Step by step. Official links included.
This is not legal, tax, or insurance advice. Read the official pages linked here. Partner offers are optional and labeled.
Chicago glass spends half the year collecting salt spray and interior film while the windows stay shut. Logan Square, Pilsen, and Hyde Park are stairs and older storms. Evanston and Naperville are larger houses and easier parking. The useful season is the spring wash after salt, plus a fall visit before the windows close again. A page about year-round beach houses is the wrong climate. Say whether you do two-flats.
brick two-flats, bungalows, and detached garages on alleys, with boilers still common in older buildings hard winters, ice dams, humid summers, and wind off the lake that finds every gap in the envelope Spring and fall exterior washes, interior glass, and a city-or-suburb boundary.
Start the route in Logan Square, Hyde Park, and Pilsen. Add Evanston and Naperville when you can reach them the same day. Winter emergencies go to whoever publishes a real after-hours path. Summer work is bid more slowly and compared on scope.
The Illinois guide has the filing office. This page is the local version: what the first jobs are, which permit counter to call, and how to price a day here.
Some boxes are labeled Partner. ServiceBase has not joined those programs. The links go to each company's own homepage, not a tracking link. If a program later approves us, the address will change and we may earn a commission. You can file, insure, and bank anywhere. Official government links are not partner links. Nothing on this page is a discount code.
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The guide stays public. An account saves your state, city, and trade, and lets you mark each filing as you go. The advertising credit is reserved when you register. It can be spent after the free website is live.
Create a free account to track your progresswindow cleaner names that work here are plain. Use one you can spell from a driveway in Logan Square.
Search it at the Illinois Secretary of State before you order magnets. The voicemail, the invoice, and the Google profile should use that spelling.
A lot of window routes start as a sole proprietorship because the owner is the person on the pole. That can be you, under your own name, with no formation filing. An LLC is a state filing and a separate company on paper. It does not license you, and it does not replace insurance. Form the LLC when you hire, when a storefront wants the company on a certificate, or when you want the bank account in the business name. If you are unsure, ask an accountant before you pay a filing fee. This page is not that advice.
We do not have a filing fee for Illinois that we are willing to print. The Illinois Secretary of State publishes it. Sole proprietors who operate under their own name often skip this filing. Confirm that on the same site.
If your customers are in Chicago, the registered-agent address still has to satisfy Illinois. Read the filing office's rule. A neighbor's kitchen table is not always an acceptable address.
An employer identification number is the business tax ID. The IRS issues it online at no charge and says you never have to pay a company to get one. If you form an LLC, file with the state first. The IRS says an EIN application can stall when the state filing is not done. A sole proprietor can often start with a Social Security number and get an EIN when a bank or a hire requires it.
Apply on the IRS page if you want the number yourself. LegalZoom, the partner beside this step, can request it while they form the company. That service is optional. The IRS fee is still zero either way.
Read the contractor board far enough to see whether window cleaning is on it, including any project-cost threshold printed there. Then get the city business license and the tax permit the revenue department describes. Adding pressure washing or building repairs is a second read, not a free extra.
State page: Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. This department licenses some trades, including roofing. Illinois does not issue one statewide license for every contractor. Check the city.
City of Chicago permits is the local counter for work in Chicago. We are naming that office, not linking a fee schedule we have not read. Call them or open the city's own site and ask what a new window cleaner has to register before the first job in Hyde Park.
The Illinois guide repeats the board link and tells you what we could not verify. Read it before you pay a filing service.
General liability before the pole goes onto someone else's glass. Tell the insurer you do ladders and, if it is true, that you step inside for interior panes. A broken pane and a soaked sill are the claims. Commercial auto if the car or van is how you move between stops, because a personal policy often excludes business use. If anyone else is on a ladder or carrying water, ask about workers' compensation before they start. Do not copy a headcount from another state. Keep a certificate you can send the same day a property manager asks.
Workers' compensation is a state program. Before anyone works with you, including a friend, ask an insurer and the state labor office whether you must carry it. This guide does not quote a headcount, because those rules differ and the state page is the source. The SBA page describes the common policies. It does not sell them. Buy the policy before you work in a house in Chicago.
Deposit route money into a business checking account the same week. Window stops pay small amounts, and those amounts vanish in a personal account. Note which address paid. Set tax money aside every Friday, before a good week feels like spending money.
The bank will usually ask for your ID, the EIN or your Social Security number, and the formation papers if you filed an LLC. A checking account and a habit of setting tax money aside are enough at the start.
Price the visit from stories, panes or a simple house size, interior versus exterior, and screens. Hard-water removal is its own line if you offer it. A ground-floor exterior and a second-story interior are different jobs. Write both numbers down before you need them in a driveway.
Pollen, salt, construction dust, and stairs change the time. A price copied from an empty suburban photo will lose money in a walk-up. Adjust the numbers after you have timed ten real stops, and tell recurring customers when the price changes.
hard winters, ice dams, humid summers, and wind off the lake that finds every gap in the envelope brick two-flats, bungalows, and detached garages on alleys, with boilers still common in older buildings That is why a price copied from another metro will miss. Spring and fall exterior washes, interior glass, and a city-or-suburb boundary.
Write the price you want for the common job in Logan Square and the price you want for a far stop in Naperville. If the second number is not worth the drive, leave Naperville off the service area.
Claim the Google Business Profile for Chicago, IL. Set hours you answer. The service area should list Logan Square, Hyde Park, and Pilsen if those are real stops, and it should leave off towns you will not drive.
Ask for a review after a clean job, and ask them to mention the neighborhood and the task. A review that says the work and Evanston helps the next search. A review that says 'great service' does not.
Claim the Google Business Profile in the business name, with hours you actually answer and a service area made of towns you drive. Ask for a review after a clean visit, and ask the customer to name the neighborhood and whether it was exterior, interior, or a storefront. Publish a one-page site that splits those services, and put a form on it that asks for stories, interior or exterior, screens, and a date. ServiceBase does that page and files the requests. It does not get the city license or the insurance.
When the name and the phone are real, create the free window cleaning site with Chicago already filled in. Quote requests land in your list. The site does not replace City of Chicago permits.
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Signup asks for an email and a password. No card. This guide opens the next step with the trade and city filled in. You can change every line after.
Pick the service you can finish, search the name at the Illinois Secretary of State, get the free EIN from the IRS, read the license page (Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation), call City of Chicago permits, insure the work, open a business account, and publish a page that names Logan Square and the jobs you want. Spring and fall exterior washes, interior glass, and a city-or-suburb boundary.
Read the contractor board far enough to see whether window cleaning is on it, including any project-cost threshold printed there. Then get the city business license and the tax permit the revenue department describes. Adding pressure washing or building repairs is a second read, not a free extra. Start at the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. Then ask City of Chicago permits what the city adds.
Price the visit from stories, panes or a simple house size, interior versus exterior, and screens. Hard-water removal is its own line if you offer it. A ground-floor exterior and a second-story interior are different jobs. Write both numbers down before you need them in a driveway. hard winters, ice dams, humid summers, and wind off the lake that finds every gap in the envelope Time the first ten jobs in Logan Square and Pilsen before you copy a price from another city.
You can draft it. Put it in public under the name you will actually use, with the phone you answer. If the state requires the license before you advertise the work, wait. The free ServiceBase site does not file the company. Signup can open with window cleaner and Chicago filled in so you are not retyping them.
Illinois filing and license · Free window cleaning website in Chicago, IL · All trades in Chicago, IL
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