{"id":1050,"date":"2017-11-01T20:37:29","date_gmt":"2017-11-02T00:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/wpDrakeBlog\/?p=1050"},"modified":"2017-11-01T23:00:38","modified_gmt":"2017-11-02T03:00:38","slug":"janitorial-profit-margin-vs-cost-markup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/wpDrakeBlog\/janitorial-profit-margin-vs-cost-markup\/","title":{"rendered":"Janitorial Profit Margin versus Janitorial Cost Markup. Which to choose?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Not understanding the difference between <strong>Janitorial Profit Margin<\/strong> and <strong>Janitorial Cost Markup<\/strong> is one of the most common pricing mistakes in the cleaning industry.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve seen way too many new business owners decide to price their janitorial bids solely on Markup &#8211; &#8220;I&#8217;d like to make $500 on this job&#8221; &#8211; rather consider the Margin of Profitability for the work&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Both terms &#8211; Margin and Markup &#8211; help you calculate profit, but prioritizing the wrong one could hurt your bottom line.<\/p>\n<p>Let me break it down.<!-- ENTER IMAGE FILE INFO BELOW (INSIDE THE IMAGE - IMG - TAG)--><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/cgp_images\/Cartoons\/Stick people\/CR-Stick-Scale.png\" alt=\"CleanGuidePro blog post image\" \/><\/p>\n<p><!-- ENTER PARAGRAPH TEXT BELOW --><\/p>\n<p><strong>Margin:<\/strong> (a.k.a. Profit Margin) is the percentage of the final selling price that is profit. In the highly competitive janitorial services industry, Profit Margins can trend low for very large jobs &#8212;\u00a0say, 12 to 15% &#8212; but that range is unprofitable for small to medium clients.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Markup:<\/strong> (a.k.a. Cost Markup) is either the <em>(a)<\/em>\u00a0Dollar amount above cost, or the<em><strong>\u00a0<\/strong>(b)<\/em> Percentage of the cost that you add on to get to a bid price.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So which approach should you use?<\/strong> As a general guideline, it is probably better to <strong>focus on your Profit Margin<\/strong> rather than a Cost Markup in a service business. A higher Profit Margin percentage matters more than a higher Cost Markup percentage.\u00a0For example, a 25% Cost Markup only yields a 20% Profit Margin, which means that your markup isn&#8217;t as profitable as it may seem at first glance.<\/p>\n<p>With margins, a 50% Margin means that half the selling price is profit. So, a 50% Margin means there is a 100% Markup &#8212; as you have added 100% of the cost price to make the selling price. (With margins, a 100% Margin is only possible if the cost price is zero.)  In short, a focus on Profit Margin is more effective when it comes to pricing your janitorial bid. <\/p>\n<p>Of course, situations and customers vary, and the choice to prioritize\u00a0Margin or Markup is yours.\u00a0Fortunately, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #00d2f6; \">Cleanly<em>Run<\/em> Janitorial Bidware<\/a> displays Markup and Margin right next to each other, so you always know what is your Profit Margin&#8217;s equivalent Cost Markup &#8212; and vice versa.\u00a0 <\/strong>In addition, we&#8217;ll suggest a minimum Profit Margin\/Cost Markup for each bid that you can adjust as you see fit.<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!-- NOTE: FOR ORDERED\/NUMBERED LISTS, USE OL TAG; FOR UNORDERED\/BULLETED LISTS, USE UL TAG. --><\/p>\n<p>On a related note, I&#8217;ve touched on how the Profit Margins of smaller businesses can be higher than bigger ones, even with a lower <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/wpDrakeBlog\/drakes-blog-ask-drake-competition-fair-market-pricing\/\" style=\"color: #00d2f6;\">Fair Market Price<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s enough math for now! \ud83d\ude09<br \/>\n<!-- IMAGE OF DRAKE'S SIGNATURE FLOAT LEFT; IMAGE OF SUCCESSFUL BIDDER FLOAT RIGHT --><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"margin-top: -20px; float: right; padding-left: 0px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/cgp_images\/CleanGuidePro_Successful_Bidding.png\" alt=\"CleanGuidePro Successful bidder\" width=\"42\" height=\"74\" name=\"ACCOUNT.IMAGE.7\" align=\"right\" border=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/cgp_about.php\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/images_bid\/Signature_Drake_small.png\" alt=\"Drake\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not understanding the difference between Janitorial Profit Margin and Janitorial Cost Markup is one of the most common pricing mistakes in the cleaning industry.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve seen way too many new business owners decide to price their janitorial bids solely on Markup &#8211; &#8220;I&#8217;d like to make $500 on this job&#8221; &#8211; rather consider the Margin &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/wpDrakeBlog\/janitorial-profit-margin-vs-cost-markup\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Janitorial Profit Margin versus Janitorial Cost Markup. Which to choose?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[38,30,75,2],"tags":[77,68,76],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/wpDrakeBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/wpDrakeBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/wpDrakeBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/wpDrakeBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/wpDrakeBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1050"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/wpDrakeBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1080,"href":"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/wpDrakeBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions\/1080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/wpDrakeBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/wpDrakeBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cleanlyrun.com\/wpDrakeBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}