Paying cleaners a flat rate or a percentage of the booking

You are hiring cleaners or reworking how you pay your current team, and the same question comes up in every conversation. Should you pay a fixed amount per turnover, or a share of each booking? Both methods are used in short-term rentals. They don’t pay for the same thing, though, and this choice then affects every paycheck.

Look at what each method actually pays for

The time spent in a property depends on its size, the number of beds, the number of bathrooms and the state guests leave it in. The price the guest paid plays no part in it. A two-bedroom apartment rented at a high rate in peak season doesn’t clean any faster or slower than the same apartment rented for less the rest of the year.

With a percentage, you pay the cleaner based on a figure that has nothing to do with their work. A flat rate per turnover pays for the cleaning itself. One turnover, one amount.

The percentage breaks down as soon as stay length or season changes

Take a one-night stay and a seven-night stay in the same property. The checkout clean is identical. With a percentage, the second one still pays far more than the first. On a property that books lots of single nights, the cleaner does the same work for much less. On a property rented by the week, it’s the management company or the owner who overpays.

The season has the same effect. Pay follows prices. It climbs in high season and drops in low season, while the work stays the same. Your cleaners see their income shrink just as business is already slowing down, and you overpay during the busy months. Low season is often when your best cleaners leave.

The flat rate has one more advantage on the management side. You know the cost of cleaning in advance for each property, so you can set the cleaning fee charged to guests based on real numbers instead of guessing.

Set a flat rate property by property

The flat rate has its own trap. A single amount for your whole portfolio penalizes cleaners on large properties. They spend twice as long in a family home as in a studio, for the same pay. As a result, the large properties are the ones nobody wants to take.

So work property by property. Here is a simple method:

• List each property with its size, beds and bathrooms.
• Time several full cleans on normal checkouts, following the property’s checklist, rather than a single turnover.
• Apply the hourly rate you are aiming for with your team to that average time.
• Compare the result with the cleaning fee charged to guests, and adjust one or the other.

Involve your cleaners in the timing. A flat rate they have seen being built gets challenged far less than a number that arrives by text message.

Settle three points at the same time as the amount

A well-calculated flat rate won’t hold if its scope stays vague. Three topics cause most disputes, so settle them when you set the amount:

• Linens. Is laundry included in the flat rate, or handled separately?
• Supplies. Who buys them, the cleaner or the management company, and how is restocking tracked?
• Unusually long cleans, when the property was left very dirty. Decide in advance how this extra time is paid and what evidence it is based on.

For the last point, ask for photos when the cleaner arrives at the property. They stop you from arguing from memory, and they also help you with the guest or the owner.

If you are thinking of changing your cleaners’ status or contract at the same time as their pay method, have these points checked by your accountant or an employment law advisor before you announce them.

Write the rule down before the next payroll

Whichever method you choose, the rule must be written down and stay the same from one month to the next. That rule settles any disagreement over pay, not someone’s memory of a conversation. A rule that changes from month to month, or from one cleaner to another, always ends up costing you a cleaner.

Your next step is to open a document with one line per property. For each one, note the flat rate, what is included for linens, who provides supplies and the rule for out-of-the-ordinary cleans. Have your team review it, then apply it from the next pay cycle, with no retroactive exceptions.

If you want to avoid recalculating every turnover by hand, CastorBnb pulls in bookings from Smoobu or Lodgify and calculates each team member’s pay for each booking, based on rules you set once (flat rate, percentage, calculation base). Per-property checklists, filled in on site with photos, also cover the evidence for properties left very dirty. A free trial and a demo with no sign-up let you test your pay grid before you apply it.