Trades LandscapersPricing and profit

Landscaper Business PricingBusy all spring, flat out all summer, and the bank account never shows it.

Pricing for landscaping business owners. How to build a charge-out rate that carries award labour, on-costs, machine hire, materials and green waste fees, and how to quote a sloping block or a design and construct build without eating the difference yourself.

Have a chat with Greg

A painted scene of a landscaping crew screeding a bed of sand along a rail, stacked pavers waiting beside them

The week this is about

Sound Like Your Landscaping Business?

You price off what the bloke down the road charges

You heard a number at the supplier and worked backwards from it. Nobody checked whether that rate covers the award, super, workers comp, the ute, the trailer, the excavator payment and the tip fees. So you match a price you cannot afford.

The sloping block kills the quote every time

Flat block rates do not survive a fall, poor access, or wheeling everything down a side path. You know it before you start, quote it like a flat block anyway because the client compared you to someone who did, and then absorb the extra days.

Nobody knows which jobs actually make money

The paving might carry the business and the maintenance round might be losing on fuel and tip fees, or the other way around. Without a per job margin you cannot tell, so you keep saying yes to everything and hoping the year comes out ahead.

Underpricing does not show up as a loss, it shows up as a landscaper working every weekend to stay level and calling it a busy year.

A trade business owner working alone at the kitchen table late at night, laptop open and paperwork spread across the table, work boots and tool bag by the door

Pricing and profit

Here Is What We Do About It.

The Profitable Pricing Masterclass shows you how to build a charge-out rate from your real costs, and the Profit & Freedom Masterclass connects it to what the business pays you. Pricing training in the Learning Hub goes deeper, and Greg sits with you on your actual quotes until you can hold the price.

The Tradies App

Free with an active ABN in Australia and New Zealand. No card, no trial clock.

Learning Hub

The full lesson library inside the Tradies App, self paced, $199/month.

Business Foundations

Weekly live sessions hosted by Greg Allan, where you bring your own numbers.

Free tool, no sign-up

Charge-out rate calculator

Put in what labour costs you, how many hours you can actually invoice and what the business spends, and it builds the rate that covers all of it and leaves a margin. It runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere.

Work out your rate

How it works

Three Steps, Starting Tonight.

Step 1

Work out what an hour really costs you

Not the wage. The wage plus the ute, the insurance, the phone, the unbilled hours and the time you spend quoting. Most owners have never put that number on paper.

Step 2

Price off the number, not off the last bloke

The Profitable Pricing Masterclass takes you through building a rate that carries your overheads and a margin, so you stop pricing against whoever is cheapest this month.

Step 3

Hold the price and watch what happens

The Profit and Freedom Masterclass covers the part nobody warns you about: what to do when someone pushes back, and why losing the wrong job is a win.

Why you get me

I built the coaching company everyone else runs. Then I took it apart.

Most coaching companies work the same way. You enquire, you get a salesperson. You sign up, you get a coach who has never run a trade business.

I know, because I built one. I grew the Academy to 35 staff, a CEO and 15 coaches. It ran without me.

And I hated it. The bigger it got, the further I was from the owners I started it for.

What gets me up in the morning is getting under the hood of a trade business and helping the owner hit their goals in the least time possible.

So I restructured the whole thing.

When you enquire, you speak to me. If you are accepted into the Academy, you work with me. Directly.

And with agentic AI, the results come sooner than most owners can imagine.

Places are limited. I only take on owners who are committed and ready to do the work.

Greg Allan mid-explanation with his hands open, talking to a trade business owner across a desk

Who you will be talking to

I built Response Electricians in Perth into a 30+ staff business with more than 1,950+ five-star reviews.

A general manager runs it day to day. I live in Byron Bay.

I have trained 9,000+ trade business owners across Australia and New Zealand.

What AI actually changes

The old way. The new way.

Illustration: a trade business owner standing over three office staff buried in paperwork at night. — The old way
More customers meant more people doing your computer work, and you paying for all of it.

Illustration: a tradesman shaking hands with a homeowner in her driveway, his phone showing jobs quoted and invoiced. — The new way
You stay with your customers and your team. Agents run the office your way.

The old way

Grow, then hire people to do the computer work.

Every new customer brought more quoting, invoicing, chasing, scheduling and reporting.

So you hired people to do it. Office staff, bookkeepers, admin.

None of it is billable, and every hire costs wages, sick leave and another person to manage.

Profit and time only grew as fast as you could add people.

The new way

Keep the human work. Give everything else to agents.

Your people do what only people can do: looking after customers and leading the team.

Everything else goes to agents that do it your way, instantly, any time it is needed.

No sick leave. No capacity problems. They scale as far as the business does.

So the only people you add are the ones facing your customers and your team.

A human-centred business that runs on systems you build in minutes. Nobody still running the old way can compete with it.

What changes

What Landscaping Business Pricing Actually Changes.

Three things landscaping business owners walk away able to do.

Calculate a charge-out rate that covers award labour, on-costs, plant and overheads.

Load a quote properly for fall, access and site conditions before you send it.

See the margin on each job type and drop the work that loses money.

A trade business owner watching his child play sport on a Saturday morning, coffee in hand and phone face down — Nights and weekends back

A trade business owner and his partner in the kitchen looking at a tablet showing the numbers going up — Work that actually pays

A trade business owner shaking hands with a new apprentice in the work yard — A good hire who stays

A trade business owner standing calmly in the yard while his crew load two utes behind him — Out of the middle of everything

9,000+tradies trained4.9★Google rating4.9★App Store rating

Questions

Landscaper Business Pricing, Answered.

How do I work out my landscaping charge-out rate?

Start with what an hour of crew time actually costs you: the award rate under MA000101, super, workers compensation, leave and the rest of the on-costs. Add plant, vehicle and overheads, then the margin you need. That is a rate, not a guess. The Profitable Pricing Masterclass walks you through building it on your own numbers.

Should I quote landscaping per hour, per square metre or per job?

Quote the client a fixed price for the job, and price it internally per hour and per square metre so you know what it costs. Square metre rates are useful for turf, paving and mulch, and dangerous on a sloping block with poor access. The pricing training covers when each measure works and how to load for site conditions.

How much deposit can I ask for on a landscaping contract?

Deposit caps on residential building work are set by state law and they are low, commonly 5% or 10% depending on the contract value, so never assume you can take a third up front. Check your state regulator before you write the contract, then stage payments to the build so materials and plant are funded. Greg will work through your payment schedule with you.

Landscapers

The Other Ways We Help Landscapers.

Training

Have a Chat With Greg About Your Business.