Small business question, self employed cleaner charging customer mileage

smiales

Hi,

I've very recently started as a self employed domestic cleaner, should I charge mileage to the customer? My one customer is 22 miles away so for a 44 mile round trip he pays me £5.

Seeing a new customer tomorrow who is 15 miles away. Happy to travel but it needs to make sense. My rate is £11ph

burnoutbabe

well you can charge whatever the market can stand. But it may make you more expensive than a local person that doesn't charge it.

smiales

The lady is basically interviewing a few people, I'm not in the business to clean on the cheap. It's bloody hard work and I'm willing to do it for cheap. However I would like to know what others do in this situation? I obviously don't want to ask outside the norm.

bugslet

smiales wrote: »

T I'm not in the business to clean on the cheap. It's bloody hard work and I'm willing to do it for cheap.

I can't work out if it's cheap or not from that!

You wouldn't normally charge mileage, how you get there is not someone else's problem. But a fiver won't cover 44 miles in my book. Then again, I think that's awful cheap for a cleaner, unless that is a part hour rate.

InsideInsurance

Its up to you, or more accurately your customers.

Havent been able to find a good cleaner for a while so dont have one at the moment unfortunately but when I did none of them charged mileage.

One of the issues of mileage of course is that when you are working full time at this you'll probably be going from one client to the next and so the distance you are actually travelling between then will vary depending on who wants what when etc. From you making your claim for mileage on your tax return thats fine but as a client I dont want to pay £5 this week but £12 next week as you happened to be doing a job much further away. Similarly I wouldnt want to be paying £5 the following week when I see you coming out of my neighbour's house before coming to me.

Roseability

I think you can charge what you like and it's up to the client if they want to pay that. I am a self employed cleaner and if people are more than around five miles away then it's a no thank you from me. It's just not worth my time to travel such a distance. I claim part of my petrol back on my tax return.

xHannahx

Don't charge it as mileage, but include the cost of travel within your quote.

Annisele

I wouldn't pay mileage. How you get here isn't my problem; I'm not your employer so I don't directly pay your costs.

I would expect all your costs (including mileage) to be factored into the rate. And I wouldn't be at all surprised to have a cleaner say "sorry, I can't work for you because you're outside my area". Unless you're in the back of beyond, in a sparsely populated place, I'm surprised a client 22 miles away is worth it.