When you are beginning your lawn care business, how do you find how much you should charge to mow a lawn? This is a matter that was recently asked to us on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Community forum. Here are a few ideas.
First off, if have not done so, log on top of the yard works lawn care service 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 business? If so, ask them what they charge per lawn.
Another response that was posted was to speak to a few local lawn care businesses in your area and get an estimate from them to service your lawn. If you have to a lawn then ask a friend to obtain a few estimates to service their lawn. When you three estimates, you will have a good idea just how much to charge. You will know the price, plus you discover the square footage sized your lawn and you can divide that out determine how much to charge per square ft. Ought to actually give you a ballpark idea. Keep in mind, the expenses you ought to run your lawn care business can drastically vary 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 sq . ft . or man hour?
Kurt Chance said “The first thing you always want to do, when giving an estimate, has been walk the property and do not be in a rush to get in and out. I did this once and when Received there I was set for a surprise. I did not know there were four ditches in the front lot that would need for you to become manually trimmed and gone around while mowing. Luckily for me it still took the estimated time that I figured and my price still worked out 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 short it’s better to say “I’ll perform these set of services, to your satisfaction, for $50” than capable “I’ll spend an hour at your house for $50.” Of course, you can use your hourly rate to base your price on but you don’t wish to pass those pricing details on to the customer. You should the customer watching time and as you get good at your job and shave a few minutes off of 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’ve got to. Then I figure my hourly rate or what I want to make from the property and put a price together from that. With many commercial properties are gonna be broken up into several mowing areas, I locate one easier to just uncover the time it needs for each and then figure out the total time plus drive day time.”
Another more advanced method to charge per sq . ft . based on formulas. Using formulas requires a little more experience, because it is important your formulas are accurate.