When you are 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 required to us on the Gopher yard works lawn care service Care Business Forum. Here are a few ideas.

First off, if you have never done so, log on the lawn care business forum and post your question along with your areas. There is a good chance another lawn care business owner around can give you the going rate. You may also want to ask yourself, do you have any friends in the concern? If so, ask them what they charge per lawn.

Another response that was posted was to talk to a few local lawn care businesses in your area and get an estimate from them to service your lawn. If be fit a lawn then ask a friend to acquire a few estimates to service their lawn. When you have three estimates, you will have a good idea the amount to charge. You will know the price, plus you uncover the square footage measurements of your lawn and you can divide that out to figure how much to charge per square ft. Amount give you a ballpark idea. Keep in mind, the expenses you end up being 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 may well 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, is walk the property and be in a rush to get in and out. I did this once and when Received there I was in for a surprise. I didn’t know there were four ditches in the front lot that would need with regard to manually trimmed and gone around while mowing. Luckily for me it still took the estimated time that I figured and my price still solved to what I was looking for.”

If you are a fresh 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 group of services, to your satisfaction, for $50” than health “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 must have to pass those pricing precisely to the customer. You don’t want the customer watching the hands of time and as you get good at your job and shave a few minutes from 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 I’ve got to. Then I figure my hourly rate or what I must make from the property and put a price together from that. Sometimes commercial properties are going to be broken up into several mowing areas, I feel that it’s easier to just calculate the time it may for each and then figure out the total time plus drive time.”

Another more advanced method to charge per sq . ft . based on formulas. Using formulas requires a a bit more experience, because it important your formulas are accurate.