Your crew hourly wage, payroll burden, overhead on direct cost and target net margin are the same on every job you bid. Save them once and every trade bid calculator here opens with your numbers instead of a stranger’s ballpark.
Kept in this browser only, on this site’s own storage. Nothing is uploaded, and clearing your browser data clears it. Forgetting them leaves the numbers already on this bid alone.
Keep this bid so it is still here when the customer calls back. Every number on this form is saved together, under a name you choose, along with the figure it gave you, and restoring one puts the whole job back exactly as you priced it. Mark each one won or lost when you hear — the ones you have not heard back on stay listed as waiting, with how long they have been out. Once a few have come back, this panel says how long yours actually take, and how many are still out past that. Once enough of them have been decided, it also says whether the bids you save here have been landing differently lately than they used to. Once a few here are decided, this panel says what the ones you won averaged against the ones you lost, so you can see where your price tips. On a lost bid you can also note what the job went for, if you heard — then it says how far off you actually were, which is the part guessing gets wrong in both directions. On a won one, note what the job came to once it was done and this panel says what those jobs actually kept, so you can see whether the ones you are winning are worth winning — and it tells you how many of your won jobs are still missing that figure, rather than going quiet about it. Restoring a bid also pins the figure it was saved at above this panel, so when the customer asks what it costs without the tear-off, the new number is shown against the one they already have — and by how much, in money and in percent.
Kept in this browser only, on this site’s own storage. Nothing is uploaded, and clearing your browser data clears it — download a backup to keep a copy or open your bids on another device. Bids are kept per tool, so these are the ones you saved here.
FOR INDEPENDENT LAWN CARE OPERATORS
Bid the stop, not the lot size.
Price a recurring lawn-care stop the way a crew actually runs it: turf, beds, and edging each at their own production rate, then windshield time, fuel, dump, and the margin you intend to keep. You get the price per visit, the in-season monthly, an annual that counts growing-season weeks rather than inventing winter, and the number below which the stop loses money.
One row per service on the visit. Production rate is how much one person covers per hour in that row’s unit. Pick a service to start from a common figure, then replace it with a rate timed from your own crew.
ServiceQuantityPer hour
Route and season
Round-trip travel is loaded labor. Service weeks are the growing season you actually bill — 32 is a common temperate-US figure, not a recommendation. Annual is visit price × these weeks, not monthly × 12.
Your costs
Payroll burden covers employer taxes, workers’ compensation, and paid time off. Equipment share is this stop’s piece of the mower payment, trailer, and shop — not the whole fleet.
Your bid
$—
per visit
In-season monthly
Honest annual
Year-round monthly equivalent
On-property hours / visit
Travel hours / visit
Clock time on site
Loaded labor / month
Fuel & dump / month
Equipment & other
Overhead
Total in-season cost
Monthly profit
Price per acre / month
Effective hourly rate
Walk-away monthly
Walk-away per visit
Where the hours go
Transparent arithmetic from your own inputs. The starting production rates are common ballpark figures, not an industry standard, a benchmark, or a guarantee — time your own crews and replace them.
Hand the customer a proposal
The price above is for you. This is the page you print or save as a PDF and give to the customer — your details, their details, the scope, the deposit split, and a line for them to sign. Your business details are saved on this device so you only type them once; the customer’s details are never saved.
Everything on the printed page is text you typed or a number this calculator worked out. It contains no warranty, lien, or cancellation wording — those depend on your jurisdiction and your contract, and this tool is not the place to invent them.
Common questions
How do I price lawn mowing for a residential yard?
Split the stop into services with their own rates — turf mowing, edging and blowing, beds — then add round-trip travel, fuel, and dump. Price from those hours plus overhead and the margin you intend to keep, not from lot size alone.
Why is a price per acre a bad lawn care bid?
Two half-acre lots are not the same job. Beds, hedges, and an 18-minute drive each way often take more of the stop than the mow. A flat per-acre rule cannot see any of that.
Should a lawn care contract be monthly times twelve?
Only if you actually service the property every month. Most growing-season routes run 28 to 36 weeks. Annual is the per-visit price times those weeks, not the in-season monthly times twelve.
Why doesn’t adding a second crew member change the price?
Crew size only splits the clock time on site — how fast the stop gets done — not the cost. Labor is priced on total person-hours of work, and that total doesn’t shrink because two people share it. On the starting figures (10,000 sq ft turf, 25 minutes of edging, 350 sq ft of beds), one crew member clocks 1.79 hours on the property; a two-person crew clocks 0.90 hours to do the same work, but the bill stays $459.73 in-season monthly either way. A second person buys you a shorter stop and more stops per day, not a smaller number on this page — unless you also raise the wage field for a second body on the truck.
What’s the difference between “In-season monthly” and “Year-round monthly equivalent”?
“In-season monthly” is what the stop actually bills during the weeks you show up — on the starting figures, $459.73 across the 32 growing-season weeks. “Year-round monthly equivalent” ($282.91 at those same figures) spreads the honest annual total evenly across all 12 months instead, which is the number to quote a customer who wants one flat payment in January and August alike. Both come from the same annual total; only the billing pattern differs.
How much of the bid is travel time, not yard work?
Round-trip drive time counts as labor on every visit, and it can be a bigger share than any single service line. At an 18-minute one-way drive, travel is 0.6 hours of the 2.39-hour visit — about 25% of the billed time, more than either the edging or the bed-weeding line on the starting figures. A route with a short drive and a route with a long one doing identical yard work should not carry the same price; this field is why they don’t.
What does the calculator say if I quote below the walk-away price?
Type a number into “Monthly price you’re considering” and the verdict box compares it to the walk-away monthly (your cost with zero margin) and flags it red if it’s under. At the starting figures the walk-away is $344.80/month; a $90 quote shows a $254.80 monthly loss before the owner takes anything out of it — the field exists so that number shows up before the contract is signed, not after the season is half over.
Want the margin, walk-away price and overrun headroom as well, or pricing a different trade? Price this job in the Bid Price Engine, one calculator for 121 trades.