Priced the way Window Cleaning work is billed
A whole-home windows and a track & sill detail don't get quoted the same way, so why would every trade? SideWRK prices Window Cleaning the way the work is really billed: per window — about $8 a window — with add-ons billed flat. Tap the work, put in the numbers, and the line prices itself — no napkin math, no undercharging a job because you rushed the quote.
What Window Cleaning jobs actually run
These are the starting numbers SideWRK loads for common Window Cleaning work — researched to be realistic, so you can send an estimate that isn't a guess. Adjust any of them to your market in a tap.
Typical starting prices in the app — your area, your materials, and your reputation move them. You set your own; these just keep you from undercharging on the first quote.
Interior & exterior, priced out
Numbers only mean something on a real job, so here's how SideWRK builds the ticket on a common one:
That whole $250 is your labor — no parts to front and no markup games, just your time priced like it's worth something.
What moves a Window Cleaning price
Two Window Cleaning jobs that look the same on paper can be a hundred dollars apart once you're on site. Here's what actually changes the number — the things to size up before you quote:
- Count and type — you price per pane, and grids, storms, and French panes all count as more glass.
- Inside and out — doing both sides roughly doubles the panes, and screens are their own add-on.
- Height and access — second-story and hard-to-reach windows mean a pole or ladder time.
What a Window Cleaning job puts on the record
Every trade documents something different, and Window Cleaning is no exception. SideWRK captures the number of stories and the rest of what your work needs on the record — the details that protect you and make the invoice stand up:
- the number of stories
- the interior/exterior scope
- a work-at-height and rope-descent note for high-rise (OSHA anchorage rules)
Example note on a job: "Advised hard-water staining may not fully clear without restoration."
How to price a Window Cleaning job in SideWRK
- 1
Start the job and add your work
Open a Window Cleaning job and tap a suggestion like "Whole-home windows" or "Interior & exterior" — the common work is already loaded, so you tap instead of type.
- 2
Price it per window
Enter the numbers and the line prices itself, per window — about $8 a window — with add-ons billed flat. Put parts on at your cost so what you clear is real profit, not just the Window Cleaning ticket total.
- 3
Note the details
Add a plain-English note — for example, "Advised hard-water staining may not fully clear without restoration." — and a photo of the work.
- 4
Log what the job needs
Capture the Window Cleaning-specific records: the number of stories, and the interior/exterior scope.
- 5
Send it and get paid
Send the Window Cleaning estimate for approval. Your customer approves from their phone, the invoice goes out, and you get paid — card or Apple Pay, on the spot.
Staying on the right side of the rules
SideWRK documents your Window Cleaning work — it doesn't make you licensed, and it says so plainly. What to know: a business license in some places and OSHA work-at-height and rope-descent rules — high-rise rope descent needs owner-certified anchorages.
Window Cleaning pricing — common questions
How do I price a Window Cleaning job in SideWRK?
You bill per window — about $8 a window — with add-ons billed flat. Add the work — Whole-home windows, Interior & exterior, Screen cleaning — enter the numbers, and each line prices itself. Parts go on at your cost, so you see real profit and not just the total.
What does a typical Window Cleaning job cost?
It depends on the work, but as a realistic starting point a common job like interior & exterior runs about $250 in the app. Common Window Cleaning work ranges from about $60 to $250. Those are defaults you can change — you always set your own prices.
What does SideWRK document on a Window Cleaning job?
The records Window Cleaning work actually needs: the number of stories; the interior/exterior scope; a work-at-height and rope-descent note for high-rise (OSHA anchorage rules). They stay on the job as you work, so the paper trail is built instead of reconstructed later, and the disclosures this trade needs print on the estimate and invoice themselves.
Do I need a license to do Window Cleaning work?
That depends on your state and the job, but here's the shape of it: a business license in some places and OSHA work-at-height and rope-descent rules — high-rise rope descent needs owner-certified anchorages. SideWRK documents the work; it doesn't certify you.
Does SideWRK work for trades other than Window Cleaning?
