How not to mis-price jobs

Most landscapers fail to keep track of the prices at which they buy or sell materials because it is tedious: it is much easier to have a rough idea of the cost of pea gravel, to ballpark the price of servicing a small lawn, or to guesstimate how much to charge for installing a mulch pit. The downside is this often leads to business losses that are hard to track: a leaky bucket business.

Instead, we strongly recommend that you keep track of your buying and selling price. Duranta makes this easy with it’s margin calculator: you can select your buying price, then add your dollar or percentage markup, or your gross margin to get a selling price.

You can track any one (or both) of the margins below:

• Markup is how much you add to the price at which you buy materials, in order to get to the price at which you will sell materials.

For example if you purchase River Rock at $100 per ton and include it in your jobs at $200 per ton, that is a 100% markup.

• Gross margin is the gross profit on the job divided by the jobs revenue. In the example above, the gross margin is 50%.

Once you record your prices, in addition to calculating your margins, Duranta will do all the math of converting between units like weight and volume. For example, if you buy gravel from your dealer in dollars per ton, but need to price a job in terms of cubic yards, Duranta will automatically do the conversion and apply the margin for you.

Keeping track of material costs is critical to maintaining a thriving business. While it is a bit more work, doing it prevents you from having a leaky bucket problem: you won’t mis-price jobs or lose profits.