A Comprehensive Guide on Lawn Care Profit Margin: How to Price for Services

The lawn care service business has reached $115.6 billion in 2022. With the increase in demand, the industry can grow at a 4.5% CAGR in the coming years.

The increasing industry growth highlights the rise in competition and makes it difficult for multiple lawn care contractors to remain profitable and run a sustainable business.

You must create a standard lawn care pricing chart that contains clear details about your lawn care profit margin to ensure you scale your business by offering competitive pricing for your services.

It can help you deliver a quality customer experience and ensure you don’t shrink your profits to increase your clientele or attract new work. 

Let’s go through the detailed lawn care profit margin guide so you can run profitable lawn care business with pro tips

How to Price My Lawn Care Business?

Multiple lawn care businesses find confusing how to price their lawn care service jobs. But naturally, the complexities of the service business can increase the troubles while pricing your lawn care jobs.

Our team has simplified the process for you and ensured you could price your lawn care service business to increase your net profit and stand out in the landscape industry.

Lawn care service pricing guide 

The lawn care pricing guide can help you determine your landscaping service prices and help you maintain the industry standard prices to deliver quality customer service and ensure great client retention.

The basic lawn care service prices can differ for different states and may vary based on the project’s complexity.

Different customers can negotiate with your first pricing pitch, so you must set a specific window while finalizing your pricing points.

 Look at the average lawn care pricing chart in the United States:

• Leaf Removal – $30-$550
• Weeding – $40-$600
• Lawn Aeration – $30-$420
• Lawn Mowing – $50-$250
• Gardening – $30-$500
• Landscaping and Design – $30-$4,500
• Full-Service Lawn Care – $40-$449

The pricing can vary drastically for different services because of the technical ability and skills required to complete the task. Different service providers charge different prices, but you must decide your lawn care service pricing based on the quality of services.

Stand out from your competitors by choosing the additional valuable services that can offer more options to the clients and help you increase your business profits. 

Clients can consult multiple lawn care service providers before choosing the right one. You must dig deep into finalizing your price points to ensure you offer profitable and competitive pricing.

Don’t charge a lump sum amount that can minimize the risk of conversions and shake up your brand image in the industry.

Provide a detailed pricing description of different services by checking the industry standard pricing for different landscaping services.

• Landscape Edging – $700-$1,700
• Lawn Fertilization – $80-$380
• Mulching – $45-$750
• Outdoor Pest Control – $50-$200
• Spring/Fall Yard Cleaning – $100-$250
• Sprinkler Repair – $45-$300
• Winterization – $80-$380
• Tree Planting – $45-$2,000
• Watering – $50-$400

You can also analyze your tailored operational costs and tweak these standard service pricing based on your lawn care business.

Pricing a lawn care business with thorough research and thinking can help you stand out from other landscaping businesses and cover your operational and overhead costs.

Is Lawn Care Service Profitable?

An established and professional lawn care business operates at 15% to 45% profit margins. The operating profit of a business can help you determine the money you can make after deducting the operational costs like material, labor hours, equipment, and overhead.

You can run a profitable lawn care business by estimating the operational cost and adding a reasonable profit margin to the overall pricing.

The demand in the lawn care industry is increasing, and there are multiple opportunities you can use to increase your profit margins and run a profitable business with finesse.

Check the factors that can impact the profit margins for your lawn care business:

1. Services offered

Different services must be priced differently based on their complexities, supplies, and effort requirements. Don’t price your lawn care services under the same bracket to shrink your profits and increase your operational cost.

2. Area of operations

The area of your services can impact your profit margins directly. An urban area has high labor hours, material, and operational costs, implying that you must increase your profit margins to run a long-term sustainable service business.

Also, you must lower your service prices in the suburbs because of the low spending power of your clients and inexpensive labor hours costs.

3. Commercial or residential jobs

Commercial or residential jobs demand different pricing models because of the variation in the requirements, demands, and opportunities. You have an enhanced chance of increasing your revenue and profits from a commercial task, but you require increasing the quality of your labor, equipment, and lawn care services.

While handling residential-based jobs, you must increase your employees’ total number of jobs to ensure revenue and profits.

How to Calculate Lawn Care Profit Margin?

You must consider multiple factors that can deliver your lawn care profit margins and ensure that you can scale your business operations to new heights.

