Job costing for landscaping contractors

Landscape installs have thin margins and lots of moving parts: plant material, sod, irrigation, rentals, and crews who bounce between jobs. JobMargin keeps plants and sod on their own line and puts every crew hour on the right job.

What landscaping contractors track in JobMargin

• Plants and sod separately. Nursery and sod invoices post to their own budget, apart from mulch, stone, and irrigation parts.
• Crews that move between jobs. Crews clock in at each site on their phones, so a day split across three jobs is costed correctly.
• Scope by area. Line items like “Sod, 6,500 SY” or “Shrubs, front beds” become the job’s scope, and progress is logged by quantity.
• Quotes accepted online. Homeowners and property managers can accept a quote from a private link, and the bid turns Won.

Set up for landscaping from the first day

When you pick Landscaping as your trade, JobMargin loads these cost categories for budgets, receipts, and job costs. You can rename or add your own at any time.

• Materials
• Labor
• Plants & Sod
• Equipment Rental
• Fuel
• Dump Fees
• Subcontractor
• Other

Bid line items use the units landscaping actually bid in: square feet (SF), square yards (SY), cubic yards (CY), each (EA), and lump sum (LS).

Example: what a landscaping job looks like mid-way

Grading, irrigation, 210 trees and shrubs, mulch beds, and 6,500 square yards of sod. The irrigation and plantings are done; the sod goes down next week.

Plants and sod at 64% looks right, with the sod, the rest of that budget, still to come. Labor is the tight one: 73% is spent, and laying 6,500 square yards of sod takes a lot of labor. On a job with margin this thin, put the full crew on the sod and get it down in as few days as possible.

Guides and tools for landscaping contractors