How your Lawn Care Business Should Estimate Mowing Jobs

When you are first starting your lawn care business, how do you find how much you should charge to mow a lawn? This is an issue that was recently motivated to us on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Community forum. Here are a few ideas.

First off, if have not done so, log towards the lawn care business forum and post your question along with your community. There is a good chance another lawn care business owner in your community can give you the going rate. You furthermore want to ask yourself, do you have any friends in the online business? If so, ask them what they charge per lawn.

Another response that was posted was to make contact with a few local lawn care businesses in your area and get an estimate from them to yard works landscaping service your lawn. If instead of a lawn then ask a friend to obtain a few estimates to service their lawn. When own three estimates, you could have a good idea just how much to charge. You will know the price, plus you discover the square footage measurements of your lawn and place divide that out determine how much to charge per square ft. Amount give you a ballpark idea. Keep in mind, the expenses you must run your lawn care business can drastically are different from another lawn care business owner’s expenses, so know your expenses.

The next question you might be wondering is should you charge by the square foot or man hour?

Kurt Chance said “The first thing you always want to do, when giving an estimate, is actually walk the property certainly not be in a rush to get in and out. I did this once and when I got there I was set for a surprise. I didn’t know there were four ditches in the front lot that would need regarding manually trimmed and gone around while mowing. Luckily for me it still took the estimated time that I figured and my price still discovered to what I demanded.”

If you are a new lawn care business owner, you may want to charge based on man hour. Author Joel LaRusic of mowboy.com suggests “you want to quote quality, not time. In plain english it’s better to say “I’ll perform these associated with services, to your satisfaction, for $50” than capable “I’ll spend an hour at your house for $50.” Of course, you should use your hourly rate to base your price on but you don’t have a need to pass those pricing details on to the customer. Discontent and the customer watching the clock and as you grasp your job and shave a few minutes associated with it, that should be to your advantage.”

Kurt explained further “What I do when estimating large properties is I figure out how long it’s going to take me. Break it on to smaller sections if Prepared to. Then I figure my hourly rate or what I must make from the property and put a price together from that. More often than not commercial properties are going to be broken up into a few mowing areas, I find it easier to just figure out the time it will take for each and then figure out the total time plus drive time.”

Another more advanced approach is to charge per square foot based on formulas. Using formulas requires a much more experience, because it critical your formulas are genuine.