How to Bid Landscaping Jobs: Build the Price From Wage to Profit

1. New York84.45
2. Massachusetts84.13
3. California80.42
4. New Jersey80.27
5. Colorado79.81
6. Illinois73.76
7. U.S. median71.29
8. Michigan70.45
9. Virginia70.43
10. Pennsylvania70.38
11. Arizona69.86
12. Maryland69.57
13. North Carolina69.35
14. Ohio68.92
15. Georgia68.22
16. Florida65.39
17. Texas63.21

Source: BLS OEWS May 2025 state medians (1 supervisor 37-1012 + 2 workers 37-3011); U.S. DOL Significant Provisions of State UI Laws, July 2026; IRS Publication 15 (2026). Excludes workers' comp and benefits; assumes 1,600 paid hours per worker per year. Green Industry Report calculations.

Show the numbers

	Wages + FICA, FUTA and new-employer SUTA, USD per paid crew hour
New York	84.45
Massachusetts	84.13
California	80.42
New Jersey	80.27
Colorado	79.81
Illinois	73.76
U.S. median	71.29
Michigan	70.45
Virginia	70.43
Pennsylvania	70.38
Arizona	69.86
Maryland	69.57
North Carolina	69.35
Ohio	68.92
Georgia	68.22
Florida	65.39
Texas	63.21

Most bidding advice stops at “know your costs.” This page does the arithmetic. It walks one hypothetical two-crew company through every line of a bid: the wage it pays, the taxes and insurance stacked on that wage, what a commercial mower costs per hour to own and run, how overhead gets recovered, and where profit goes. Every input is either a published government figure or a dated published price, and every assumption is labeled so you can swap in your own number.

The bid formula on one line

Every method in this article reduces to one equation:

Price = (labor + burden + equipment + overhead) ÷ (1 − profit margin) + materials × (1 + materials markup)

Labor is wages for the hours you estimate. Burden is the employer taxes and insurance that ride on those wages. Equipment is the hourly cost of the machines on the job. Overhead is everything that keeps the company open but never touches a lawn: the office, the owner’s salary, liability insurance, software, the yard. Profit is what is left after all of it. Materials are handled separately because their cost is known almost exactly and their risk is different from labor’s.

The order matters. Bids go wrong when labor is priced at the bare wage, when overhead is guessed as a flat percentage nobody has checked against the books, and when “30 percent markup” is confused with “30 percent margin.” Each step below closes one of those holes.

Step 1: Write the scope before you price anything

A price is only as good as the quantities under it. Before any dollar figure, the estimator should be able to fill in a scope sheet: what gets done, how much of it, how often, and what is excluded.

• Turf: square feet or acres by mowing method (60-inch rider, 36-inch walk-behind, 21-inch push, string trimmer only). Slopes and gated areas get their own line because they mow at a different rate.
• Edges and beds: linear feet of hard edging, square feet of beds to weed and mulch.
• Plants: count of shrubs to prune and trees within reach, with the number of prunings per season.
• Frequency: visits per season, and which tasks happen every visit versus once or twice a year.
• Site conditions: drive time from your yard, parking for a trailer, water and disposal access, irrigation zones.
• Exclusions: what is not in the price (storm cleanup, irrigation repairs, snow, plant replacement) and the unit price you will charge if it is requested.

Measuring from aerial imagery is fine for a first pass, but site conditions such as slope and access only show up on a walk. Then convert each quantity into crew hours using your own production rates. Production rates are the one input no public dataset can give you: they depend on your equipment, crew and terrain, which is why job-costing your last season (estimated hours against actual hours) is the most valuable thing an estimator can do.

Step 2: Direct labor, priced at what you actually pay

Labor is the largest controllable cost in landscape maintenance, so start there. The national median wage for landscaping and groundskeeping workers (SOC 37-3011) was $18.82 an hour in May 2025, and first-line supervisors of landscaping crews (SOC 37-1012) earned a median of $28.09 (BLS OEWS, May 2025; BLS OEWS, May 2025). Inside the landscaping-services industry itself, the medians were $19.49 and $27.31 (BLS OEWS industry estimates for NAICS 561730, May 2025).

