Move Out Cleaning Quote: Scope, Labor, Exclusions, and Price

The customer says the property is empty and only needs a final clean. Your crew arrives to furniture, bagged trash, a full refrigerator, and heavy grease. A move out cleaning quote must define the property you priced, not the property you hoped to find.

Start with the required finish. Inspect the condition. Turn each included task into crew time and cost. Then write the assumptions, exclusions, and change-order rule on the quote.

Start with the finish the customer expects

Move-out cleaning is not routine maintenance cleaning. Routine work controls buildup during occupancy. Move-out work prepares an apartment, house, rental, or recently vacated property for handover or another occupant.

Ask the customer what handover means. Empty rooms ready for inspection? A property ready for listing photos? A rental ready for the next tenant? The answer changes the scope.

You can promise the cleaning work written on the quote. You cannot promise the return of a security deposit or acceptance by a landlord, property manager, buyer, or inspector. Damage, lease terms, and another party's judgment sit outside your control.

Build a cleaning scope checklist

Write the scope by room, surface, and task. Give every uncertain item a clear included, excluded, or optional status.

For the kitchen, consider:

• Counters, sinks, faucets, and backsplashes
• Cabinet and drawer fronts
• Cabinet and drawer interiors
• Appliance exteriors
• Oven, refrigerator, microwave, and dishwasher interiors
• Range hood surfaces and removable filters
• Baseboards, doors, trim, switches, and reachable fixtures
• Floors, edges, and accessible areas beneath appliances

For bathrooms, consider:

• Toilets, tubs, showers, basins, and faucets
• Tile, grout surfaces, mirrors, and glass screens
• Vanities, cabinet fronts, and cabinet interiors
• Exhaust covers, reachable fixtures, doors, trim, and baseboards
• Floors and edges

For bedrooms and living areas, consider:

• Reachable horizontal surfaces
• Shelves and closet interiors
• Doors, handles, switches, trim, and baseboards
• Interior glass, tracks, and blinds
• Spot cleaning or full washing of walls
• Vacuuming, mopping, or carpet extraction

Name balconies, garages, porches, storage rooms, exterior windows, furniture moving, and trash removal separately. Do not bury them under whole property or full clean.

Separate the base clean from optional work

Keep the base scope narrow enough to price. Put uncertain or equipment-heavy work into options.

Appliance interiors, cabinet interiors, wall washing, carpet extraction, blind cleaning, interior windows, trash hauling, and exterior areas are common points of disagreement. A customer may assume they are included. Your crew may assume they are not. The quote must settle that before arrival.

Qualify the property before promising a price

Collect the property facts before you discuss a fixed total. Property size matters, but condition and access can consume more labor than floor area suggests.

Record:

• Property address and type
• Rooms, bathrooms, levels, and storage areas
• Vacant, partly occupied, or occupied status
• Furniture, appliances, personal items, and trash left behind
• Visible grease, scale, dust, hair, stains, residue, and odors
• Stairs, elevators, loading access, parking, and walking distance
• Water, power, lighting, and climate control availability
• Key collection, lockbox, alarm, and building access instructions
• Required completion date and any restricted work hours
• Customer presence during the work
• The person allowed to approve added work

Ask who will empty cabinets, remove food, move furniture, and dispose of unwanted items. Write the answers into the job record.

Decide whether photos are enough

Photos can support a quote when the property is vacant, the rooms are visible, and the customer provides current images of every area. Ask for wide room shots and close views of kitchens, bathrooms, floors, appliances, cabinets, windows, and any reported problem area.

Photos do not reveal everything. They can miss grease, odors, adhesive, high surfaces, items behind furniture, poor access, and unavailable utilities.

Inspect on site when the property is occupied, heavily soiled, partly packed, difficult to access, or poorly documented. Inspect when the deadline leaves no room for a bad labor assumption. If the condition remains uncertain, issue an estimate or make the price subject to an inspection rather than presenting uncertain work as fixed. Use the quote-versus-estimate guide when choosing the document.

