Landscaping requires an immense amount of meticulous planning, communication, and budgeting. Every private or commercial landscaping job will be different from the next. So you have to churn out a new estimate whenever you’re in touch with a new potential client.
Want to do this more efficiently at scale? Use our fully customizable landscaping estimate template. To highlight what it can do, we’ll break down the different applications and benefits of using a professional landscaping estimate template and showcase how to use it.
What is a landscaping estimate template?
A landscaping estimate template is a document that simplifies the estimation of the costs involved in a specific landscaping project. It’s a shortcut to professionally presenting a detailed estimate of material costs, unit prices, and labor costs for landscaping jobs.
Most landscaping estimate templates include the following details:
- The date of estimate creation and submission
- The name and contact details of your landscaping business
- The name and contact details of your client
- The address of the property requiring landscaping
- An estimate of material costs
- An estimate of labor costs
- An estimate of overhead costs
- An estimate of subcontractor costs
When creating a landscaping estimate, use a template that will produce the most accurate landscape cost estimate. The most suitable one depends on the type of landscaping work and whether it is commercial landscaping or a small-scale private gig.
As with any budget estimate, a landscaping estimate template is made up of line items. A line item is simply the general name given to an item that will be listed in a budget. These items can be listed in different formats.
Many smaller contractors try to make things work with word processors like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. While it’s easy enough to create an estimate and print it out, these tools lack the functionality to effectively manage potential deals, forecast future cash flow, and manage your projects effectively.
But what can the right landscaping estimate template do for your business?
Why use a landscaping estimate template?
Presenting a client with a neatly laid out summary of the costs for a landscaping project is a sign of professionalism and trustworthiness. But there are more reasons to use a landscaping estimate template. Let’s look at some of them.
It helps you see the big picture
It can be challenging to keep your finger on the pulse of your project. You have to communicate with multiple parties, transport various materials, and remain aware of future steps. Writing down your plans in an estimate as well the processes and elements involved helps you understand the big picture. That way, you can get more involved and understand the smaller steps along the way.
It helps maintain communication with your clients
A well-thought-out template minimizes the risk of miscommunication. Creating an estimate ensures potential clients get all the information they need to make a decision, while including cost estimates facilitates an honest line of communication with your clients.
Thorough research into all project costs lets you deliver on your promises, making sure you maintain a good, honest relationship with your clients.It can help you adjust your landscaping project if necessary
Investing in the planning stage of any project is often the difference between success and failure. Having an estimate of exactly how much money and manpower is needed allows you to adjust your landscaping projects where necessary.
You may be inspired to search for new suppliers when you notice your estimate sheet going over budget when you’re only halfway through compiling a list of necessary materials. A clear-cut template helps you see where the biggest cost centers are and adjust the plan to remain within budget at an early stage.
But different companies need different templates — let’s explore a few different use cases.
What are some examples of a landscaping estimate template?
There are several ways landscaping companies can use templates. Below, we’ll show real-life examples of how they manage their business with templates.
General landscaping business estimate template
Although this free landscaping estimate template is fairly basic — what makes it unique is the way it separates costs. Instead of separating the landscaping costs based on materials and labor, the cost estimates are categorized by area.
The landscaper can give a total cost for each area, as well as the cost for each line item. This template is useful if the client is trying to decide which areas need landscaping and which don’t.
Landscaping lawn care estimate template
This landscaping business estimate for a lawn care company is a bit more detailed. It includes sections for the materials used, plant information, the labor involved, customer information, and job description. It also has space for you to add your company name, address, and logo.
This template separates the estimated costs into categories, such as plants, labor, lawn materials, and hard materials. The total estimated costs for each of these categories can be seen at the bottom, as well as the total cost estimate for the whole landscaping job.
If you want more power than a text or spreadsheet-based template can offer, monday.com has just the landscaping estimate template for you.
monday.com’s smart landscaping estimate template
Even smaller contractors have dozens of potential deals in any given quarter. Staying on top of all potential and sold projects is a challenge — that’s why we’ve created an interactive landscaping estimate template that helps you manage all landscaping projects in your pipeline.