State matters more than most estimators expect. The table below prices a common crew (one leader at the state’s 37-1012 median plus two crew members at the 37-3011 median) and adds only the payroll taxes every employer owes: Social Security, Medicare, federal unemployment (FUTA) and state unemployment (SUTA) at each state’s published new-employer rate. Workers’ comp is left out here because it varies by carrier and class; it is covered in Step 3.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

State	Crew median wage (37-3011)	Supervisor median wage (37-1012)	New-employer SUTA rate on taxable wage base	Payroll taxes per crew-member hour	3-person crew, wages + payroll taxes per paid hour
New York	$21.56	$34.02	4.025% on $17,600	$2.12	$84.45
Massachusetts	$23.40	$30.65	2.42% on $15,000	$2.04	$84.13
California	$21.90	$30.42	3.4% on $7,000	$1.85	$80.42
New Jersey	$19.88	$32.97	2.8% on $44,800	$2.10	$80.27
Colorado	$22.00	$29.25	1.53% on $30,600	$2.00	$79.81
Illinois	$21.05	$25.65	2.8% on $14,250	$1.89	$73.76
U.S. median	$18.82	$28.09	2.7% on $9,000 (assumed)	$1.62	$71.29
Michigan	$18.33	$28.29	2.7% on $9,000	$1.58	$70.45
Virginia	$18.46	$28.08	2.5% on $8,000	$1.56	$70.43
Pennsylvania	$18.99	$26.66	3.822% on $10,000	$1.72	$70.38
Arizona	$18.71	$27.12	2.0% on $8,000	$1.56	$69.86
Maryland	$18.93	$26.31	2.6% on $8,500	$1.61	$69.57
North Carolina	$18.22	$27.37	1.0% on $34,200	$1.60	$69.35
Ohio	$18.38	$26.77	2.7% on $9,000	$1.58	$68.92
Georgia	$18.25	$26.36	2.64% on $9,500	$1.58	$68.22
Florida	$17.84	$24.66	2.7% on $7,000	$1.51	$65.39
Texas	$17.66	$22.90	2.7% on $9,000	$1.53	$63.21

The spread between Texas and New York is $21 per crew hour before a single overhead dollar is added. A bid template copied from a company in another state, or from a national software default, can be wrong by that much on labor alone. For every state’s wage and employment figures, see our landscaping industry data by state, and for pay by experience level see the landscaper salary breakdown.

Two adjustments turn the wage into a usable bid rate. First, use the wage you actually pay, not the median; the median is a check on whether your pay is competitive, not a substitute for your payroll register. Second, account for hours you pay for but cannot bill: loading the trailer, driving between stops, fueling, rain delays. Our worked example assumes 85 percent of paid hours are billable on site. If a crew spends two hours of an eight-hour day in the truck, your billable share is 75 percent, and every hour you bid has to carry a third more payroll than the wage suggests.

Step 3: Labor burden, the cost that rides on every wage dollar

Labor burden is what an employer pays on top of gross wages. For a small landscaping company that offers no health plan, it is mostly taxes and workers’ compensation, and most of it is set by statute.

Burden item	2026 rate or amount	Applies to	Cost per hour, crew member at $18.82
Social Security (employer share)	6.2%	Wages up to $184,500	$1.17
Medicare (employer share)	1.45%	All wages	$0.27
FUTA	6.0% less up to 5.4% state credit = 0.6% ($42 per worker per year)	First $7,000 of wages	$0.03
SUTA (example: 2.7% new-employer rate)	2.7% ($243 per worker per year)	First $9,000 of wages (Texas and Ohio base)	$0.15
Workers’ comp, lawn care maintenance (Washington class 0308, employer share)	$1.1625 per hour worked	Hours worked	$1.16
Total statutory burden			$2.78 (14.8% of wage)

The Social Security and Medicare rates (6.2 and 1.45 percent from the employer, on a 2026 Social Security wage base of $184,500) come from IRS Publication 15 (2026). FUTA is 6.0 percent of the first $7,000 of each worker’s wages, reduced to 0.6 percent when you pay state unemployment tax on time (IRS Topic 759).

California is the exception. Because the state still owes the federal unemployment trust fund, California employers lost 1.2 points of the FUTA credit for 2025, and the Department of Labor’s January 2026 estimate puts the potential 2026 reduction at 5.3 points if the loan is not repaid by November 10, 2026 (U.S. DOL, FUTA credit reductions). At 5.3 points that is an extra $371 per employee on the first $7,000 of wages. California bids written now for next season should carry it.

