How landscapers price work

Price landscape maintenance from the cost of a complete route, including travel between stops. Price installation work from the actual materials, excavation, rentals and crew time. Both need a labor rate that recovers costs, but a mowing day rate cannot stand in for an installation takeoff. The hourly rate formula provides the starting calculation.

How travel between stops affects route revenue

For this illustrative comparison, both crews have an 8-hour day, spend 25 minutes per property and need one hour to travel from the shop and return. One route has short drives between stops; the other has longer drives. The table counts every drive between properties.

558 minutes is 9 hours 18 minutes, so the spread crew never gets to 12. Each extra stop costs the tight crew 29 minutes and the spread crew 43. Both are divided by the same eight paid hours, because that is what payroll costs either way.

Identical prices, identical work: $27.50 a crew-hour apart. Five days a week across a 30-week season is 1,200 paid crew-hours, or about $33,000.

Every figure there is a placeholder for one of yours, the $55 especially. Per-cut prices are set street by street: lot size, terrain, gate width, whether you haul clippings, local rates. Time your own stops for a week before you trust the 25 minutes — and the tight route only reaches 14 if you have sold 14 houses in that subdivision.

A trip charge may recover the cost of an isolated stop, but it does not shorten the drive. Group nearby work by day and price a stop far off the route for its actual travel; charging for travel time covers that calculation.

What a crew day actually costs

A two-person crew at $20 an hour each — an illustration, not a going rate. Everything below is per crew-hour: the truck out for an hour, not one person's. Mixing the two halves your rate.

The 25% payroll burden is illustrative. Use your actual payroll taxes, insurance premium and benefits; your policy and payroll records supply those figures.

Equipment is the second. You recover a machine over the hours its meter turns, not the hours the truck is out. Charge that mower for eight hours instead of the four its deck ran, and you have doubled a real cost. Use your own meters, maintenance records and replacement history to estimate useful operating hours.

Put $64 against the routes above: the tight one clears about $32 a crew-hour toward overhead and profit, the spread one under $5, which has not paid the office, the insurance or you.

Installs are costed forward, not by the day

A 300-square-foot paver patio, three days for the same crew. The maintenance reflex prices the days: about $1,545 for three maintenance crew-days, including the maintenance vehicle and equipment costs, plus something for stone. That misses most of the job:

• Excavation and haul-off. Cubic yards of spoil, and a transfer station billing by the ton.
• Base and bedding. Aggregate to the depth your soil and frost line demand, not the budget's.
• Materials. Pavers, edge restraint, polymeric sand and fabric, off this week's supplier quote.
• Rentals. Mini skid steer and plate compactor by the day, plus fuel.
• Rework risk. A mowing mistake costs one visit. A base that settles costs you the patio twice.

Materials at your markup, rentals and disposal at cost plus handling, crew days at the loaded rate, then overhead and profit on top. You buy the stone before anyone pays you, so installs want a deposit and, past a week, progress billing.

The add-ons that need their own license

Weed control and pesticide treatments need a separate licensing check. EPA applicator guidance says restricted-use pesticides require certified applicators, and many states require certification for all commercial application. Check fertilizer and irrigation requirements with the relevant state agencies before offering those services. For contractor-license checks, see when you need a contractor license.

The paperwork changes when the job is permanent

Installation and maintenance may have different contract and tax treatment. Check these before sending the quote:

• Advance payments. Confirm whether your project is covered by a home improvement deposit limit. California, for example, limits covered down payments to the lesser of 10% or $1,000; CSLB's contract guidance also explains progress-payment restrictions. Do not assume a landscaping label creates an exemption.
• Cancellation rights. The FTC Cooling-Off Rule gives a three-business-day cancellation right for covered sales at a home or certain other locations. It has thresholds and exceptions. The requested-repair exception concerns buyer-initiated home visits specifically to repair or maintain personal property, not a general exemption for landscaping work. Determine coverage and provide the required notice before relying on a start date; state law may add rights.
• Lien rights. Check whether the particular improvement or maintenance work qualifies, which notices are required and what event starts each deadline. An approval date alone is not a reliable deadline trigger. Record the confirmed dates and delivery requirements separately.
• Sales tax. New York's landscaper guidance distinguishes taxable maintenance from qualifying capital improvements. An exempt charge to the customer does not necessarily make the contractor's material purchase tax-free. Verify classification and documentation for your location.

The season has to carry the calendar

Count your own productive mowing weeks from recent seasons, allowing for weather, cancellations and service frequency. Use that number to spread annual overhead across the weeks in which you can earn it.

At 30 productive weeks, each week must recover about 1.7 calendar weeks of annual overhead. A written annual agreement with monthly billing, suitable winter services or installations in quieter months may help spread revenue. Check the payment and cancellation rules for the agreement before collecting for future work.

Two price lists, one catalog

Keep the two sides as two categories in your DoneQuote catalog: maintenance priced per visit and per season, installs with materials, rentals and crew days as separate lines. Upload your existing price list and DoneQuote reads it in, then review the imported selling prices and the scope, quantities and terms of each draft.

Before you quote the next job

• Time one full route for a week and re-price the stops that run long.
• Rebuild the crew-hour cost from your comp declarations page and your hour meters.
• Cost installs forward from materials, haul-off and rentals, not as a multiple of the day rate.