Free download
Cleaning Specification Template — Free, Room by Room
Eight sections, every task, every frequency. Fill it in once and send the same document to three suppliers so their quotes are finally comparable.
Last reviewed August 2026
Nearly every cleaning contract that goes wrong went wrong at the specification stage. Nobody wrote down what "clean" meant, so nine months later two reasonable people disagree and neither has a document to point at.
What the template covers
- Site detailsAddress, floor area, headcount, access hours, key-holding and parking. One page that stops five emails.
- Office and desk areasBins, desks, hard floors, carpets, glass partitions, high dusting — each with a frequency column.
- WashroomsThe area that decides whether staff believe the building is clean. Sanitise, restock, descale, deep clean.
- Kitchens and breakoutWorktops, sinks, appliance exteriors, fridge interiors, floors — with the fridge date agreed up front.
- Reception and circulationFirst impressions, entrance matting, glass doors, lifts and stairwells.
- Meeting and quiet roomsUsually under-specified, and usually the rooms your clients actually sit in.
- Periodic worksCarpet extraction, hard floor treatment, internal and external windows, high-level dusting — with intervals and who quotes.
- Consumables and equipmentWho supplies, who stores, who pays. The single most common source of surprise invoices.
How to fill it in
Walk the building with the template and a pen. Start at the front door and work the way a cleaner would: entrance, circulation, washrooms, kitchen, desks, meeting rooms. Cross out anything you don't have and add anything unusual — a server room, a lab, a showroom, a loading bay.
Then set frequencies honestly. The instinct is to write "daily" against everything, which inflates the hours and therefore the price. Most offices need daily bins, washrooms, kitchens and floors, weekly glass and dusting, and monthly high-level work. Our guide on how often an office should be cleaned gives the full frequency table by area type.
Then use it properly
- Send the identical completed document to three suppliers.
- Ask each to return a price and the cleaner-hours per week they've scoped for it.
- Compare implied hourly rates — the method is in our quote guide.
- Attach the final version as Schedule 1 of the cleaning contract.
Want a sanity check on the numbers before you start? The cost calculator gives an indicative monthly range in about thirty seconds.
Frequently asked questions
What is a cleaning specification?+
A room-by-room, task-by-task schedule that states exactly what will be cleaned and how often. It is the document that turns "the office is dirty" into a specific, remediable failure, and it should be attached to your contract as a schedule.
What should a cleaning specification include?+
Every area of the building, every task in that area, a frequency against each task (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly), the total cleaner-hours per week, what's periodic and priced separately, and who supplies consumables and equipment.
Who writes the cleaning specification — me or the contractor?+
You should. If the contractor writes it, it describes what they intend to do rather than what your building needs, and every quote you receive will be scoped differently and therefore incomparable. Write it once, send the same document to three suppliers.
How detailed should a cleaning specification be?+
Detailed enough that a new cleaner could work from it on their first shift without asking questions. For a typical single-floor office that's two to three pages. Anything shorter leaves gaps; much longer and nobody reads it.
How often should the specification be reviewed?+
Annually, and whenever headcount, layout or occupancy pattern changes by more than about 20%. Hybrid working has quietly made many pre-2020 specifications wrong in both directions — fewer desk days, but heavier washroom and kitchen use on the days people do attend.
More free cost & contract tools
Send us your finished specification
We'll price it against it line by line, state the hours on the face of the quote, and survey the site before confirming anything.