SUTA depends on the state and on your claims history. New employers pay a rate set by law until they build an experience record: 2.7 percent in Texas, Florida, Ohio and Michigan, 1.0 percent in North Carolina, 3.4 percent in California and 4.025 percent in New York, each on a different taxable wage base, from $7,000 in California and Florida to $78,200 in Washington (U.S. DOL, July 2026). Seasonal layoffs generate unemployment claims, which push an established landscaping employer’s experience rate up over time; Massachusetts’ range runs to 14.37 percent and Michigan’s to 12.2 percent. Use the rate on your latest state notice, not the new-employer default.

Workers’ compensation is the burden line that varies most. In most states, a private carrier prices it per $100 of payroll by classification code, then adjusts by your experience modification factor; the classification and base rate are filed by the state’s rating organization. Washington is one of the few states that runs its own fund and publishes hourly rates by risk class, which makes it a useful public benchmark. For 2026, the composite base rate is $1.4948 per hour worked for class 0308 (lawn care maintenance), of which workers pay $0.3324 through payroll deduction; $2.1811 per hour for class 0301 (landscape construction and renovation), with a $0.4279 worker deduction; and $7.0142 per hour for class 0106 (tree care and pruning) (Washington L&I, 2026 rates by business type). Note what that implies: the same crew member costs about 50 percent more to insure per hour on an install crew than on a mowing crew, and nearly five times more if the job puts them in a tree. Bid maintenance and installation with separate burden rates.

As a cross-check, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ employer cost survey found that legally required benefits (Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and workers’ comp) cost private employers $2.08 an hour for service occupations, 11.4 percent of their $18.26 average wage, and $4.22 an hour for construction, extraction, farming and forestry occupations, 13.1 percent of a $32.17 wage (BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026, Table 4). Our 12.4 to 17.9 percent range sits just above those averages, which is what you would expect for an outdoor, equipment-heavy trade with seasonal layoffs. Paid holidays, health insurance or a retirement match go on top; if you offer them, add their actual cost per hour worked.

Step 4: Equipment cost recovery

Equipment is a real cost of every hour the machine runs, whether or not you financed it. The simplest honest method charges each machine an hourly rate built from ownership cost plus operating cost.

Mower. Toro lists its Z Master 4000 Pro with a 60-inch deck (model 74004) at $12,399, with a 5-year or 1,250-hour limited warranty (Toro product page, list price checked October 7, 2026). If the mower runs 3,000 hours before you replace it and sells for 20 percent of its price, depreciation is $12,399 × 0.8 ÷ 3,000 = $3.31 per hour. Add fuel: at an assumed 1.0 gallon per hour and the U.S. average regular gasoline price of $4.354 a gallon in the week of October 5, 2026 (EIA weekly retail prices), fuel is $4.35 an hour. Add an assumed $1.50 an hour for blades, belts, oil and repairs, and the mower costs about $9.16 per running hour. Measure your own fuel burn (fill-to-fill over a week) and your own repair spend; both swing the total more than the purchase price does.

Truck and trailer. The IRS business standard mileage rate is 76 cents a mile from July 1, 2026, up from 72.5 cents in the first half of the year, and is meant to cover the fixed and operating costs of a vehicle (IRS standard mileage rates). It is a floor, not a ceiling, for a three-quarter-ton pickup towing a loaded trailer. A 40-mile daily route at 76 cents is $30.40 a day; spread across six stops, $5.07 a visit.

Reprice equipment every year. The producer price index for commercial turf and grounds-care equipment rose 31.7 percent from August 2019 to August 2026 (BLS PPI series WPU111401; 2026 values preliminary). An hourly equipment rate set when you bought your last mower undercharges for its replacement.

Step 5: Materials and the markup on them

Materials are the easiest line to price exactly: get a current quote or price sheet and take off quantities. As illustrations, one New York landscape supply yard’s 2026 retail sheet lists dyed hardwood mulch at $46 per cubic yard, garden mix soil at $57 and compost at $58, with delivery fees from $50 to $140 depending on town (Adams Landscaping and Supply, 2026 retail price list, dated April 9, 2026). Nevada’s state tree nursery prices plants by container: $10.75 for a 1-gallon pot, $26.75 for a 5-gallon and $37.25 for a 15-gallon (Nevada Division of Forestry, Las Vegas Nursery 2026 price list). Your contractor pricing will differ; the point is to bid from a dated source, not memory.

Take-off arithmetic is where small errors compound. One cubic yard is 27 cubic feet, so mulch at 3 inches deep covers 108 square feet per yard; a 600-square-foot bed needs 600 × 0.25 ÷ 27 = 5.6 yards, which you round up to 6. Add waste for plants that fail inspection at pickup and for over-ordering bulk products by the half-yard.

