Guide
Garden maintenance contracts: how to schedule and bill them.
Regular maintenance is the steadiest work a garden or grounds firm has, and the easiest to lose money on quietly. Here is how to set a contract up, price it, schedule the rounds and bill without missing visits.
The numbers in the example are made up to show the method. They are not market rates and not any real firm's prices. This is general guidance, not legal advice.
- What the contract says
- Turning visits into a monthly price
- Ways to bill
- Scheduling the rounds
- Keeping billing and visits in step
- Late payment
- Questions
What the contract says
A garden maintenance contract, or grounds maintenance contract for larger sites, only needs to answer a few questions clearly. Most disputes come from a gap in one of them.
- The site and the work. Address, and a list of what each visit covers: mowing, edging, weeding, hedge trimming, pruning, leaf clearance, lawn feeding, green waste.
- How often. Visits per year and how they vary by season, for example fortnightly in the growing season and monthly in winter.
- What is not included. Hedge cutting above a height, tree work, waste from a big clear-up. Say how extras are priced and that you will agree them before doing them.
- Green waste. Whether you take it away, and whether there is a charge.
- Access. Gate codes, pets, who is at home, what happens if you cannot get in.
- Weather and missed visits. What you do when it is too wet or frozen to work. Most firms make the visit up rather than credit it.
- Price and payment. Total or per-visit price, how and when it is paid, and when the price is reviewed each year.
- Start date, length and notice. How either side ends it.
Turning visits into an even monthly price
Visits are bunched in summer, but customers prefer to pay the same each month. The approach is to price a visit, add up the year, and divide by the number of payments.
| Line | How it is worked out | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Price of a normal visit | 2 hours, 1 person, at £30 an hour | £60 |
| Growing season visits | March to October, fortnightly: 8 months, 2 visits each, 16 visits at £60 | £960 |
| Winter visits | November to February, monthly: 4 visits at £60 | £240 |
| Lawn feeds | 2 visits at £45, materials included | £90 |
| Annual price | Sum of the lines above | £1,290 |
| Monthly payment | £1,290 divided by 12 | £107.50 |
| Monthly payment with VAT | If you are VAT registered: £107.50 plus 20% (£21.50) | £129.00 |
The £60 visit price should come from the same method you use for any job: your fully loaded labour cost, overheads and the profit you need. See how to price landscaping jobs.
Include travel. A garden 25 minutes from the yard costs more per visit than one next door, and a contract is a promise to go there every fortnight.
Ways to bill
- Even monthly payments
- Customers like it, and your cash flow is level. The risk is that you are paid in winter for little work, and if a customer leaves in July you are owed for the summer you have not yet been paid for. Say in the contract what happens at the end.
- Invoice each visit
- Simple and fair, but it is more admin, payments chase you, and a wet month means no income.
- Quarterly or seasonal invoices
- Fewer invoices, but bigger ones, and more to chase.
Whichever you choose, put the amount, the day of the month and the payment method in the contract. If you use QuickBooks, a recurring invoice per contract is one way to keep monthly billing regular.
Scheduling the rounds
The scheduling job is to turn "fortnightly" into dates on a calendar, staffed, with the right equipment, and then to cope when the weather changes it.
- Group by area. Put the visits for a neighbourhood on the same day so the crew is not driving across town.
- Put the visits in the calendar for the season. Not just the next one, so holiday gaps are visible.
- Check staff and holidays. The most common maintenance failure is a round that nobody covered.
- Expect rain. Leave slack in the week, and decide in advance which visits slide and which cannot.
- Tell the customer. A message the day before, or when a visit moves, prevents a lot of calls.
Keeping billing and visits in step
Once a month, compare three lists: the contracts you have, the visits that were done, and the invoices that went out. Gaps show up quickly. A contract nobody invoices is lost income. A contract invoiced but not visited is a complaint waiting to happen.
Late payment
If your customer is a business, such as a property manager or a company, statutory interest of 8% plus the Bank of England base rate may be charged on late commercial payments, unless the contract sets a different rate, according to GOV.UK (checked 3 November 2026). That rule is for business-to-business transactions. Put your payment terms and any late-payment charge in the contract, and take advice on the wording.
Doing this in EasyUse
EasyUse has a garden-maintenance quote calculator that prices an agreement from rates you set. A contract's visit schedule creates its upcoming visits on the rota, so they can be staffed, checked for double-booking and holidays, flagged if the forecast is poor for that kind of work (flags are advice only), and completed by the crew on their phones. Weed-spraying visits can carry a spray record.
What it does not do: it does not collect payments, and it does not create the recurring invoices in QuickBooks for you today. You set those up in QuickBooks. Ask us on a call about checking active contracts against what QuickBooks is billing. See the features page, the live demo (made-up data), or how the free pilot works.
Questions
How do I price a garden maintenance contract?
Price one visit from your costs and the time it takes, multiply by the number of visits in a year, add any feeds or extras, and divide by the number of payments. The worked example above shows the sums.
Should I charge the same every month?
Most customers prefer it and it levels your income. It works best with a clear contract that says what happens if the contract ends part-way through the year.
What if I miss a visit because of the weather?
Say in the contract that the visit will be made up, not credited, and then make sure you do. Keeping a record of each visit makes this easy to show.
Can software schedule recurring garden visits?
Yes, most job-management software can. In EasyUse a contract has a visit schedule that puts the visits on the rota. Compare the options on the Jobber, Tradify and ServiceM8 comparison pages.
Sources
- Statutory interest on late business payments: gov.uk/late-commercial-payments-interest-debt-recovery/charging-interest-commercial-debt, checked 3 November 2026.
Related: How to price landscaping jobs, Weed-spraying records, EasyUse vs spreadsheets.
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Read what is built on the features page, click around the live demo (made-up data), or see how the free pilot works.