Price the yard, not the square footage
A square-foot price sheet starts from the lot: so much per thousand square feet, so much for edging, a little extra for a big yard. That number tells you what a yard is worth to a customer. It does not tell you what the yard costs you.
The cost is the crew’s clock, not just the minutes on the grass. It is the drive from the last stop, the truck burning fuel for those minutes, the mower wearing out an hour at a time, and the insurance, phone and storage that every booked hour has to carry. A yard that looks fine on a square-foot chart can lose money every week once its drive is counted, and a yard you undercharge on paper can turn out to be one of your best.
This lawn care and snow removal pricing spreadsheet prices every property the second way. It is built for solo and small-crew (one to three people) mowing and landscaping-maintenance operators who also plow, shovel or salt in winter. You type the minutes you really drive to reach each yard from the stop before, in the order you actually drive them. It adds labor for the whole clock, the cost per hour of the mower kit you use there, the truck’s cost for that drive, and a share of overhead, then sets the total against your price. Each yard gets a profit, a margin, a suggested price at your target margin, and a flag: KEEP, REPRICE or DROP. For the reasoning behind charging for drive time, see how to price a service call.
Which route day actually pays
The Route tab rolls your yards up by route day, across a two-week cycle so every-other-week yards count only in their own week. For each day you get the stops, the share of the day spent driving, the route hours, revenue, cost, day profit and dollars per route hour, a TIGHT, FAIR or SPREAD density band (how many stops the day fits per hour of driving), and a rank from best day to worst. Pick a day and a week and the tab prints a stop-order route sheet for the truck, with the running clock at each stop timed from when you leave the shop.
It is a pricing and planning workbook, not a GPS or route optimizer: you set the stop order and type the drive minutes. It does not send invoices, take payments or remind customers.
Rankings puts every property in order by margin and every route day in order by dollars per route hour, so the next move is obvious: the few yards dragging a day down, and the day that needs re-ordering or repricing.
What your equipment really costs per hour
Each mower, trimmer, blower, truck, trailer, plow and spreader goes on the Equipment tab with what you paid, what it will be worth at the end, how many hours it lasts, its yearly upkeep and its fuel burn. The tab books each machine’s hours from your own yards and snow pushes and turns all of it into a cost per hour. Machines bundle into kits, and the kits feed every price in the workbook.
Per push or seasonal? Test it before you sign
Snow pricing is a bet on the weather. A light winter can starve per-push income, and a heavy one can sink a seasonal contract you signed in October.
The Snow tab carries both prices on every snow account — a per-push price and a seasonal price, typed or derived from the other at an average winter. It shows the profit at each price in a light, an average and a heavy winter; the number of pushes where seasonal and per-push earn the same; the number where a seasonal contract stops covering your cost; and a verdict. It flags a signed seasonal contract that loses money in an average winter (raise the price) or a heavy one (cap the pushes), and it never names a winner when one price is missing.
A winter-risk table then compares your whole snow book as signed against every account on per-push pricing and every account on a seasonal contract, across all three winters, with the swing from light to heavy.
Billing and the ledger
Billing compares a discounted seasonal monthly contract with per-visit billing after the mows skipped for drought or washouts, and says REPRICE FIRST before suggesting a contract on a yard that already loses money. The Ledger logs invoices and payments (paid, part paid, unpaid, days to pay) and feeds what each account has paid and still owes, and it tracks expenses against your overhead budget.
Both seasons in one year
The Dashboard puts the green (mowing) season and the white (snow) season side by side, month by month, after all overhead and equipment, then shows the whole year under a light, an average and a heavy winter. A “What to do next” column turns it into a short list: how many yards to reprice or drop (Rankings names them), the best and worst route day, how many snow contracts to cap or raise, and what has been collected.
What’s in the download
- The workbook — 10 tabs: Start Here, Setup, Equipment, Properties, Route, Snow, Billing, Ledger, Rankings and Dashboard, with room for 40 properties, 20 machines, and an invoice and payment ledger of 60 rows plus an expense log.
- A 17-page Start Here guide that explains how each tab thinks, the two snow break-evens, and a weekly and seasonal routine.
- 3 printable field sheets — a route day sheet, a snow event log and a property walk & time sheet.
- Open in Google Sheets.pdf and READ-ME-FIRST.txt.
Pre-filled, so nothing is blank on the first open
The workbook opens on a worked example — 14 invented properties, 11 machines and 5 kits, with sample invoices and expenses — so every tab calculates straight away. None of it is a real business, and the default rates, lot-size minutes and winter event counts are illustrative placeholders, not benchmarks for your area. Clear the sample and type your own.
Prefer Google Sheets? No import needed
The download includes a one-click link that makes your own native Google Sheets copy, formulas already working. The .xlsx itself opens in Excel and LibreOffice.
Want to try it first? The free Lawn & Snow Job Pricing Calculator prices one yard for one visit, the drive to it included, and checks one snow account’s push price against what a push costs you. The full workbook does it for up to 40 yards and their snow accounts at once, then adds the route days, the three winters and the whole year.
Own it, don’t rent it
Field-service apps for lawn and snow crews are often a monthly subscription. This is a file you buy once and keep. Your rates, your routes and your customers stay in your own workbook.
When the operation outgrows a spreadsheet, Ardent Seller (opens in new tab) is our living operations app for small-business sellers — customers, work and sales in one place, with a free plan to start, on the same own-it ethic.
For the method behind the numbers, read how to price lawn mowing jobs by cost per visit and what route density is. To weigh this file against a monthly app, see spreadsheet vs lawn-care software. More tools for the trade are on the lawn-care and snow-removal hub.
A note on the numbers
This workbook calculates from the numbers you give it. It is not financial, tax or legal advice, and the prices you charge are your decision.