The markup on materials pays for the time spent sourcing, picking up and handling them, the risk of replacing a plant under warranty, and a profit on the capital tied up. No public source sets a “correct” materials markup. Our example uses 20 percent; the trade-off is that a homeowner who has seen retail prices will compare your materials line directly, so a high markup on materials is easier to challenge than the same dollars recovered in labor. Check whether your state taxes the materials, the service, or both, and keep sales tax out of the markup base.

Step 6: Overhead recovery per billable hour

Overhead is the annual cost of running the company that no single job causes: owner’s salary (if the owner is not on a crew), office staff, rent or yard, general liability and vehicle insurance, software, phones, marketing, accounting, estimating time, and the cost of equipment sitting idle in winter. The cleanest way to recover it is to divide the year’s overhead budget by the billable hours the field staff will produce, then add that rate to every hour you bid.

Our hypothetical company runs two three-person crews. Each worker is paid for 1,600 hours a year and 85 percent of those hours are billable, so the company sells 2 × 3 × 1,600 × 0.85 = 8,160 billable person-hours. With an assumed $180,000 overhead budget, every billable hour must carry $180,000 ÷ 8,160 = $22.06 of overhead. That is more than the crew member’s wage, which is normal for a small company and the reason bare-wage pricing fails.

The alternative, adding a flat percentage of direct cost, is faster but has a known flaw: it loads overhead onto materials. A $10,000 stone patio with $7,000 of stone would collect most of its overhead from the stone, while a labor-heavy pruning job of the same price would collect too little. Per-hour recovery ties overhead to the resource that actually consumes it, the crew’s time. The trade-off is that per-hour recovery depends on hitting your billable-hours forecast: sell fewer hours than planned and overhead goes unrecovered, so recheck the rate mid-season.

Step 7: Profit, and why margin is not markup

Profit is a decision, not a statistic. What matters is doing the arithmetic correctly. Margin is profit as a share of price; markup is profit as a share of cost. To earn a 10 percent margin you divide cost by 0.90, which is an 11.1 percent markup. An estimator who adds 20 percent to cost and believes the job earns 20 percent is actually earning 16.7 percent.

Target profit margin (share of price)	Divide cost by	Equivalent markup on cost	Price on $1,000 of cost
5%	0.95	5.3%	$1,052.63
10%	0.90	11.1%	$1,111.11
15%	0.85	17.6%	$1,176.47
20%	0.80	25.0%	$1,250.00
25%	0.75	33.3%	$1,333.33

A fully worked bid: weekly maintenance plus a bed renovation

Both jobs below use the same company and the same national inputs: crew leader at $28.09, two crew members at $18.82, a 2.7 percent SUTA on $9,000, Washington’s 2026 workers’ comp rates as the comp input, $22.06 of overhead per billable person-hour and a 10 percent profit margin. Substitute your own state’s wages from the table above and your own carrier’s comp rate.

Job A: a small commercial property, weekly maintenance

Scope: mow about an acre with a 60-inch rider, string-trim, edge hard surfaces and blow off, 28 visits from April through October. Estimated time on site: 1.5 hours for a three-person crew, or 4.5 person-hours. The loaded labor rate for a maintenance crew works out to $74.78 per paid crew hour, $24.93 per paid person-hour, and $29.33 per billable person-hour once the 85 percent billable share is applied.

Line	Calculation	Per visit
Labor + burden	4.5 person-hours × $29.33	$131.96
Mower	1.5 hours × $9.16	$13.74
Trimmer, edger, blower	1.5 hours × $2.00 (assumed)	$3.00
Truck and trailer	$30.40 a day ÷ 6 stops	$5.07
Overhead	4.5 person-hours × $22.06	$99.26
Total cost		$253.04
Profit at 10% margin	$253.04 ÷ 0.90 − $253.04	$28.12
Price per visit		$281.15
Season (28 visits)	$281.15 × 28	$7,872
Billed in 12 equal installments	$7,872 ÷ 12	$656 a month

The visit sells for $187 per crew hour on site, or about $62 per person-hour. Notice how little of it is the wage: field wages are $116 of the $281, about 41 percent. Overhead alone is 35 percent of the price.