Separate paid from potential projects, create approval processes, and create your own material categories. The template is also fully customizable — you can add or remove columns desired to make sure it looks like what you want.
Edit and share your landscaping estimate from anywhere
Our interactive landscaping estimate template lets you customize and view your landscaping estimate from anywhere in the world. We’ve combined our expertise in workflow solutions with next-generation work software to take the stress out of planning and executing your landscaping projects.
With our live editing capabilities, you can share, review, and edit your landscaping estimate with clients and team members any time, anywhere. Simply create a link to your estimate board, and voila! They’ll have access.
Communicate with your team seamlessly
From your own landscaping team to subcontractors and clients, there can be a lot of people for you to stay in touch with. And to communicate effectively, context is everything. Our template lets you communicate with your team within the context of your landscaping project.
Say goodbye to endless email chains and weekly sync meetings. All messages about your landscaping estimate can be viewed on one consolidated platform. By clicking on any item, you can access prior updates and post new messages, all within the context of each task.
Get a clear overview of future projects
With built-in timelines and a dedicated Timeline View, you can stay on top of ongoing and future projects at a glance. You can color-code the projects with custom statuses so that you know which ones are paid for, overdue, or lost with a single look.
There are endless ways to organize your template. You can even take inspiration from other industry templates to create one that fully meets your needs.
Related monday.com templates
Let’s explore some related templates that can help you grow your landscaping business.
Construction management template
Our construction management template keeps you updated on the live status of your construction projects. It orchestrates your operations through streamlining communication between those working on a site and those working at the office.
You can avoid overspending by creating a budget projection plan that is as accurate as possible. A construction management template will help you to stay on track, meet your deadlines, minimize costs, and keep your customer happy.
Project requests and approvals template
Many of our templates revolve around streamlining communication to promote time-efficient and resource-savvy productivity. The project requests and approvals template is no different — it notifies you instantly of urgent client requests and any unexpected changes to your plan. Plus, it lets you create customizable and shareable forms that you can share with clients and stakeholders.
Invoice tracker template
The invoice tracker template is useful for any business dealing with invoices. And, let’s face it, every business does.
List your client’s information, the work you have done for them, and the costs involved to create a detailed yet highly organized history of the various invoices you have sent out. These templates can even assist with converting estimates to invoices. This is a function that is particularly useful when working in conjunction with a landscaping estimate template.
Budget tracker template
Stay on top of your financial status and monitor expenses with our all-in-one budget tracker template. Monitoring a business’ budget can be a messy and confusing endeavor. There are countless costs and incomes that need to be accounted for on a daily basis. This template will help your business operate more efficiently.
FAQs about landscaping estimate template
How do I write my landscaping estimate?
To write a landscaping estimate, you need to create an overview of all the costs of the potential project, including the design, trees, plants, digging, repaving, etc. For large projects, you should break the costs down into categories like “lawn materials” and “hard materials.”
But to create landscaping estimates is no simple task — the sheer volume of information that needs to be presented in an easy-to-digest format makes the process more complex and time-consuming than a quick write-up. That’s why monday.com created the perfect template to help you create estimates efficiently at scale.
When you use our intuitive drag-and-drop builder, you can quickly customize the template to be on-brand and create a professional landscaping estimate in just a few minutes.
What is an estimate sheet?
An estimate sheet provides clients with a detailed breakdown of all the costs involved in the commission of a specific project. It ensures that both parties are in agreement to facilitate an efficient and cost-effective project execution.
How do I estimate landscaping costs?
This really comes down to research. The more thorough your research, the more accurate your landscaping costs will be. Contact a range of suppliers to secure materials that you feel are well-priced. But remember that the quality may be compromised for the bottom-of-barrel products. If the products break in a few years, that can compromise your reputation and become much more expensive in the long run.