How much is a window cleaning round worth

How rounds are priced in the trade

In UK window cleaning, a round is the list of regular customers a cleaner works through on a cycle, and it is bought and sold like a small business. Clear View Services puts it plainly: the price of a round is almost always based on a multiple of its average monthly turnover. What the buyer actually gets is a list of addresses and the goodwill that comes with them. As one member of the UK Window Cleaning Forums put it, the goodwill is the previous owner's relationship with the customers, not yours, and none of those customers is obliged to stay.

The multiple people quote varies more than you might expect. Cleaner Planner and Window Cleaning Warehouse both give 3 to 5 times average monthly turnover as the usual sale price, and Window Cleaning Warehouse adds that some sellers ask 6 to 9 times when the round is well priced, compact and made up of long standing customers. In a Window Cleaning Forums thread on valuing a round, members suggested anywhere from 3 to 8 times, and one argued that anything over 4 times was unrealistic. Clear View Services quotes a much higher 8 to 12 times monthly value, which sits well above the other sources.

Reported sales tend to land at the lower end. In one forum thread a seller in North Wales agreed 3.5 times the monthly rate with his buyer, and another member said he had paid 3.5 and 4 times monthly for rounds he bought. A cleaner in a separate thread said he got 3 times for a round he had built over 14 years, because he needed to sell quickly. Treat asking prices and agreed prices as two different numbers.

Working out a round's monthly value

Monthly turnover is not the same as the total of one lap of the round. A customer on a four weekly cycle is cleaned 13 times a year, not 12. At £20 a clean that is £260 a year, or about £21.67 a month. The same customer on an eight weekly cycle is cleaned 6.5 times a year, which is £130 a year or about £10.83 a month.

So the reliable way to get a monthly figure is customer by customer: price multiplied by 52, divided by the cycle length in weeks, divided by 12. Add those up across the book and you have the number the multiple is applied to. A member of the Window Cleaning Forums did the same sum for two monthly work: £180 of work on a two month cycle is £90 a month, and he treated 5 times that as the most he would pay.

Base the figure on what the round actually earned over the last year rather than on the prices in the book. Customers who are often out, skip cleans or pay late all reduce the real turnover. Clear View Services recommends asking the seller for invoices, bank statements and tax returns, and warns buyers to be cautious about cash in hand jobs with no paperwork behind them.

What pushes the price up or down

Density comes first. Cleaner Planner asks whether the work is compact and focused around one or several core locations or spread out across a whole county. Driving between jobs is unpaid time, so two rounds with the same turnover can earn very different amounts per hour.

Age and loyalty come next. Cleaner Planner advises avoiding rounds less than a year old, because some cleaners build up rounds only to sell them, and Window Cleaning Warehouse notes that rounds built in recent months tend to show a high drop off rate. A book of customers who have been cleaned by the same person for years is worth more than a book of recent sign ups.

Then check the detail. Cleaner Planner suggests picking a few jobs at random, visiting them and checking the pricing matches the list. Find out whether the round is cleaned traditionally, with a water fed pole or a mix, because both Cleaner Planner and Window Cleaning Warehouse warn that switching a whole customer base to a new method causes substantial drop off. Window Cleaning Warehouse also treats customers paying by bank transfer or direct debit as a sign of a well organised round, and for commercial work it recommends checking contract end dates and whether the client will accept a new cleaner.

Customer drop off and how handovers are done

Some loss is normal. One experienced member of the Window Cleaning Forums wrote that anyone who buys a round expects to lose about 10 to 20 percent of it. The same member described buying a round advertised at close to £700 a month and ending up with about £90 worth of work after knocking on doors, which is why the list itself needs checking before any money changes hands. Window Cleaning Warehouse suggests agreeing an acceptable level of drop off in advance, and gives 5 to 10 percent as an example.

Staged payment is the usual protection. Window Cleaning Warehouse advises against paying a lump sum and recommends a written contract, a receipt and tiered payments. Forum members describe a 50 percent deposit with the rest paid once all the cleans had been completed, a deposit of £500 or £1,000 with an agreed takeover date, and in one case a seller who accepted £50 a week. Not every seller agrees: one forum member insisted on full payment before the new cleaner took over. The contract is where that tension gets settled.

How the customers are introduced matters as much as the price. Clear View Services says a personal introduction, ideally with the previous owner present, builds trust and reduces drop off. Forum members describe working the jobs together so customers meet the new cleaner, putting an introduction leaflet from each of them through the door, and in one case letting customers think the new man was helping out for a few months. That cleaner said he lost only two customers.

Once the round changes hands, change as little as possible at first. New owners who raise prices or switch cleaning method straight after the handover give customers a reason to leave at the moment they are least attached. Keeping prices and frequencies the same for the first few cycles lets customers get used to a new face first.

Common mistakes when buying or selling a round

Paying the advertised figure. Clear View Services points out that the advertised price is only the asking price and should be negotiated, and says that if a seller cannot or will not provide documentation, you should walk away.

Adding up every customer's price and calling it monthly turnover. That total is only close for a book where everyone is on a four weekly cycle, and even then it is slightly low because there are 13 cleans a year. A round with a lot of eight weekly customers can be worth little more than half that headline total per month.

Handing over a messy book. The buyer needs every customer's address, price, cycle and last clean date, and both sides should agree in writing who collects money that is already owed. If the round is kept in RoundTally, the whole round can be exported to CSV in one go for the buyer to check against bank statements, and the Owed tab shows how much each customer still owes so arrears can be settled or priced in before the handover.

This is general information drawn from trade guides and forum reports, not financial or legal advice. For a purchase of this size, talk to an accountant or a solicitor before you sign anything.

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