Job B: a 600-square-foot bed renovation

Scope: strip the old bed and cut a new edge, work in 2 cubic yards of garden mix, plant 15 five-gallon shrubs, and top-dress with 3 inches of mulch (6 cubic yards). Because this is installation, the burden uses Washington’s landscape-construction comp class, which lifts the loaded rate to $30.02 per billable person-hour. The production rates are assumptions; replace them with your own job-cost history.

Line	Calculation	Amount
Strip and edge (hours)	Assumed production rate	6.0 person-hours
Spread and incorporate soil (hours)	2 cu yd × 1.5 person-hours (assumed)	3.0 person-hours
Plant shrubs (hours)	15 × 0.5 person-hours (assumed)	7.5 person-hours
Spread mulch (hours)	6 cu yd × 1.0 person-hour (assumed)	6.0 person-hours
Cleanup and haul (hours)	Assumed	1.5 person-hours
Labor + burden	24 person-hours × $30.02	$720.49
Truck and trailer, disposal	$30.40 a day + $40 disposal (assumed)	$70.40
Overhead	24 person-hours × $22.06	$529.41
Profit at 10% margin	$1,320.30 ÷ 0.90 − $1,320.30	$146.70
Shrubs	15 × $26.75	$401.25
Garden mix	2 cu yd × $57	$114.00
Mulch	6 cu yd × $46	$276.00
Bulk delivery	One delivery fee	$75.00
Materials markup	20% × $866.25	$173.25
Bid price		$2,506.50

That is about $4.18 per square foot of bed. Profit dollars on the job are $320 ($146.70 on labor plus $173.25 of materials markup), 12.8 percent of the price. Field wages are 25 percent of the price here, against 41 percent on the mowing visit, because materials carry so much of the install ticket. For a homeowner-side view of what these jobs typically cost, see our landscaping cost guide.

What Census data says about margins, and what it cannot

Bidding articles often quote an “industry average profit margin.” There is no government source for one. The 2022 Economic Census, the most complete count of the industry, reports revenue, payroll and employment for landscaping services (NAICS 561730), but not profit or materials cost. What it does give is a useful check on the labor side of your pricing.

Firm size (employees)	Firms	Average revenue per firm	Payroll as % of revenue	Revenue per employee
Fewer than 5	49,049	$350,923	23.3%	$167,980
5 to 9	15,883	$898,946	29.4%	$138,241
10 to 19	8,743	$1,801,459	32.6%	$134,803
20 to 49	5,084	$3,963,335	34.8%	$133,774
50 to 99	1,136	$8,709,658	35.9%	$129,925
100 to 249	478	$19,660,209	35.5%	$133,893
250 to 499	116	$42,320,595	38.5%	$128,409
500 or more	46	$363,224,565	38.4%	$139,709
All firms operating all year	80,535	$1,344,750	32.8%	$139,314

Three things stand out. First, across all employer establishments, payroll was 32.3 percent of the industry’s $115.4 billion in 2022 revenue (Census, EC2256BASIC). That payroll includes office staff and managers, so field wages in a typical bid should sit below it on a materials-heavy install and can sit above it on a mowing route, as our two jobs show.

Second, the smallest firms look cheapest on payroll (23.3 percent) and highest on revenue per employee ($167,980). That is not because they run leaner. Owners of sole proprietorships and partnerships are not on payroll, so their own labor is invisible in these figures. An owner-operator who bids at the “industry” payroll share without pricing their own hours is working for whatever is left over. Price the owner’s field hours at a supervisor’s wage, at minimum.

Third, revenue per employee is remarkably flat above five employees, between about $128,000 and $140,000. In practice, a firm’s revenue is largely set by headcount times billable hours times rate, which is the logic of per-hour overhead recovery. Most of the industry is small: 70.6 percent of employer establishments had fewer than five employees in 2023 (Census, County Business Patterns 2023).

How to bid commercial landscaping jobs

Commercial bids use the same cost build-up, but the buyer controls the format. Property managers, HOAs, school districts and government agencies issue a scope, hold a site visit, and compare bids line by line. Four habits separate bids that get read from bids that get tossed.

Walk the site and measure it yourself

Go to the bid walk (pre-bid site visit) even when the specifications include a site map. Measure turf by mowing method, count trees and shrubs, measure bed square footage and edging linear feet, note irrigation controllers and zones, and photograph problem areas. Submit questions in writing before the deadline. In public sealed bidding the agency evaluates bids “without discussions” (FAR 14.101), so anything you assume rather than ask about becomes your risk.