Inspect the conditions that consume crew time

Walk the property in the same order the crew will clean it. Open permitted cabinets and appliances. Look behind doors. Check floor edges, tracks, blinds, high ledges, shower screens, range surfaces, and storage areas.

Separate ordinary soil from work that needs another decision. Paint, adhesive, construction residue, damaged finishes, mold-like growth, pest waste, sharps, unknown chemicals, and biological material are not ordinary dust and grease.

Do not tell the crew to experiment on an unknown condition. Stop the affected task. Keep people away from the area. Photograph it and decide whether qualified handling, repair, restoration, or another contractor is needed.

Attach each dated photo to the room and task it shows. Add a note that identifies the surface and condition. The crew can then see why time was allowed or why the work was made optional or excluded.

Turn the scope into a deep cleaning labor estimate

Estimate the work task by task. Do not take a generic property price and hope the crew fits inside it.

For each room, list the included tasks. Estimate the labor needed for the observed condition. Keep separate lines for work such as oven interiors, cabinet interiors, windows, blinds, wall washing, and carpet extraction. This shows which task must change when the scope changes.

Use a blank room-by-task worksheet before setting the price:

Then add labor for work that does not belong to one room:

• Unloading, setup, and chemical preparation
• Carrying equipment from the vehicle
• Elevator waits, stairs, and long access routes
• Moving permitted light items
• Equipment changes and water collection
• Room checks and correction work
• Completion photos, packing, and key return

Crew size does not erase labor. If several cleaners work together, count each person's time. A larger crew may shorten elapsed time, but every paid labor hour still belongs in the job cost.

Match the crew to the property. List the machine needed. Record the permitted entry time. Assign each task to a crew member trained to do it. Check whether one person will lose time waiting for another. Build the schedule from total labor rather than assuming more people always produce free speed.

Build the price from cost, overhead, and markup

Use the labor plan to build the cost base. The price should recover every job cost, a fair share of overhead, and profit.

Start with direct labor. Use the real cost of employing or paying the people assigned to the job, not just the amount they receive for cleaning time. Add the supplies expected to be consumed, equipment costs tied to the job, travel, parking, access charges, and approved disposal.

Then recover overhead. Office time, administration, insurance, vehicles, storage, phones, and other business costs still exist while the crew cleans. Choose one consistent method for assigning overhead and do not count the same cost as both direct cost and overhead.

Turn the labor plan into a fixed price with this sequence:

Planned crew-hours × your own loaded labor cost = planned labor cost
+ supplies
+ job-specific equipment
+ travel, access, and disposal
+ allocated overhead
= total cost before markup
+ markup based on your own figures
= fixed quoted price

Markup is what you add to cost to reach the selling price. Margin is profit measured as a share of the selling price. They are not interchangeable. Use your own cost records when setting either one. The job-pricing guide shows how to keep labor and material pricing, overhead, and markup separate.

Use a fixed quote when the condition, access, scope, and readiness are defined. Use an estimate, inspection condition, or separately authorized option when the information is incomplete. A fixed price is not a reason to absorb undisclosed work.

Build the move out cleaning quote the crew will follow

The document is both a customer offer and a crew instruction. Use the same room names, tasks, and options in both places.

Identify the customer, service address, quote number, proposed date, property status, included rooms, included tasks, options, exclusions, assumptions, total price, acceptance method, and quote validity. State how added work will be approved.

A good move out cleaning quote makes the disputed items explicit. Do not write appliances included when you mean exterior surfaces only. Name each appliance and state interior, exterior, or both. Do the same for cabinets, windows, walls, carpets, blinds, furniture, trash, balconies, garages, and exterior areas.