Yes — it runs all 42 trades, each priced and documented its own way. If you run more than one, the Multi-Trade plan unlocks them all and switches between them in a tap.
Your first jobs
The menu above answers what to charge. Finding the first houses to charge is its own problem, and this trade starts it with an advantage almost nobody else gets: the job is countable from the sidewalk.
- Quote it standing in the driveway. Walk the outside, count the panes, ask whether they want the inside done too. That's the whole quote — no diagnostic, no tear-down, no "let me get back to you." Put the count in and send a branded estimate they can tap Approve on before you're back in the truck. A number said over a fence gets half-remembered by dinner. A written one doesn't.
- Take the small ones. A $60 screen clean and a $90 track-and-sill detail are already on your menu, and they're the cheapest way for a stranger to find out whether you show up when you said you would. They also put you at the house for an hour of careful work in plain view. Nobody builds a business on $60 tickets; that isn't what they're for.
- Photograph the tracks, not the glass. Clean glass looks like nothing in a photo — the cruel joke of the trade. A black track that comes out white, a hazed pane that clears: those photograph. Same angle, before and after, on every job that has one. A season of that is a folder of proof that cost you nothing.
- Get paid before you pull away. There is nothing to apply for. The customer settles from their own phone off the estimate you just sent, or you send a payment request that lands in the handle you already use, with nothing shaved off it. A first-time customer is exactly who you don't want to be chasing by text on Tuesday.
Repeat business — the house, written down
Every window cleaner already knows the route is the business. What decides whether the second visit actually pays better than the first isn't the pitch — it's how much of the first visit you wrote down. A route stop is only cheap because there's nothing left to figure out.
- The first visit is a survey you got paid for. A window cleaning job in SideWRK hangs on a property, and the property holds the label, the service address, the number of stories, and whether last time was exterior only, interior only, or both. The notes field asks for the four things you'll want in September: window count, screens, hard water, access. Fill it once while you're standing there and next spring's quote is a record lookup instead of a drive across town.
- Put the standing date on a plan, not in your head. On the customer, "Set up recurring" builds the visit once — the work and its price, which property it belongs to, the first date, and how often. The cadence runs weekly, every two weeks, monthly, or every N days, and that last one is where a quarterly route lives: 90. Each cycle the app writes the job for you, pre-filled and sitting in your list ready to do and get paid. Pause it for the winter, resume it in March, or hit "Start this visit now" when somebody calls early. How recurring plans work →
- The gate code belongs on the plan. Its notes line asks for the gate code, the dogs, and where to park. Those are the three answers nobody has a quarter later, and each one you're missing is a phone call you'd rather not make from the curb.
- The route math and the quarterly conversation. Both are worked out end to end in Window Cleaning: Build a Recurring Quarterly Route — why a $250 one-off pays worse per hour than a $180 route stop, the narrow moment when the recurring ask actually lands, where four visits belong in the year, and how to answer "can we skip this one" without losing the account. That's this trade's route deep-dive. Read it before you take a job across town.
How window cleaning bills
Two numbers, and one of them is already sitting on the house. The work form on a window cleaning job asks for Windows and Rate ($/window), preloaded at the researched $8, and the running "This work =" total reprices itself as you type. What that meter makes of ordinary houses:
One piece of arithmetic, four times, at the $8 default. The 23-window and 31-window rows are the counts sitting under the menu's own "Whole-home windows" and "Interior & exterior" starting numbers from the list above — the menu is a round number to quote from, the line is your count times your rate.
The menu is shorthand, and it pays to know what sits under it. Glass is the honest per-window line, and "inside and out" is simply a different count from "outside only" — quote the panes you're actually cleaning. Hard water is per pane too — the stained panes get counted the same way the clear ones did. And the two add-ons that bill flat are flat at a size. The calculator further down this page prices screens at $2 a window and sills and tracks at $3, which on a thirty-window house comes to exactly the $60 and $90 sitting on the menu. So those flat numbers are a thirty-window house. On a fourteen-window bungalow they're generous; on a forty-window colonial you're working part of the day for free. Check them against the count before you send it.
