When you are starting your lawn care business, how do you find how much you should charge to mow a lawn? This is a question that was recently motivated to us on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Discussion board. Here are a few ideas.
First off, if you’ve never done so, log on 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 additionally want to ask yourself, do you have any friends in the yard works landscaping service? If so, ask them what they charge per lawn.
Another response that was posted was to contact a few local lawn care businesses in your area and get an estimate from them to service your lawn. If there isn’t a lawn then ask a friend to get yourself a few estimates to service their lawn. When own three estimates, you may have a good idea how much to charge. You will know the price, plus you uncover the square footage size of your lawn and may do divide that out to figure how much to charge per square ft. This should give you a ballpark idea. Keep in mind, the expenses you end up being run your lawn care business can drastically differ from another lawn care business owner’s expenses, so know your expenses.
The next question you most likely are 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, has been walk the property certainly not be in a rush to get in and out. I did this once and when Acquired there I was in for a surprise. I did not 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 wished.”
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 simple terms it’s better to say “I’ll perform these group of services, to your satisfaction, for $50” than the guy “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 wish to pass those pricing exactly to the customer. Probable disappointment the customer watching contributions and as you get better at 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 into smaller sections if I have to. Then I figure my hourly rate or what I’d like to make from the property and put a price together from that. More often than not commercial properties are probably broken up into several mowing areas, I locate it easier to just uncover the time it calls for for each and then figure out the total time plus drive time.”
Another more advanced method is to charge per square foot based on formulas. Using formulas requires a little more experience, because it is vital your formulas are effective.