Copy-ready quote template

Customer: [customer name]
Service address: [full property address]
Quote number: [quote number]
Proposed service date: [date or scheduling window]
Valid until: [date]
Property status: [vacant / partly occupied / occupied]
Required finish: [describe the agreed handover condition]

Included rooms and tasks:
- Kitchen: [surfaces and tasks]
- Bathrooms: [surfaces and tasks]
- Bedrooms: [surfaces and tasks]
- Living areas: [surfaces and tasks]
- Floors: [vacuum / mop / extraction details]
- Other areas: [laundry / closets / storage / other]

Optional work:
- Appliance interiors: [scope]; option price [price]; status [accepted / declined]
- Cabinet and drawer interiors: [scope]; option price [price]; status [accepted / declined]
- Interior windows, tracks, and blinds: [scope]; option price [price]; status [accepted / declined]
- Wall washing: [scope]; option price [price]; status [accepted / declined]
- Carpet extraction: [scope]; option price [price]; status [accepted / declined]
- Furniture moving: [scope]; option price [price]; status [accepted / declined]
- Trash removal: [scope]; option price [price]; status [accepted / declined]
- Balconies, garages, and exterior areas: [scope]; option price [price]; status [accepted / declined]

Customer preparation:
[items removed, cabinets emptied, food removed, access cleared]

Assumptions:
[property condition, utilities, parking, access, keys, work hours]

Exclusions:
[damage, restoration, hazardous conditions, blocked areas, disposal limits]

Change-order rule:
[affected work stops until added scope and price receive written approval]

Quoted total: [price]
Payment terms: [terms]
Quote acceptance: [name, approval method, and date]

Use plain task names. If the crew cannot tell what to clean from the document, rewrite it before sending.

Write cleaning quote exclusions before arrival

Exclusions draw the boundary around the price. They should describe real site conditions, not hide ordinary parts of the promised clean.

State whether the price excludes damage repair, restoration, paint and adhesive removal, construction residue, unknown chemicals, biological material, mold-like growth, pest waste, sharps, damaged building materials, and unapproved hauling or disposal.

State the readiness assumptions. The property is vacant or occupied as described. Customer belongings are removed where agreed. Water and power are working. The crew can enter at the booked time. Parking, elevator access, and keys are available as disclosed.

If furniture, bagged trash, or food remains on arrival, do not move or discard it without authority. If water or power is unavailable, pause the tasks that cannot be completed safely or to the quoted standard. Record the condition and contact the named approver.

Define rework against the written scope. A missed included task is different from a request to add wall washing, another appliance, or a blocked room after completion.

Stop and write a change order when the property differs

Give the crew a stop-work point. When an affected task sits outside the agreed condition or scope, they pause that task, photograph the issue, describe the added work, and send a price for approval.

The change order should refer to the original quote. Name the added task, price, schedule effect, and approval. Do not rely on a hallway conversation or a text that only says go ahead.

The house example is electrical, but the document control works the same way. R. Chen's job at 14 Oak Street had quote Q-1847 for 1,105. The ceiling was lined, the quote excluded chasing, and extra cable and chasing were approved as a 160 change order. Invoice INV-1847 therefore totaled 1,265.

Do not mix the added invoice value into the original job-profit calculation without its costs. Price and record each change on its own facts. The move out cleaning quote remains the baseline for deciding what was included.

Close the clean against the quote

Run the final check before packing equipment. Follow the room order and task wording from the quote. Check included appliance interiors, cabinet interiors, windows, tracks, floors, walls, and optional work instead of relying on a quick doorway look.

Take completion photos where the customer has permitted them. Record damage, declined tasks, inaccessible rooms, blocked surfaces, and work stopped for unsafe conditions. Note who received the keys and when.

Offer the customer a final walkthrough when scheduling and access allow it. Ask them to compare the property with the written scope. Record accepted work and specific correction items. Do not turn a vague request for a better clean into unpaid added scope.

Attach approved change orders to the invoice. Keep the quote, inspection evidence, crew notes, completion photos, acceptance record, and invoice under the same job. After payment, compare planned labor and cost with the actual result using the job-costing guide.

After you price the work, use Yes Foreman's quoting tools to keep the accepted move out cleaning quote and later changes with the job.