Three lines, every one of them a count times a rate the customer could check on their own house. The screens land at $62 against a $60 menu line, which is the whole point: at thirty-one windows the shorthand was right, and at fourteen it wouldn't have been. Every rate on that ticket is a field, so a number you disagree with is one line to change, not an argument with the app.
Which of those lines belong on a given house isn't a pricing question — it's decided in the ninety seconds you spend looking at it. The Add-On That Turns a $180 Wash Into $318 is this trade's walk-around deep-dive: what to look at before you quote, and how to say what you saw. Read that one, then come back and price it here. The window cleaning app is built for that walk — tap the work, each service its own priced line, one estimate, one approval.
Multiplying jobs
Past the first month, growth in a route trade is mostly follow-through, and follow-through is what falls off the truck by Thursday. These run whether you remember them or not:
- You find out the second they open it. When a customer opens the estimate you sent, your phone gets a push — or an email if push isn't set up on your phone — so you can call while they're still looking at it. It's throttled to one notification per job per six hours, so it stays useful instead of becoming noise.
- The quiet estimate gets a nudge. An estimate nobody answered gets a friendly follow-up email at 3 days and again at 7. Two, maximum. The customer who meant to say yes usually just lost the thread.
- The unpaid invoice reminds itself. A wrapped job with money still owed sends an email at 3, 7, and 14 days carrying the balance and a button to the job's own page, where they can settle it by card once you've connected card payments. Three at most, and the whole thing is a switch you own — so the awkward Tuesday text isn't yours to write.
- The finished job asks for the review. After the work wraps the app emails a review request on its own, then one reminder a few days later. In a trade where people hire the name a neighbor said out loud, that ask is the flywheel, and it's the step everybody skips.
- The tracks you cleaned sell the next house. Pair a before and after from the job's own photos into the gallery on your public page. Somebody deciding between two window cleaners picks the one whose work they can see.
A seeded window cleaning business — jobs, estimates, the gallery, the money — is running in the live demo. Free, no signup.
Price it now
Window count in, add-ons picked, your own rate, and your hard costs so the number at the bottom is profit and not just the ticket. The same free calculator the window cleaning page runs, right here (or open the full version):
One thing to line it up with the ticket above: enter the count you're quoting and leave the "inside & out" box alone. That box is a ×1.7 shortcut for anyone who counted one side and wants a two-side number, so ticking it on a count that already includes both sides charges the house twice. Thirty-one panes at an $8 rate with screens ticked lands on $310 — the same $248 and $62 the ticket above bills. (The box starts at $7 a pane; set it to what you charge.)
The paper worth keeping
The records list above says what a window cleaning job captures. This is why each one earns its place, and what it saves you from reconstructing later:
- The property, on the record. Label, service address, stories, whether the last visit was exterior, interior, or both — plus the notes holding the count, the screens, the hard water, and how you get in. When "same as last time" comes back in the fall, you're reading instead of guessing, and the quote goes out that day.
- The condition you named, in writing. Type it on the job and it rides both documents — the estimate they tap Approve on and the invoice they pay — so it's on the paper before the work starts instead of remembered differently two weeks later. Deciding which conditions are worth a line at all is a different skill, and it lives in the walk-around guide.
- Height, said plainly on every document. Every window cleaning estimate and invoice the app builds carries the same standing notice: work at height is the operator's responsibility, ladder safety and fall-protection practices apply, and rope-descent and high-rise work carry added OSHA requirements (29 CFR 1910.27) including owner-certified anchorages. The document says outright that it is not a safety certification. If a building needs that anchorage certification, that's between you and the building — worth having in hand before the ropes come out, not after.
- April, already done. Numbered invoices, payments, and the expenses you tracked all roll into a year-end wrap-up: rows, category totals, CSVs, and a printable summary your preparer can actually use.
SideWRK is a documentation tool, not legal advice. It helps you keep the records; the rules stay OSHA's and your state's, and meeting them stays yours.