Office Cleaning Contract Checklist: What Should Be in Your SLA

If your office cleaning contract is a one-page quote and a handshake, you don't actually have a service level agreement, you have a price. The difference matters the first time a visit gets missed, a washroom runs out of soap, or a new starter asks what's actually covered and nobody can point to a document that says. Here's the checklist a proper office cleaning contract should cover, and why facilities managers who skip any of these end up managing the relationship by memory instead of by agreement.

Scope: room by room, not "general cleaning"

"General office cleaning" isn't a scope, it's a placeholder. A real spec lists what's covered by area: desks and communal surfaces, kitchen (including inside microwave and fridge, or not), washrooms (consumables included or billed separately), meeting rooms, reception and glass, floors by type (carpet vacuum, hard floor mop, or both). If it's not listed, assume it's not included, and get that confirmed rather than assumed.

Frequency and days, not just "weekly"

Weekly could mean once on a Monday or spread across five light touches. Get the actual days and, ideally, the approximate time window written down. This matters more than it sounds, because a Friday-only clean before a Monday-heavy office means the space looks tired by midweek regardless of how good the Friday visit was.

Access hours and how the cleaner gets in

Before opening, after close, or during the day. Key access, alarm codes, sign-in requirements for reception-controlled buildings, whoever's writing the spec should confirm this explicitly rather than leaving it to be sorted out on day one. This is also where DBS checks matter: any cleaner with unsupervised access outside working hours should be vetted, and that should be confirmed in writing, not assumed.

What happens when a visit can't go ahead

Staff illness happens to every cleaning company, the question is what your contract says happens next. Are you told in advance? Is a visit rescheduled or just skipped? Is there a standby arrangement for sites where a missed visit is genuinely disruptive? A contract that's silent on this usually means you find out reactively, when the office isn't cleaned and nobody told you.

Named contact and how issues get reported

Not a call centre, not a generic inbox. A cleaning contract for a business of any size should include a named point of contact, and a clear process for reporting an issue, a missed spot, a maintenance flag, a change request, that doesn't disappear into a queue. If your current contract doesn't name a person, that's worth raising before renewal, not after the third unanswered email.

Contract length and how to change the spec later

Minimum term, notice period, and, just as importantly, how you add or remove something from the scope once the contract is running. Offices change, headcount grows, a new kitchen gets added, and a rigid contract that can't flex without a full renegotiation is a genuine problem six months in.

What we put in writing

Every office cleaning contract we run starts as a written spec from the free site walkthrough, covering every item above, not a verbal agreement adjusted after the fact. If you're comparing us against your current provider, or a new quote, this checklist is the fastest way to see what's actually being promised versus what's just implied.