Assign Cleaning Supplies to Specific Locations: Build a Par Sheet

It is 6:52 a.m. and the property manager at your best account is texting a photo of an empty tissue dispenser. Your night lead swears he stocked it. Both of them are telling the truth, because the closet ran dry on Tuesday and nobody had a number to check it against.

That gap bills you twice: once when somebody pays retail at a big box store and drives 40 minutes to fix it, and again when the client starts keeping a list of your misses.

Assigning cleaning supplies to specific locations means setting a written par level for every consumable at every site, based on measured usage per service visit, then restocking to that par on a fixed cadence. Build one par sheet per location, store it with that site's scope, and reconcile deliveries against it monthly.

What follows is the sequence in the order you actually have to do it. Each stage has an input, an output, and a condition that must be true before you move to the next one.

Stage 1: What counts as a "location" on your supply list?

Most operators assign supplies to contracts. That is the first mistake. Supplies live in physical storage points, and one contract can contain three of them or none at all.

A medical office park with three buildings and three separate janitor closets is three supply locations, even though it is one invoice. Six small dental offices on a day-porter route with no on-site storage are one supply location: the van.

• Input: Your active account list plus a walk-through note for each site recording where product is physically stored.
• Output: A location roster where every storage point has a unique ID, a street address, a closet location description, and the key or code needed to open it.

Write the closet description like a stranger will read it, because eventually one will: "Building B, 2nd floor, north corridor, unlabeled door across from freight elevator, key ring #14."

Move on when every site on your cleaning schedule maps to exactly one primary storage point, and no storage point serves sites on two different delivery routes.

Stage 2: How do you measure what a site actually consumes in 30 days?

You cannot set a par from square footage. ISSA's cleaning time standards will tell you how long a restroom takes to clean, but they do not tell you how many rolls of tissue 200 people go through. Consumable usage tracks occupancy, fixture count and visit frequency, not floor area.

So you measure. The count method is old, boring and accurate:

Usage over the period = (Opening count + Everything delivered) minus Closing count.

Do it for 30 days at each location. Count in issue units, not cases. Your crew hands out rolls and cartridges, not cartons, and a par written in cases is a par nobody can verify at 9 p.m.

• Input: A shelf count on day 1, every delivery slip for the period, a shelf count on day 30.
• Output: A consumption figure per item per 30 days, then divided into usage per day and usage per service visit.

Move on when you have 30 days of real numbers for the site's top eight to twelve items. Those items will be most of the spend. Everything else can wait.

What drives usage, by category

Stage 3: How do you set a par level for each item?

A par level is the quantity that should be on the shelf the moment the delivery driver walks out. Two formulas do all the work:

Par = (usage per day) x (days between deliveries) x (1 + safety factor), rounded up to the case pack.

Reorder point = (usage per day x lead time in days) + safety stock.

Use a safety factor of 0.25 for a stable office and something higher for schools, clinics or any site with event traffic. That is a judgment call, not an industry constant, so write down which one you chose and why.

Worked example: the Beltline Office Center

Assume a 50,000 sq ft multi-tenant office, cleaned Monday, Wednesday and Friday, roughly 200 people on site daily, 6 restrooms, 12 common-area cans and 44 desk-side cans. Deliveries every 14 days, supplier lead time 4 days, safety factor 0.25. These figures are illustrative, built from the assumptions just listed.

Liners first, because you can calculate them instead of counting: 12 common cans changed every visit (12 x 3 = 36 per week) plus 44 desk cans changed once a week (44) equals 80 liners per week, about 11.5 per day.

Check the tissue line by hand: 3.2 x 14 = 44.8, times 1.25 = 56. Reorder point: 3.2 x 4 days of lead time = 12.8, plus safety stock of 11 (25 percent of a cycle), which rounds to 24 rolls. Two cases left on the shelf means order today.

• Input: Stage 2 usage numbers, your real delivery interval, your supplier's real lead time.
• Output: A par and a reorder point for every stocked item at that location, expressed in the units the crew handles.

Move on when the par quantities physically fit in the closet. If they do not, you fix that in Stage 4 rather than pretending.

Stage 4: What stays at the site, what rides in the van, what stays in the warehouse?

Three tiers, and each item belongs to exactly one.

• Site closet: Bulky, low-value, high-turn consumables. Tissue, towel, liners, soap, the diluted chemicals for that building's finishes.
• Van or cart stock: Items that walk, items that freeze, and items shared across a route. Cordless tool batteries, specialty pads, terminal cleaner, backup vacuum belts.
• Warehouse: Everything above one and a half delivery cycles. Backstock does not belong in a client's closet, where it is invisible to your count and visible to everyone else.

The one-and-a-half-cycle ceiling matters. Over-stocking a site is not free insurance. It is cash sitting on a shelf you do not control, in a building whose contract might end in 90 days.

