Cleaning company: the transfer of staff (Annex VII) in 2026

Quick answer. In cleaning, Annex VII of the national collective agreement for cleaning companies organises the automatic transfer of the employment contracts of staff assigned to a contract when it changes provider, under conditions of seniority and assignment. Winning a contract may therefore require taking on staff, and losing one transferring employees. In 2026, this mechanism remains the specificity that weighs most heavily on your payroll and your margin, in a trade where the wage bill is by far the leading cost item.

You run a cleaning company and you have just won (or lost) a tender. The first question is not commercial, it is social: what happens to the operatives who worked on that site? In most sectors, a change of provider starts from scratch. In cleaning, it does not. The staff assigned to the site follow you, with their seniority, their paid leave and their contract. This particularity radically changes the way you must keep your accounts, run your payroll and read your profitability.

Annex VII of the collective agreement for cleaning companies provides that, when a contract changes provider, the incoming company takes on the employment contracts of the staff assigned to that contract, provided they meet conditions of seniority and assignment to the site concerned. The employment contract continues without interruption: no dismissal on the outgoing side, no new hire on the incoming side, but a transfer.

In practice, three parties are involved:

• The outgoing company, which loses the contract and must pass on to the incoming one the list of transferable staff, with their contractual details.
• The incoming company, which takes on these employees under their acquired conditions (seniority, grade, leave entitlements).
• The employee, whose job is preserved despite the change of employer.

The mechanism resembles the statutory transfer under article L1224-1 of the French Labour Code, but it differs from it: Annex VII is a sector-specific contractual scheme that applies on its own criteria, even where the conditions of the statutory transfer are not met. It is this interaction between contractual and statutory rules that calls for careful reading, case by case.

In a trade where the wage bill is the dominant cost item, the fate of staff at each tender is not an administrative detail: it is the core of your economic equation. At each contract movement, you have to manage several issues at once.

First, the social liabilities attached to transferred staff. You inherit their seniority, and therefore greater exposure in the event of a future termination (severance pay calculated on total seniority, longer notice). You also inherit their accrued and untaken paid leave, which must be properly valued and, where relevant, re-billed between the outgoing and incoming company.

Next, the entries-and-exits mechanics. In a single month, you may bring ten operatives onto a site you have won and transfer eight from a site you have lost. Each exit requires a rigorous final settlement; each entry, a reliable carry-over of contractual details. An error on leave balances or seniority is paid for in full during an employment tribunal dispute.

Hayot Expertise tip. Before responding to a tender, systematically ask your firm to cost the real social burden of the staff to be taken on: seniority, grade, leave balances, any ongoing absences. A contract that looks profitable on gross margin can become loss-making once these liabilities are included.

The table below summarises the concrete consequences of an Annex VII transfer depending on your position in the operation.

Here is the most common steering mistake we see in cleaning files: reasoning on an overall result. A cleaning company's profitability is not read at the level of the consolidated income statement, it is read site by site. Analytical tracking by contract is essential, and it rests on a few simple indicators.

1. The billed hourly rate compared to the cost hourly rate (loaded wages, supervision, consumables) for each site.
2. Productivity, that is, the surfaces cleaned relative to the hours actually paid.
3. Absenteeism and replacements, which inflate the real cost of a site when stand-ins are paid on top of absent permanent staff.
4. The weight of the social liabilities taken on for the contracts concerned by Annex VII.

Without this dashboard, two contracts with identical revenue can have opposite margins without your knowing it. This is precisely the steering tool most often missing in the sector, and the first thing we set up as part of an outsourced finance director engagement.

Widespread part-time work, staggered hours early in the morning or late at night, multi-site assignments, frequent replacements, soiling or sorting bonuses: payroll in cleaning is one of the most technical there is. Each month, the slightest mis-entered parameter spreads across dozens of payslips.

Mastering payroll, together with productivity tracking and the rigorous treatment of Annex VII transfers, directly drives profitability. Outsourced and secured payroll, supported by dedicated payroll and HR management, avoids mass adjustments and URSSAF reassessments linked to contributions mis-applied to modulated part-time contracts.

• The transfer list. On both the incoming and outgoing side, formalise and, where appropriate, challenge the list of transferable staff: it is the number-one source of disputes.
• The payroll/collection lag. You pay the wage bill at each month-end while the service is collected later. On a contract you have won, anticipate this cash requirement from the start.
• The leave and seniority balances taken on. An approximate carry-over surfaces months later, at the worst moment, during a final settlement or a dispute.
• The interaction with article L1224-1. Depending on the configuration, the transfer may fall under the statutory scheme, the contractual scheme, or both. The classification has practical consequences for each party's obligations.
• Accounting consistency. The social liabilities taken on (paid leave, seniority) must be properly provisioned at the closing, or the true result of the year will be distorted.

We support cleaning companies of all sizes, and one observation recurs: in this trade, accounting is managed through payroll before it is managed through the balance sheet. The annual result is merely the outcome of a multitude of decisions taken site by site, month by month.

We supported a cleaning company that had won several office-sector contracts within a few months. On paper, the growth was spectacular. In reality, each contract won came with a transfer of staff whose real social cost had never been costed in advance. By setting up analytical tracking by contract and properly provisioning the social liabilities taken on, we revealed that two contracts were destroying the margin of the others. Management was able to renegotiate one and terminate the other within the rules, before cash was lastingly depleted.

Our conviction is simple: the value of a firm, in this sector, is not to produce a balance sheet once a year. It is to set up tracking by contract, make each transfer of staff reliable, anticipate the lag between monthly payroll and collection of services, and turn Annex VII into a decision parameter rather than an accounting surprise.