Commercial cleaning fails on definition far more often than on effort. These are the clauses that decide whether the arrangement lasts a year or a month.
Office work is the one part of this niche where a site visit is genuinely worth the time, on both sides.
Square metres, number of bathrooms, whether there is a kitchen, how many people use it and what kind of business it is. A clinic, a restaurant and a software office are three different jobs.
Anybody quoting a commercial contract without seeing the space is guessing, and the guess will be corrected upwards in month two.
What happens every visit, what happens weekly, what happens monthly. Get it in writing, even informally — it is the document you will point at later.
A month, reviewed honestly at the end of it. Both sides learn what the space actually needs, which is never quite what either predicted.
The 30 searches a month for office cleaning in this city undercount the market badly, because a lot of small commercial premises never use that word.
Higher standards, specific rules about waste, and often a legal requirement to document what was done. Ask any business directly whether they have worked in your kind of premises before, because the answer matters more than the price.
Shared kitchens and bathrooms with no single owner of the problem. These need very clear scope, because 'the kitchen' means something different to each company on the floor.
Cleaning has to fit around opening hours and a shopfront that faces the street collects city dust daily. Frequency matters more than depth here, which is the opposite of most office arrangements.
Most small offices in Lisbon are done early morning or in the evening, because vacuuming next to a desk helps nobody. During-hours cleaning is normal in premises with public access, such as clinics and shops, where visible cleanliness during opening is part of the point.
This is the argument every office eventually has. The workable version is that the cleaning arrangement covers emptying, wiping and restocking, while washing up and removing personal food remains internal. Write that down at the start and the argument does not happen.
For a small office, typically a monthly value with a month's notice on either side, and a scope list attached. Long lock-ins are unusual at this size and are worth questioning if offered. The thing to negotiate is the review point, not the length.
It should be, and for a business expense you want it. Confirm the tax number and the exact company name before the first invoice rather than after, and check whether the quoted figure includes IVA — that single question resolves most apparent price differences between two proposals.
Decide whether the cleaning business holds keys and a code, or whether somebody lets them in. Key holding is normal and workable, but it needs a named individual, a written record and an agreed procedure for when the alarm triggers. Ask what happens if that person leaves the business.
Frequently yes, and it removes a small recurring annoyance from somebody's desk. Expect it to be billed at cost plus a margin, which is fair for the trip and the storage. If the volumes are large it can be cheaper to buy them separately and have the cleaning business simply restock what is there.
Square metres, bathrooms, how many people use the space and when it has to be empty. That is enough to know who can take it and roughly what it will cost.
Tell us the space and the hours. We pass it to businesses that do commercial work.