Should I count my own time if I do the cleaning myself?

Yes, at what it would cost to have someone else do it. Leaving it at zero makes a property look profitable when what it is really doing is paying you below market rate for your weekends, and it hides the moment when hiring a cleaner becomes the better decision.

How do I split a bulk consumables order across properties?

Split it when you capture it, by whatever basis is closest to use — unit count, bedroom count, or equal shares if the properties are similar. Any consistent rule beats loading the whole order onto the property that happened to be next in the list.

Is a wear allowance worth the trouble for a single property?

It is, because a single property is where a replacement spike does the most damage to a monthly number. A small standing allowance turns an alarming month into an ordinary one and makes the annual picture truthful.

What a turnover really costs

The four buckets

A turnover cost is not one number. It is four, and only the first has a price list.

Labour — what the clean itself costs, including any premium for a same-day turnaround or an awkward hour.
Linen and towels — laundering or hire, plus the working stock you have to own to cover the gap between sets.
Consumables — everything the guest uses up, from coffee and loo roll to dishwasher tablets and the bin bags nobody counts.
Coordination and wear — the time somebody spends making the turnover happen, and the slow replacement of things that wear out because strangers use them.

The first two usually have invoices. The third hides in a supermarket shop. The fourth has no document at all, which is exactly why it goes uncounted.

Measure it, do not estimate it

Estimating a turnover cost produces a number that is always a little too low, because you estimate the things you can picture and forget the things you cannot. Measuring takes one month.

Pick one property. For every turnover in a month, record: what the clean cost, what linen cost, every consumable purchase with a receipt, and the minutes spent arranging it — messages to the cleaner, rescheduling, the trip to drop off a forgotten key, the call about the blocked sink. Divide by the number of turnovers.

Do it on a busy month rather than a quiet one. A busy month includes the back-to-back turnovers, the same-day changeovers and the panic restocks, and those are the ones that set your real cost.

The coordination time nobody bills

Coordination is the cost that separates a property that looks profitable from one that is. It is made of small pieces: confirming the cleaner, fielding the message that the previous guest left late, arranging access for the linen delivery, replacing the cleaner who cancelled on a Friday, checking the photos that came back after the clean.

None of those take long. All of them take attention, and attention is the input you cannot buy more of. If you are running the properties yourself, price your own time at what you would pay someone else to do the same work — otherwise you will conclude that a low-ADR, high-turnover property is worth keeping, when what it is really doing is consuming the hours you would need to add a better one.

Two properties can have identical cleaning bills and completely different coordination loads. The one with a lockbox, a local cleaner and a linen service costs a fraction of the one with a key handover, a cleaner forty minutes away and a washing machine in the flat.

Consumables and wear: the two that hide

Consumables

Consumables hide because they are bought in a single shop that also contains your own groceries, or in a bulk order that covers four properties for three months. Neither lands in your records as a per-turnover cost.

Two habits fix it. Buy for the properties in separate transactions, so the receipt is clean. And when a bulk order covers several properties or several months, split it at the point of capture rather than dropping the whole amount on whichever property happened to be next. Capturing costs against the property and the stay.

Wear and replacement

Towels grey. Bedding thins. Pans warp, the toaster dies, the sofa takes a stain that will not come out. These are not repairs; they are the predictable consequence of letting a property, and they belong in the cost of running it.

The practical way to carry them is a standing monthly allowance per property rather than a spike in the month the sofa goes. Estimate the replacement cycle for the main items, divide by the months, and log the allowance every month. You will be wrong at first. You will be less wrong after a year, which is the point.

A worked example

One two-bedroom flat, a month with six turnovers, coordination priced at £28 an hour.

Cost of six turnovers, one property, one month
Bucket	Basis	Month	Per turnover
Cleaning	6 at £65, one same-day premium £15	£405.00	£67.50
Linen hire	Two-set rotation, 6 changes	£112.00	£18.67
Consumables	Restock plus welcome items	£41.60	£6.93
Coordination	1.5 hrs total at £28	£42.00	£7.00
Wear allowance	Standing monthly allowance	£45.00	£7.50
Total		£645.60	£107.60

Illustrative figures. They show the method; your own month will not look like this.

The cleaner’s price was £65. The turnover cost £107.60. That difference is the whole reason for doing the exercise.

What to do with the number

Set a minimum stay that makes sense. If a turnover costs £107 and a one-night stay nets £95, the booking loses money however good it looks on the calendar.
Price a cleaning charge deliberately. A charge that covers labour but not linen, consumables and wear is a discount you did not mean to give.
Compare properties honestly. A property with a high cost per turnover needs a higher rate or a longer average stay to match one without it — not more effort.
Judge a gap-filling discount properly. Dropping the rate to fill a night is sometimes right, but only once the turnover cost is on the other side of the sum.
Re-measure annually. Cleaner rates, laundry contracts and consumable prices all move, and a cost you measured two years ago is a cost you are guessing.

The measuring checklist

Measure one property for one month

Every clean logged with its actual price, premiums included.
Linen cost captured, including the stock you own rather than hire.
Consumables bought in their own transaction, receipt kept.
Bulk purchases split across the properties and months they cover.
Coordination minutes recorded as they happen, not reconstructed.
A standing wear allowance logged monthly, not only when something breaks.
The month chosen was a busy one.
The result divided by the actual number of turnovers, not the number of stays.

Common questions

Should I count my own time if I do the cleaning myself?: Yes, at what it would cost to have someone else do it. Leaving it at zero makes a property look profitable when what it is really doing is paying you below market rate for your weekends, and it hides the moment when hiring a cleaner becomes the better decision.
How do I split a bulk consumables order across properties?: Split it when you capture it, by whatever basis is closest to use — unit count, bedroom count, or equal shares if the properties are similar. Any consistent rule beats loading the whole order onto the property that happened to be next in the list.
Is a wear allowance worth the trouble for a single property?: It is, because a single property is where a replacement spike does the most damage to a monthly number. A small standing allowance turns an alarming month into an ordinary one and makes the annual picture truthful.

Guide · 6 min read

A monthly P&L for every property

One page per property, every month: revenue in, real cost out, and a net figure you can act on before the quarter closes. The lines, the allocation rules and the discipline that keeps it honest.

Guide · 7 min read

Cost categories that keep a year tidy

A short, stable category list is the difference between a year you can compare and a year you have to reconstruct. How to build one, where to put the awkward costs, and when to change it.

Figures in the worked examples are illustrative — they show the method, not a going rate. This guide is general information, not professional advice.