Are You Profitable or Just Busy? Unlocking Job Costing for Landscape Success

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Are You Profitable or Just Busy? Unlocking Job Costing for Landscape Success

Landscaping

Updated September 26th, 2025

As a landscape business owner, you’re constantly moving, managing crews, and delivering incredible results for your clients. But at the end of the day, when all the hard work is done, are you actually making money, or are you just incredibly busy? That’s the million-dollar question, and it’s exactly what job costing helps you answer. It’s about ditching the guesswork and getting crystal-clear on your financial picture so you can boost your bottom line.

Recently, LMN hosted a powerful webinar featuring industry experts John Dalton (Fractional CMO, McFarland Stanford), Jason Drews (Senior Director of Customer Enablement, LMN), and special guest Cole Weller (President & CEO, Weller Brothers Landscape Professionals). They shared invaluable insights on how to leverage job costing to identify problem areas, fix underperforming jobs, and significantly boost your bottom line.

Watch the full webinar here:

Why Mid-Season Job Costing Can Save Your Year

It’s never too late to start! Even if you haven’t meticulously tracked costs from day one, beginning now can make a huge difference. The goal is to avoid those painful end-of-year surprises and proactively address inefficiencies.

We polled attendees and found that nearly 80% of them felt they either didn’t know much about job profitability or relied heavily on “gut feel.” If this sounds like you, you’re not alone! The good news is that starting small can lead to big wins.

The Wake-Up Call: From Guesswork to Guided Growth

Cole Weller shared a relatable “aha moment” from his early days in business. A seemingly profitable mulching job, priced at $1,000, quickly turned into a lesson on true costs. After factoring in materials and labor, his 17-year-old self realized the profit margin was razor-thin before paying himself and his brother. This early experience, though initially just an “aha moment,” eventually led to significant change years later when the company and crew grew. .

This highlights a fundamental shift in mindset: Profit isn’t what’s left over. It’s planned for and tracked.

Where to Start: Tackling Your Biggest Line Item – Labor!

Job costing doesn’t have to be overwhelming. The best place to begin for the most impactful results is with labor. It’s almost always your biggest expense.

Track ALL hours: Don’t just focus on time at the job site. Account for “windshield time” (travel), material pickup, fueling, waiting for instructions, and even breaks. These seemingly small increments can add up to hundreds of unbillable hours per month.

Optimize routes: As Cole shared, simply optimizing routes can add significant gross margin points. Using software to determine the fastest routes and ensuring crews stick to them can drastically reduce wasted drive time.

Know your hourly rates: Utilize tools to accurately calculate your average hourly rate for a crew, including labor burden and unbillable time, to ensure your estimates are spot-on.

Spotting Hidden Waste and Boosting Efficiency

Beyond labor, several other areas can quietly eat into your profits:

Waiting around: Crews waiting for instructions, materials, or late employees are all incurring costs without producing revenue. Streamline your morning roll-out and ensure clear communication.

Disorganization and movement: Disorganized yards, incorrect equipment on site, or tools that can’t be found all lead to wasted time. A clean, organized workspace and proper equipment staging are vital.

Inventory waste: Are you holding onto old, unused materials? Over-ordering? Paying attention to plant hardiness zones or ensuring you’re utilizing existing inventory before purchasing new can significantly reduce waste and improve cash flow. Cole’s team, for instance, walks their design team through the yard to help them incorporate existing materials into new designs.

LMN: Your Partner in Profitable Operations

LMN customers have powerful tools at their fingertips to simplify job costing and drive profitability:

Analytics Section – Job Costing Analysis Dashboard: This dashboard provides clear, actionable insights into which jobs are going over hours or budget. You can filter data by division, crew leader, customer, and job group to dig deep into trends. See estimated vs. actual revenue, labor, and material costs, as well as gross and net profit.

Job Listing Report: For those who love spreadsheets, you can pull all these key metrics directly into Excel for further analysis.

Scorecard View: A must-use feature, the scorecard provides a real-time snapshot of job performance, even at the task level. Catch potential issues before they become major problems. If you’ve used 80% of the hours but the job is only 60% complete, that’s a red flag you can address immediately.

Job Costing Overview Section: Get live, real-time actual costs (not just hours, but dollar amounts!) for single jobs while they are happening. This allows for critical course correcting mid-job.

The Power of Team Accountability and Communication

Job costing is also about fostering accountability and unity within your team. Here are some best practices:

Involve everyone: From the owner to the crew members, everyone plays a role in job profitability. Share the data and involve them in finding solutions.

Daily job huddles: Simple check-ins with crew leads can make a huge difference. Ask: “What slowed you down today? What did you get done? What are tomorrow’s priorities?” This proactive approach helps identify gaps and needs in advance.

Gamify improvements: Make it fun! Cole’s team incentivizes things like daily vehicle checklist completion with gift cards. You can offer bonuses for ideas that save money or for crews who consistently hit their targets.

Empower your team: Your crews in the field see everything. Encourage them to share suggestions for improvement. “Knowledge isn’t power; taking knowledge and turning it into meaningful action is power.”

Cole highlighted how job costing has united his team, shifting blame from “sales vs. ops” to a collective “we missed the hours on this job.” When sales and operations collaborate with data-driven conversations, results can be exponential.

Ready to Transform Your Business?

Remember, start small. Pick one thing to focus on—like improving your morning roll-out time—and commit to doing it consistently across all your crews. The small adjustments add up to significant differences over time.