Job costing for landscaping contractors

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

What landscaping contractors track in JobFigure

• Plants and turf separately. Nursery and turf 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 “Turf, 5,400 m²” 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, JobFigure loads these cost categories for budgets, receipts, and job costs. You can rename or add your own at any time.

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

Bid line items use the units landscaping actually bid in: square metres (m²), cubic metres (m³), each (EA), and lump sum (LS).

Example: what a landscaping job looks like mid-way

Grading, irrigation, 210 trees and shrubs, mulch beds, and 5,400 square metres of turf. The irrigation and plantings are done; the turf goes down next week.

Plants and turf at 64% looks right, with the turf, the rest of that budget, still to come. Labour is the tight one: 73% is spent, and laying 5,400 square metres of turf takes a lot of labour. On a job with margin this thin, put the full crew on the turf and get it down in as few days as possible.

Invoices the New Zealand way

Set your company to New Zealand and every progress invoice is a GST tax invoice with retentions. Tick one box to make it a payment claim under the Construction Contracts Act 2002, with the statement, work period and due date it needs. Prices are in New Zealand dollars. More in our guide: Payment claims under the Construction Contracts Act 2002.

Guides and tools for landscaping contractors