LawnBiz Tools

Lawn Care Contract Calculator

A season of mowing, turned into a level monthly payment — and the cash-flow gap that almost every explanation of seasonal contracts gets backwards.

Level monthly payment —

Enter your numbers below.

The season you are pricing

Pre-filled with the worked example below. Change every field to your own numbers.

First cut to last. 26-32 in much of the US; longer in the south.
1 for weekly, 2 for fortnightly.
From the price calculator, not a guess.
Spring and fall cleanup, fertiliser rounds, anything billed once.
12 smooths the bill most and carries the biggest gap.
Unplanned cuts you would still have to do under a flat contract.

These are your numbers, not market rates. This calculator works from the costs you enter. It does not tell you what your area pays — that varies by region, season and year, and any site quoting you a single national figure is guessing. Use this to find the price that covers your costs and target profit, then sanity-check it against what you can actually win locally.

The formula and a worked example Show the arithmetic 
visits        = floor((season weeks - 1) / weeks between visits) + 1
season total  = visits x price per visit + extras
monthly       = season total / payments per year

months in season = season weeks / (52 / 12)
collected by end = monthly x min(months in season, payments)
financing gap    = season total - collected by end

The visit count is not a plain division. A 29-week season cut fortnightly from week one gets visits in weeks 1, 3, 5 … 29 — fifteen of them, where dividing says fourteen. One visit is a whole cut's revenue, so the off-by-one is real money.

Worked example

30-week season, weekly, $45 a visit, $350 of extras

visits        = floor(29 / 1) + 1        = 30
mowing        = 30 x 45                  = $1,350
season total  = 1,350 + 350              = $1,700
monthly       = 1,700 / 12               = $141.67

months in season = 30 / 4.3333           = 6.92
collected by end = 141.67 x 6.92         = $980.77
financing gap    = 1,700 - 980.77        = $719.23

So at the last cut of the season you have delivered $1,700 of work and collected $980.77. The customer owes you $719.23, which arrives over the winter. That is the opposite of being paid in advance, and it is why a contract book needs working capital behind it.

Set payments per year to 7 — roughly the season's own length — and the gap falls to almost nothing. You also give up every winter payment. That is the trade.

The risk a flat contract transfers to you

A seasonal price is a fixed price for a variable amount of work. A wet spring and a warm autumn can add three cuts to a thirty-cut season, and under a flat contract you do them for nothing. On the example above, three extra visits take the effective price from $56.67 a visit to $51.52 — a 9% cut in what every visit earns, taken entirely out of your margin.

That is the service the customer is buying, and it is worth charging for. The common protection is to state the visit count in the contract and bill additional visits separately.

Common questions

Does a monthly contract mean I get paid in winter for work I did in summer?

It is the other way round, and this is the single most misunderstood thing about seasonal contracts.

Level monthly billing spreads a season's money evenly across the year. The WORK is concentrated in the season. So by the time the last cut is done you have delivered the whole season's value and collected only the months that have passed. The customer owes you the balance, and you collect it over the off-season.

You are lending to the customer, not being paid in advance. The calculator shows exactly how much.

Is that a reason not to offer contracts?

No. Level billing is genuinely good for both sides: the customer gets a predictable bill, and you get income in months when there is no mowing to invoice.

But you have to fund the gap. If you are pricing a contract that leaves you carrying several hundred dollars of delivered-but-uncollected work at season end, you need the working capital to cover it, and you should not treat the off-season payments as new money when they arrive.

What happens if the season runs long?

You do the extra cuts for free. A flat seasonal price transfers weather risk from the customer to you, which is the trade the customer is paying for.

The calculator shows what each visit is actually worth once the extra cuts are counted. If three unplanned cuts drop your effective price below what the job costs, the contract was priced on an optimistic season.

The usual fix is a stated visit count in the contract, with additional visits billed separately.

How many payments should a contract have?

Whatever you and the customer agree, but the choice has consequences. Twelve payments give the smoothest bill and the largest financing gap. Matching the payments to the season - eight or nine - shrinks the gap to almost nothing but leaves you with no winter income.

Set it to your season length in this calculator and the gap goes to zero. That is the trade, stated exactly.

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