1. Calculate the overall revenue

To calculate your lawn care profit margins, you must know about your business revenue. A clear revenue number can help you calculate the total profit margin and help you get a better overview of your business performance.

You can calculate your sales price yearly, monthly, or per job base.

2. Determine the operational cost

Operational costs are crucial when calculating lawn care profit margins. You must clearly understand the material, overhead, equipment, and labor hours cost that can help you add a markup on the overall service expense.

A detailed analysis of your existing business operations or in-depth research of the industry or competitors can help you better understand the average overhead cost to ensure you earn great lawn care business profits and cover your operational costs.

Consider costs like technology, equipment, office rent, business insurance, salaries, etc., to get an accurate overhead cost and add your profit margins.

You can calculate the overhead per hour job by dividing the total overhead cost by the average number of lawn care job requests you manage. It can simplify your profit calculations and help you minimize the efforts during the job estimations.

3. Role of taxes

You should also give special attention to taxes while calculating your operational cost to ensure a healthy profit margin for your business.

Being an independent contractor or a business owner, you get multiple tax deduction opportunities that can help you reduce your tax bills.

From equipment purchases to miles driven, most business expenses are tax-deductible. You can include your expenses during the tax filings, which can help you lower the overall taxable amount paid to the government.

Hire a professional accounting firm or accountants who can assist you in filing your business taxes and ensure that you don’t drain your profits to the governing authority. 

Focus on recording your business cash flow that helps you minimize the errors and discrepancies during the final auditing.

Once the total overhead costs is calculated, including the taxes, it’s easier to extract the real net profit margin for completing a lawn care job.

4. Subtract the cost from your revenue

Now, once you have the revenue and the operational cost for a specific time or job. Calculate profit by subtracting cost from the total revenue generated.

Ensure that your operational cost and revenue numbers are accurate and that prices can help you get a decent value for residential or commercial jobs.

5. Calculate the profit percentage

Analyze the percentage that can improve your decision-making and help you optimize your operations to boost your lawn care business profits for a particular job.

You need to divide the total profit by total revenue to get the profit ratio and then multiply the ratio by 100 to get the final profit percentage.

For example, if you make $10,000 in one month and have a total operational cost of $5000. Here’s how you can calculate your profit margins.

• $10,000 – 5,000 = $5000
• $5000/10,000 = 0.5
• 0.5*100 = 50%

The profit margin for a specific month will be 50% which is a high-profit margin in the lawn care service business.

You can use different ways to optimize your profit margins and achieve better business results to stand out from most landscapers.

Methods to Boost Lawn Care Profit Margin

1. Reduce overhead costs

Focus on reducing the overhead cost like your taxes, salaries, external expenses, and other costs that can help you boost your landscaping business profits and ensure that you can scale your business to new heights.

Add automation to your business workflows, tailor your resources, and ensure you use your business assets effectively.

2. Consistent price increments

You must ensure that you increment your service pricing by 2-3%, which can help you scale your operations and ensure that you manage your expenses professionally.

With the rise in inflation in recent times globally, you must re-calculate your operational cost consistently, which can help you maintain a steady flow of profits and strengthen your industry impact.

3. Efficient team

Create a professional and skilled lawn care service management team that can help you attract new customers and retain the old ones. You can deliver a quality customer experience with an efficient team that can increase your business productivity and enables you to stand out.

4. Use professional business software

Provide your team with the best equipment and software that creates a productive work environment. Minimize the inefficiencies and ensure that you can remove the complexities and manage your lawn care service business.

Integrate professional lawn care software to scale your lawn care service business with finesse and automate the job requests. You can control your service operations and manage your resources to increase business efficiency.

But finding a leading service scheduling software can be overwhelming for you because of the multiple options available in the industry. 

Our team has done the research on your behalf and selected quality software that can help you scale your lawn care business profits and ensure that you stand out.

FieldCamp Can Enhance Your Lawn Care Business 

FieldCamp is a professional service scheduler software that can help boost your profits and reduce operational costs. 

You can channel your business resources into your core business operations by automating the management process. The software increases business efficiency and cuts operational costs.

Your employees can create quick invoices at the job site and help you accurately charge the billable hours to the clients. The user-friendly interface makes it easier for your employees to explore a wide range of features to increase your business productivity and boost profits.

Get free access to a 7-day trial period, and streamline your lawn care service operations to grow your business.