Landscaping Job Pricing Calculator

By Trade Business Guide Research Desk

Describe one month of service

Visits per month is the number of planned visits to the account. Minutes per visit is production time at the property. Drive minutes per visit is travel time you want assigned to each visit. Crew cost per hour is the hourly cost of the crew represented by those minutes; it is not automatically a customer charge rate. Monthly materials is the amount spent on supplies for this account over the month. Target margin (%) is the share of the monthly selling price left after the costs entered.

This is a monthly contract calculator. Do not treat the result as a one-time landscaping project quote without adjusting the inputs to the period being priced. If seasonal work changes visit frequency or materials, run separate scenarios for the relevant months instead of assuming a uniform schedule. The form does not model equipment depreciation, dump fees, property size, or unusual scope as separate fields. Include applicable amounts in your crew cost or materials budget only when that classification is deliberate and documented.

How the calculation works

monthly cost = visits per month × (minutes per visit + drive minutes per visit) / 60 × crew cost per hour + monthly materials. The calculator then computes monthly price = monthly cost / (1 − target margin / 100) when Target margin is below 100%. Drive time is added for every visit before multiplication by crew cost. The monthly cost result can appear even when the chosen margin cannot produce a price. A negative margin is not blocked by the code, so enter a meaningful target.

Example assumptions — not benchmarks: four visits per month, 90 minutes on site and 30 drive minutes each visit, crew cost $60 per hour, monthly materials $40, and target margin 20%. Each visit uses 120 minutes, or two hours. Four visits consume eight costed crew hours. Eight × $60 = $480; adding $40 materials gives $520 monthly cost. Divide $520 by 0.80 to get $650 monthly price. The $130 difference is 20% of selling price, before costs omitted from the input.

Check the route economics

Travel can dominate a short visit. This formula makes drive time visible so an account far from the route carries its own time allocation. Use drive minutes for the time attributable to this account, not a full day’s travel charged again to every property. If a crew services adjacent properties on one trip, allocate shared travel consistently. The calculator does not optimize a route or account for idle gaps caused by scheduling.

For contract renewals, compare actual visit counts and materials with the original assumptions. Extra cleanup, storm work, or plant replacement may need a separately scoped price if it was not part of the monthly work. A positive target margin on entered costs does not guarantee overall business profit when equipment, administration, and other overhead have been omitted.

Use employee true cost when forming the crew cost, commercial vehicle cost for fleet allocation, and monthly expense for company overhead. The job pricing tool fits separately scoped one-time work.

Route-pricing questions

Last updated: September 24, 2026