Boulder
Boulder's local minimum wage is $16.82 an hour from January 1, 2026, and the city has set $18.17 for January 1, 2027 under Ordinance 8664. The city's poster says the wage applies to people of all ages and that independent contractors are exempt. Colorado's current state rate is $15.16, with $15.71 announced for 2027, so Boulder labor needs its own rate in your books.
Boulder has already published its 2027 number, which gives a cleaning company a few months to see what it does to each contract. This page covers the Boulder rate and its tip credit cap, who the city says the wage applies to, the city business license, and what the January change means for your books. Payroll registration and the rest of the state picture are on bookkeeping for Colorado cleaning businesses.
The City of Boulder's local minimum wage is $16.82 an hour from January 1, 2026, and $18.17 an hour from January 1, 2027, under Ordinance 8664. The tip credit is capped at $3.02 an hour. The city's page says CPI-U adjustments begin January 1, 2028.
Source: City of Boulder, Local Minimum Wage
Colorado's current statewide rate is $15.16, and on August 13, 2026 the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment announced $15.71 for 2027.
Source: Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, Labor Standards and Statistics
According to the city's poster, the local minimum wage applies to people of all ages, and independent contractors are exempt from it. This page doesn't cover which hours or which job locations count toward the Boulder rate; that question goes to the city or an employment attorney. Because contractors are exempt, whether a cleaner is an employee or a contractor decides which rule applies, and that call belongs with your CPA or an employment attorney. How each one shows up in the books is in 1099 subcontractors vs. W-2 employees.
Source: City of Boulder, City of Boulder Minimum Wage poster (English)
The City of Boulder requires a business license for all businesses conducting business in Boulder, taxable or not, and the license is tied to the city's sales and use tax program. The city's page says the license comes with a tax filing requirement. At the state level, residential and commercial cleaning appear not to be taxable, an inference from a 2012 non-binding Department of Revenue letter saying Colorado generally doesn't tax services. Home-rule city taxes weren't checked, so this page doesn't cover whether Boulder's own tax reaches cleaning. The state detail is on the Colorado sales tax on cleaning page.
Source: City of Boulder, Sales and Use Tax / Licensing, Overview of Business Licenses in the City of Boulder
A new rate on January 1 looks like a payroll setting you change once. It isn't just a number in the payroll software, though. It's the labor line on every job the Boulder rate covers, it's the margin on every contract you priced at $16.82, and it's the reason employee pay and contractor payments have to sit in separate accounts in a city that exempts contractors from its wage. I book payroll at the wage you actually pay, and the job profitability estimator shows which Boulder contracts still hold up at $18.17.
I'm a bookkeeper, not a CPA or an Enrolled Agent. I keep labor and contractor costs recorded and separated; tax questions go to your CPA, and coverage or classification questions go to your CPA or an employment attorney.
Rules checked against the sources above as of October 20, 2026. Rates and rules change; confirm current figures with the agency or your CPA.
About Figure Eight Financial
Figure Eight Financial is Dave Gordon’s bookkeeping practice for residential and commercial cleaning companies. I work with owners in Boulder and across the country, and I’m a Certified QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor.
Before bookkeeping I studied computer science at Penn State and spent a career at IBM as an engineer, so I build the books as a system: data comes in once, lands in the right place, and ties back to a statement. I’m a bookkeeper, not a CPA or Enrolled Agent. I keep the books your CPA works from, and the tax decisions stay with your CPA.
Credentials and memberships reported by Figure Eight Financial.
More about DaveHow I Help
Boulder's rate moves from $16.82 to $18.17 on January 1, so labor the Boulder rate covers gets recorded at the wage actually paid on both sides of that date. Employee pay and contractor payments sit in separate accounts, which matters in a city that exempts contractors from its wage. Tell me about your Boulder work on a short call; you can book it below.
The core service. Transactions recorded and categorized, every account reconciled so the books and the bank agree, and monthly reports that arrive explained, split by residential and commercial and sliceable per contract.
The full picture of how this works for a cleaning companyFor the months where nothing got entered at all. I fill in the missing periods from the ground up, pulling bank feeds, statements, and receipts until every month has a complete set of records.
How catch-up bookkeeping worksFor books that exist but can’t be trusted. I audit what’s there, fix the unreconciled accounts, duplicate transactions, and wrong categories, and tie every balance back to a statement.
How cleanup bookkeeping worksYour crews paid on time, every pay period, with each payroll run recorded in the books so labor shows up against the jobs it belongs to.
How payroll worksRecurring invoices that match your contracts, an aging report you can trust, and follow-up on slow payers handled by a process instead of your evenings. Built for net-60 commercial accounts.
How invoicing and receivables workA file built right for a cleaning company from day one, or rebuilt after the DIY version drifts, and then I teach you to run it. I’m a Certified QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor, and this is honestly my favorite part of the job.
How a proper setup worksWe start with a short call about your business and where the books stand. The first conversation doesn’t cost anything.
I take a look at what you’ve got, your QuickBooks file, your spreadsheet, whatever exists.
You get a written proposal with the price, so the decision is yours with the number in hand.
Let's Connect
Have Boulder contracts priced at this year's rate? Send me the list and we'll look at the numbers against $18.17 together. The first conversation doesn't cost anything.
