your pricing is up to you.

Several things come into play for pricing.

One of them is to "reverse engineer" a price.

Mcdonalds puts out a 1.90 cent burger... to compete, BK looks at their prices to figure out how they can replicate or beat that.

If the local competition is charging $45 per app for a service and your math comes to $70, you have to figure out why.

Do you take longer? Are you selling a better product? are you getting a raw deal on pricing?
did you make an estimation error? Did they?

Frequently different people arrive at prices by non standard practices such as: SWAG (scientific wild ass guess), copying someone else's price list, taking the cost of the product and multiplying by 2 or 2.5 or 3...
All those things are and should be considered in your pricing but shouldn't be how you determine your pricing.

Once you figure out what your price is to apply an acre then divide by 44 and thats your price per thousand.

You will frequently find that "only" 3,000-5,000 square feet will come out to a silly low number like $12, in which case you have to establish a minimum...lets say $30 for example.
That means that every app from 0-7,500 sq ft will be $30 and then every thing Over 7,500 will be multiplied by your MSF rate.

Example If I do an acre of 21-7-14 with trimec and I want to apply at 4 lbs per thousand that means applying 176 pounds of product.
Lets say your cost per 40# bag is $30..or 80 cents per pound.
Apply 30% mark up for material and you have $1.10 for material per pound.
You're going to be using 176 pounds so $193.60 is your material cost.
Let's say 1.2 hours is your time to apply and you charge $72 per hour
That's $86.40 for labor.
86.40 added to 193.60 is $280.00... your price per acre is $280.00
Divide $280 by 44 (thousands of sq ft per acre rounded up) and you get $6.40 per thousand square feet.

so 3,500 square feet would be (3.5 x 6.4) $22.40.... whats your minimum? Consider call backs, warranty/guaranty, Ive got one weed and its your fault... every SMALL lawn is the same call back as every big lawn, so say you want this app to have a minimum of $38.00, this covers your guaranty and the risk of a call back, not to mention the time it takes to drive out to the job is going to be higher per thousand square feet than an acre (same time to drive there, less sq ft) and admin billing time off property.
so anywhere from 1-6,000 square feet is going to be $38.00
but 7,000 square feet (6.4 x 7) will be $45 (44.80 rounded up)

 

Typical is a charge per thousand sqft--perhaps 3 dollars--which covers the labor and chemical cost for 1000 sqft. You have to calculate the average chemical cost per year for the fert and herbicide, per thousand sqft.

Then a "stop charge" is added to cover overhead and the cost to drive to the site--maybe 25 dollars.

Find your overhead by adding up the remaining expenses last year. Divide by the number of stops you made.

Add in some margin to pay yourself for the risk of being in business.

 

We have a minimum per 5000 sqft that is charged regardless up to 5000 sqft then so much per 1000 after the 5000. So a minimum of $50 then $9 per 1000. So a 7000 sq ft yard is $68. No matter how big. All are figured the same.

 

Where are you at, Reynolds Plantation?

 

We charge a min. of $30.00, our average cost charged is $4.5 per k! I wish we could get $9