Move on when each item on the par sheet has a tier assigned, and the closet's shelf capacity has been measured in linear feet against the par volume.

Stage 5: How do you build a closet the night crew can restock without calling you?

The par sheet is a physical document taped inside the closet door, in the language your crew reads, with the item name, the shelf position, the par and the reorder point. One page. Laminated.

Then label the shelves to match. A bin labeled "Jumbo tissue, PAR 60, order at 24" removes every judgment call from a person who has 42 minutes of restroom work ahead of them.

The safety data sheet and secondary container labeling items are not optional housekeeping. OSHA's Hazard Communication Standard requires that safety data sheets be readily accessible to employees in their work area and that containers of hazardous chemicals in the workplace be labeled with the product identifier and appropriate hazard information.

Move on when a cleaner who has never worked that building could open the closet and restock to par correctly using only what is posted on the wall.

Stage 6: How often should you deliver, and what triggers a reorder?

Pick a cadence per location and publish it: for example, Beltline gets a delivery every other Tuesday, and requests for that delivery close Friday at noon. A published cutoff is what kills the 11 p.m. text message.

Between deliveries, the reorder point does the talking. When the crew hits the number posted on the shelf label, they file a request. Not "we're getting low." A quantity, an item, a location.

• Input: Par sheet, reorder points, supplier lead time, your route map.
• Output: A delivery calendar by location and a written request rule with a cutoff time.

Move on when two consecutive delivery cycles pass with no emergency purchase at any location.

Stage 7: How do you reconcile supply spend back to each account?

Now the par sheet earns its keep. Every delivery is a known quantity going to a known location, which means you can finally produce a cost per site per month and compare it to what you bid.

Say you priced the Beltline at $3,600 a month and carried $180 for consumables, a figure you chose during estimating rather than an industry benchmark. Add up the 30-day delivery value at that site. If it lands at $214, your variance is $34, and there are only four honest explanations.

1. Occupancy went up, which is a conversation with the client and possibly a price adjustment.
2. The crew is over-diluting or over-issuing, which is a training fix.
3. Product is leaving the building, which is a control fix.
4. You bid it wrong, which is a pricing fix on renewal.

Chemical variance is usually dilution. One gallon of concentrate at 2 ounces per gallon yields 64 gallons of ready-to-use solution, because 128 ounces divided by 2 is 64. If a site is burning a gallon of concentrate a week and only filling six quart bottles a night, somebody is free-pouring.

Move on when you can name your consumable cost per location for last month without opening a supplier statement and adding it up by hand.

Frequently asked questions

Should supplies be included in the monthly price or billed separately?

Both work, but pick one and write it into the scope with a defined list. If you include consumables, name the grades you supply and state that dispenser-specific or premium products are billed at cost plus a stated markup. Open-ended "all supplies included" language is how a client's break room ends up stocked on your dime.

How much supply should I keep at a client site versus in my warehouse?

Cap on-site stock at roughly one and a half delivery cycles. If you deliver every two weeks, no location should hold more than about three weeks of product. Anything beyond that is capital sitting in a building you do not own, exposed to theft, water damage and a contract you could lose on 30 days notice.

What paperwork has to be in a janitor closet at a client location?

Safety data sheets for every chemical stored or used there must be readily accessible to your employees in their work area, and every secondary container such as a spray bottle needs a label with the product identifier and hazard information. Post the dilution chart too. Regulators and your own crew both benefit.

How do I stop supplies from disappearing from a site?

Three controls do most of the work: a locked closet with a documented key list, a par sheet that makes shortages visible within one visit, and delivery quantities tied to a named location rather than dumped on a route. When a count comes up short two cycles running, you know which building and which crew before you have to ask anyone.

Can I set par levels from square footage instead of counting?

Not for consumables. Square footage drives labor time, which is what ISSA cleaning time data is built for. Tissue, towel and soap track the number of people using the restrooms, so a 20,000 sq ft call center can outconsume a 60,000 sq ft warehouse. Count for 30 days, then calculate.

Where CleanTrack360 fits

Once your par sheets exist on paper, the bottleneck moves to routing requests and tying spend to the right building. CleanTrack360 gives every location its own record, with supply requests filed against that location instead of texted to a supervisor, and team messaging organized in location-based channels so the Beltline conversation stays with Beltline. Reports export to CSV, so you can pull request volume by site and set it next to your supplier invoices to build the cost-per-location view described in Stage 7. Locations can be loaded in bulk by CSV import when you are setting up a portfolio.

The quoting calculator prices on square footage, frequency, labor and supplies, which means the consumable figure you validated with real 30-day counts can go straight into the next bid instead of being guessed again. Plans start at $99 a month for up to 5 team members, $199 for up to 20 and $249 for up to 50, priced per plan rather than per user, with a 14-day free trial and no credit card required.