Every week, we hear from janitorial business owners who are seeing their profits disappear—and they can’t always explain why. They’re pricing contracts competitively, scheduling their cleaners reliably, and paying wages on time. But they’re still coming up short on cash.
One of the most common reasons?
Time theft.
Whether you’re trying to grow past your first few contracts or you’ve been in the game for years, untracked or inaccurate cleaner hours can cost you thousands each month. That’s money you could use to hire more staff, win bigger contracts, or reinvest in better equipment. If you're not monitoring when and where work happens, you're not just losing time—you’re losing opportunity.
Time theft happens when cleaners are paid for time they didn’t actually work. This isn’t always malicious—it can stem from bad habits, a lack of oversight, or even honest confusion. But no matter the cause, the result is the same: inflated payroll, thinner margins, and potential damage to your client relationships.
Common signs of time theft in a cleaning business include:
Let’s break it down with an example:
You’ve got a medical clinic that should take 3 hours to clean, five days a week. That’s 60 hours a month. But your team is regularly logging 3.5 hours a shift, twice a week. That adds up to 4 extra hours a month—at just one site. Multiply that across your contracts, and suddenly you're leaking thousands of dollars.
Tired of high turnover and cleaners you can’t count on? Build a team that shows up, does great work, and sticks around.
Before jumping to conclusions, you need to ask: Is this time theft… or is it a sign of a deeper problem?
Often, time discrepancies (also called schedule variances) point to other issues in your operations. Think of them as signals—something is off, and it’s worth investigating:
Access issues: Cleaners are slowed down by building access or security delays
Incorrect estimates: The original walkthrough underestimated the time required.
Training gaps: A cleaner may be struggling with specific equipment or tasks.
Pro tip: Schedule variances aren’t just problems—they’re insights. They can reveal opportunities to improve your estimating, training, and retention systems.
Want a team you can count on to show up, do great work, and stick around? It starts with how you manage them. Learn how to build a reliable, accountable cleaning team.
Time discrepancies go both ways.
When fewer hours are logged than scheduled, it could mean:
In the best-case scenario, you’ve identified an all-star cleaner who deserves recognition—and could help train others. In the worst case, you’re losing the client and don’t even know it yet.
Among Swept users with time tracking enabled, the average variance in reported hours is 198 hours/month. At $12/hour, that’s $2,376/month in potentially lost profits—or over $28,000/year.
Could your business afford that?
The key to solving time theft isn’t guesswork—it’s data.
Manual logbooks and spreadsheets won’t cut it anymore. You need a system that tracks time accurately and gives you the visibility to spot patterns:
Time tracking is your foundation. But stopping time theft (and protecting your contracts) takes more than a clock-in app. It takes a system built for accountability, quality, and communication.
Here are the three systems Swept customers use to prevent time theft and build stronger operations:
Your cleaners can’t meet expectations if they don’t know exactly what to do.
Site-specific cleaning instructions and checklists eliminate confusion, reduce shortcuts, and make quality repeatable—even if a cleaner is new to the site.
Use this free janitorial cleaning checklist to standardize expectations and ensure nothing gets missed—every time.
Inspections are your early warning system. They help you monitor cleaner performance, spot quality issues early, and identify when additional training or support is needed.
With Swept, you can track inspection results alongside cleaner and location data, giving you the context to pinpoint whether an issue is with the site, the estimate, or the individual cleaner.
Download this free inspection report template to start evaluating quality consistently across your contracts.
Miscommunication leads to mistakes—and time theft thrives in silence.
With Swept’s in-app messaging, cleaners can confirm instructions, report delays, or flag issues in real time. Managers can respond instantly—without the chaos of juggling texts and calls.
When cleaners know they’re supported (and being seen), they show up stronger and stay longer.
Swept was built specifically for janitorial businesses. Our tools aren’t just for tracking hours—they’re designed to give you visibility, control, and peace of mind.
With Swept, you can:
Accurately track time
Identify and fix payroll variances
Create site-specific checklists and cleaning instructions
Run regular inspections to improve quality
Keep your team connected with real-time messaging
And because all of this is in one place, you don’t just track problems—you solve them.
Time theft is invisible—until it hits your margins. Swept gives you visibility, accountability, and control, so you can stop the losses and grow with confidence.