When you are starting 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 Place. Here are a few ideas.

First off, if you’ve never done so, log onto 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 likewise 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 contact a few local lawn care businesses in your area and get an estimate from them to service your lawn. If instead of a lawn then ask a friend to get yourself a few estimates to yard works landscaping service their lawn. When you three estimates, you will have a good idea exactly how much to charge. You will know the price, plus you discover the square footage dimensions your lawn and can certainly divide that out determine 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 may 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 along with be in a rush to get in and out. I did this once and when I got there I was in for a surprise. I didn’t know there were four ditches in the front lot that would need to be 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 was looking for.”

If you are 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 pair 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 need to pass those pricing information on to the customer. You wouldn’t like the customer watching contributions and as you get better 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 have to make from the property and put a price together from that. A lot of times commercial properties are usually broken up into several mowing areas, I locate it easier to just discover the time it needs for each and then figure out the total time plus drive your time.”

Another more advanced technique to charge per sq . ft . based on formulas. Using formulas requires a much more experience, because it critical your formulas are genuine.