prefer a public record to a curated sheet — a reference list is chosen by the vendor, a public review page is not. JAS points at its reviews page and its Google Business Profile rather than a hand-picked list, and the transparency page explains how to check every claim on the site.
How many quotes should I get before hiring a commercial cleaner?
Two or three is usually enough, but the number matters far less than making the scopes comparable first. Two quotes for the same office can differ by hundreds of dollars purely because one includes restroom restocking, interior glass, and a monthly baseboard rotation and the other does not say. Write down your own task list with a frequency next to each line, hand the same list to everyone, and ask each vendor to price that. Then the cheapest number actually means the cheapest.
Are the questions different for a one-time cleaning than for a recurring contract?
Yes, and the difference is where the risk sits. A one-time job — a build-out handoff, a move-out, an event reset — is graded on scope and on the day: what exactly is included, how long it takes, and what happens if it is not finished. A recurring contract is graded on month six: what proof arrives after each visit, what the notice period is, and when you are billed. On a one-time job you are buying an outcome you can see. On a contract you are buying a standard you have to be able to check.
The short version
Make the paperwork arrive before the price, insist on a walkthrough before a number, and do not sign a scope without a frequency next to every task. Then add the three Miami questions nobody else will hand you: the night access plan for your building, what happens to your schedule between June and November, and what they do when they find something a cleaning cannot fix. Keep the answers in writing. In month six, that email is all you have.
This guide is part of the JAS operating playbook — we publish the questions we would rather be asked, with the page where each answer can be checked.