descriptionThe Franchise Dossier
FDD Sourced
Independent analysis. Not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Coverall. All figures sourced from public FDD filings.
Franchise dossier · Commercial cleaning

Owning a Coverall: what actually happens

VERDICT · A TRAP
A package of cleaning accounts you pay to service, with about 17% of every bill taken before your own costs: a paid-for job, not a business you control.
You'd pocket / yr*
$8K–$40K
1 unit · before your salary
Your time
20–55 hrs/wk
owner-operator
Becomes an asset at
n/a
real wealth: n/a
Agreement term
20 yrs
then renewal
Year one, honestly

Year one is you cleaning offices, clinics and small commercial sites at night, usually on top of a day job, for the accounts in the package you bought. Coverall handles the customer contract, billing and collections, then pays you your billings less the 5% royalty, the 10% management fee and insurance charges. Your revenue is set by the dollar volume of accounts in your package, not by how hard you sell, and an account that cancels is revenue you have to wait to have replaced. Most of the 'margin' is your own unpaid labor.

If you want out

There is very little to sell. The customer relationships run through Coverall's contracts and billing, so a buyer is paying for the right to service accounts rather than for a customer list they control, and any transfer needs franchisor approval. Most exits are a small-dollar transfer of the account volume or simply stopping. The 20-year term has no automatic right of renewal.

Smart for

A hands-on person who wants a low-cost, structured way into night cleaning work with accounts, billing and collections handled for them.

Dumb for

Anyone who wants to build a company with employees, a customer list they control, or income that is not tied to their own hours.

The disclosure it's built on

The verdict above is our read of the numbers Coverall files with regulators — here they are, cited.

CoverallFDD 2024
Item 5 · Initial franchise fee
$15,570
Item 7 · Initial investment
$17,917 – $64,048
Item 6 · Royalty
5% royalty + 10% management fee (~15% of billings)
Item 6 · Ad / brand fund
None (no ad fund)
Item 19 · Avg unit revenue
Not disclosed
Item 20 · US units (~2024)
5,588
SOURCEFranchiseOverview summary of the 2024 unit-franchise FDD: fee $15,570-$40,320, Item 7 $17,917-$64,048, 5% royalty, 10% management fee, 2.4% accident insurance, no ad fund, 20-year term, 5,588 franchised units (high confidence on fee, Item 7 and royalty; medium on the insurance percent). Franzy (2024 FDD) agrees on fee and 5% royalty and shows 5,654 units; FranchisePayback shows $17,986-$64,280 and 5,669 units from a later filing (medium confidence on unit count, sources differ by under 2%). Item 19: two of three sources say none, Franzy lists a section without figures (medium confidence that there is no unit-level revenue figure). The fee for additional account volume is described inconsistently across summaries (low confidence) and is not quantified here.
The catch

The 5% royalty is only a third of what comes off the top. Item 6 adds a 10% management fee on the same gross dollar volume, plus accident insurance of about 2.4% of monthly volume, so roughly 17% of billings is gone before you buy supplies or pay a helper. The franchise fee ($15,570 to $40,320) is priced by package size: you are paying for a stated dollar volume of cleaning accounts that Coverall sources and offers to you, and growing beyond that package generally means paying for additional volume rather than simply winning it. The term is 20 years with no automatic right of renewal.

*How to read these numbers. Disclosed (2024 FDD via FranchiseOverview, Franzy): fee $15,570-$40,320, Item 7 $17,917-$64,048, 5% royalty + 10% management fee, 20-year term. No unit-level Item 19 figure confirmed, so take-home, cost structure and hours are ESTIMATES (low confidence, wide) from janitorial industry norms. Labor % is mostly owner self-labor; otherOpex includes the ~17% franchisor fee stack. — "You'd pocket" is estimated owner cash flow for one average unit before a salary for your own full-time work, so it is not take-home pay. Averages are not promises; your unit could earn far less. This is analysis, not advice — read the current FDD in full and talk to current and former franchisees before you commit.

Seriously considering Coverall?

Pressure-test the affordability, then read the full FDD and validate Item 19 (or its absence) with existing franchisees. When we add vetted franchise-consultant and financing partners, they'll be clearly disclosed here and never change our analysis.

Run a rough affordability check →