Chart of Accounts for Cleaning Businesses

Published by the Opora editorial team. Does not constitute accounting or tax advice; consult a licensed CPA for guidance specific to your business.

A chart of accounts is the master list of categories your bookkeeper uses to record every transaction. Set it up correctly and you can read profitability by service line, track cost of goods sold accurately, and close your books in under two hours each month. Set it up poorly and you will spend years cleaning up misclassified expenses when a buyer, lender, or auditor asks for financials.

Most cleaning operators inherit a generic QuickBooks template that treats all labor the same and buries supply costs in a catch-all account. The structure below reflects how commercial cleaning businesses actually operate: direct labor separated from supervision, workers comp tied to payroll, and consumables tracked by job type.

Revenue Accounts: Service Line Granularity

Create one revenue account per major service line so you can calculate gross margin by offering. Typical structure:

• 4000 · Janitorial Services (Office)
• 4010 · Janitorial Services (Medical)
• 4020 · Janitorial Services (Industrial)
• 4030 · Carpet and Floor Care
• 4040 · Window Cleaning
• 4050 · Post-Construction Cleaning
• 4060 · Disinfection Services
• 4900 · Other Income (equipment rental, product resale)

Do not create a separate revenue account for every client. Use customer records in your accounting software for that dimension. Revenue accounts exist to separate service types that carry different cost structures.

Cost of Goods Sold: Direct Labor and Consumables

COGS includes every expense that scales directly with revenue. If you double your square footage under contract, these costs double. The four errors in the opening statistic all involve COGS misclassification.

Direct Labor Structure

• 5000 · Direct Labor (Wages) (hourly pay for cleaners working client sites)
• 5010 · Direct Labor (Payroll Taxes) (employer FICA, FUTA, SUTA on direct wages only)
• 5020 · Direct Labor (Workers Comp) (premium allocated to direct labor class codes)
• 5030 · Direct Labor (Benefits) (health insurance, PTO for field staff)

Supervisors, dispatchers, and quality control staff belong in operating expenses, not COGS. The test: if the person generates billable hours on a client invoice, their fully loaded cost goes in COGS. If they coordinate or inspect work done by others, they are overhead.

Workers comp must sit in COGS because your premium is calculated on direct labor payroll and audited annually. Burying it in insurance expense makes your gross margin look artificially high. When you bid a new contract, you need to see the true all-in labor cost including comp.

Cleaning Supplies and Consumables

• 5100 · Cleaning Chemicals
• 5110 · Paper Products (toilet paper, paper towels, hand soap for restocking)
• 5120 · Trash Liners
• 5130 · Microfiber and Mops (disposable or short-life items)
• 5140 · Personal Protective Equipment (gloves, masks, disposable coveralls)

Office supplies (pens, printer paper, toner) belong in operating expenses. The distinction: cleaning supplies are consumed on client sites and should scale with revenue. Office supplies support internal administration.

Operating Expenses: Overhead and Indirect Costs

Operating expenses do not scale linearly with revenue. You can grow revenue without proportionally increasing these costs.

Indirect Labor

• 6000 · Salaries (Management)
• 6010 · Salaries (Supervision) (site supervisors, quality control)
• 6020 · Salaries (Administrative) (bookkeeper, scheduler, CSR)
• 6030 · Salaries (Sales)
• 6040 · Payroll Taxes (Indirect)
• 6050 · Benefits (Indirect)

Facility and Vehicle

• 6100 · Rent (Office/Warehouse)
• 6110 · Utilities
• 6120 · Vehicle Fuel
• 6130 · Vehicle Maintenance
• 6140 · Vehicle Insurance
• 6150 · Equipment Repairs (extractors, buffers, vacuums)

Sales and Marketing

• 6200 · Advertising
• 6210 · Website and SEO
• 6220 · Lead Generation
• 6230 · Trade Shows and Events
• 6240 · Client Gifts and Entertainment

Professional Services and Insurance

• 6300 · Accounting and Bookkeeping
• 6310 · Legal
• 6320 · General Liability Insurance
• 6330 · Commercial Auto Insurance
• 6340 · Umbrella and Excess Liability
• 6350 · Bonds

General liability and auto insurance belong here. Workers comp belongs in COGS.

Administrative

• 6400 · Office Supplies
• 6410 · Software Subscriptions
• 6420 · Telephone and Internet
• 6430 · Postage and Shipping
• 6440 · Bank Fees and Merchant Services
• 6450 · Licenses and Permits
• 6460 · Training and Continuing Education
• 6470 · Uniforms

Fixed Assets and Depreciation

Equipment with a useful life longer than one year goes on the balance sheet as a fixed asset, then depreciates over time. Typical accounts:

• 1500 · Vehicles
• 1510 · Cleaning Equipment (extractors, floor machines, pressure washers)
• 1520 · Office Equipment (computers, furniture)
• 1530 · Leasehold Improvements
• 1600 · Accumulated Depreciation (Vehicles) (contra-asset)
• 1610 · Accumulated Depreciation (Equipment)

Depreciation expense flows to the P&L:

• 6500 · Depreciation Expense

Small tools under a capitalization threshold can go directly to COGS as 5150 · Small Tools and Supplies. Consult your CPA to set the threshold; it affects both your P&L and your tax return.

Liabilities: Tracking What You Owe

Current liabilities settle within one year. Typical structure:

• 2000 · Accounts Payable
• 2100 · Payroll Liabilities (withheld taxes, garnishments)
• 2110 · Accrued Payroll (wages earned but not yet paid)
• 2120 · Sales Tax Payable (if you collect tax on product sales)
• 2200 · Credit Card Payable
• 2300 · Line of Credit
• 2400 · Current Portion of Long-Term Debt

Long-term liabilities:

• 2500 · Equipment Loans
• 2510 · Vehicle Loans
• 2520 · SBA Loan

If you invoice on net-30 terms and carry receivables, add 1200 · Accounts Receivable to your asset accounts.

Class Tracking for Multi-Location or Divisional Reporting

If you operate multiple branches or want to see P&Ls by service division, enable class tracking in QuickBooks or your accounting platform. Assign every transaction to a class:

• Branch A, Branch B, Branch C
• Commercial Division, Residential Division
• Janitorial, Specialty Services, Product Sales

Classes let you split shared overhead (accounting fees, software, management salaries) proportionally across divisions without creating duplicate expense accounts. Run a P&L by class and you see each division as if it were a standalone business.

Monthly Close Checklist

Run these steps every month before you review financials:

1. Reconcile all bank and credit card accounts.
2. Record accrued payroll if your pay period spans month-end.
3. Verify workers comp allocation matches your payroll register for direct labor.
4. Reclassify any transactions coded to the wrong account.
5. Record depreciation if your CPA has not automated it.
6. Review COGS as a percentage of revenue. Investigate if it moves more than 3 percentage points month over month.
7. Check for negative balances in liability accounts (usually means a payment was coded incorrectly).

A clean chart of accounts makes the monthly close take 90 minutes instead of four hours.

When to Revise Your Chart

Add accounts when you launch a new service line that carries a materially different cost structure. Merge accounts when you have three or more that collectively represent less than 2% of total expenses and you never look at them individually.

Do not rename or delete accounts mid-year unless you are correcting a setup error. Wait until January so your year-over-year comparisons stay clean. If you are preparing for acquisition, a buyer will want to see three years of financials with consistent account structure.

For transaction-level detail on how to record payroll and allocate workers comp premiums, see the bookkeeping guide. Tax treatment of specific deductions is covered in the tax guide. If you are setting up your first business account and need to understand how your chart integrates with bank reconciliation, start with bank account setup.