Turn the specification into a scope sheet

Rebuild the buyer’s specification as a quantity-and-frequency sheet: mowing events per season, edging and string-trimming per visit, bed weeding cycles, shrub pruning (count and cycles), mulch (cubic yards, once or twice a year), leaf cleanups, irrigation checks, fertilizer and weed-control rounds. Price each line from Steps 2 to 7. Then add unit prices for extra work (per cubic yard of mulch, per shrub replaced, per irrigation head) and list exclusions. Property managers compare bids on these lines, and a lump sum that cannot be broken out is the easiest bid to discard.

Know which kind of solicitation you are answering

An invitation for bids (IFB) is decided on price: under federal sealed bidding, the award goes to the responsible bidder whose conforming bid is most advantageous “considering only price and the price-related factors” (FAR 14.101). A request for proposals (RFP) lets the buyer trade price against technical approach and past performance, or use lowest price technically acceptable when the work is simple and low-risk (FAR 15.101). Many state and local agencies follow the same split. On an IFB, sharpen the price; on an RFP, spend the effort on staffing plans, equipment lists, references and a quality-control schedule.

Price the public-contract rules into the bid

• Prevailing wages on federal service contracts. Federal service contracts over $2,500, which include grounds maintenance, are subject to the Service Contract Act: you must pay at least the wage rates and fringe benefits in the wage determination attached to the solicitation (U.S. DOL Wage and Hour Division; determinations are posted on SAM.gov). The health and welfare fringe alone was set at $5.55 per hour in July 2025, or $5.09 on contracts subject to the federal paid-sick-leave order (DOL All Agency Memorandum 250). On an $18.82 wage that fringe is a 29.5 percent addition before payroll taxes, so a burden rate built for private work will badly underprice a federal maintenance contract.
• Bonds. Where a solicitation requires a bid guarantee, federal rules set it at no less than 20 percent of the bid price, capped at $3 million (FAR 28.101-2). Federal construction contracts over $150,000, which can include landscape installation, require performance and payment bonds (FAR 28.102-1). Bond premiums are a direct cost of that job; put them in the bid, not in overhead.
• Licensing and insurance certificates. Many states require a contractor or pesticide license to bid or perform the work. Check the rules in our state-by-state licensing table before the bid is due, not after award.
• Multi-year escalation. On a three-year maintenance contract, ask for an annual price adjustment tied to a published index. Consumer prices for gardening and lawn care services rose 13.9 percent in the year to September 2025 (BLS CPI series CUUR0000SEHP02), and wages and equipment have climbed with them. A flat three-year price absorbs all of that.

Hourly, per visit, or lump sum

The build-up works for any billing format; the format only changes who carries the risk of a wrong estimate.

• Per visit or monthly flat rate suits recurring maintenance. You carry the risk of slow visits, so job-cost the first month and reprice a property that runs long. Twelve equal monthly payments smooth seasonal cash flow but leave you exposed if a client cancels in August.
• Lump sum with unit prices suits installs and commercial scopes. The client gets a firm number, and unit prices handle changes without renegotiating.
• Time and materials suits undefined work such as storm cleanup or overgrown lots. Quote a loaded hourly rate per person (in our example, about $56 per person-hour before profit and $62 after) rather than a bare wage, and set a not-to-exceed figure so the client can say yes.

A one-page landscaping bid sheet

Section	What to record
Site	Address, contact, access, gate codes, parking, drive time from yard
Quantities	Turf area by mowing method, bed square feet, edging linear feet, shrub and tree counts, irrigation zones
Frequency	Visits per season; tasks per visit; once-a-year tasks
Labor	Person-hours per task, crew size, burden class (maintenance or install)
Equipment	Machine hours by machine, truck days, rentals
Materials	Item, quantity, unit cost, supplier and price-sheet date, delivery
Overhead	Person-hours × current overhead rate
Profit	Target margin; resulting markup
Terms	Exclusions, unit prices for extras, payment schedule, escalation clause, bonds or certificates required

Estimating software can hold these rates and production standards so each bid is a matter of entering quantities; if you are choosing a platform, our Jobber vs LMN comparison covers how the two handle estimating, and more operator guides sit in the business section.

This page is general information, not tax, legal or insurance advice. Payroll tax rates, unemployment wage bases, workers’ compensation rates and procurement rules change; confirm current figures with the IRS, your state workforce agency, your insurance carrier and the solicitation documents before you bid. Our methodology is described on the methodology page.