Hey Henrik, love the honesty. Two things I'm doing to avoid that- I know you do a lot of commercial props, so this doesn't apply for that scenario, but I offer to let my residential props either pay up front for the season, or have a card on file for weekly automated billing. We get some push-back, but when you do good work, work is always in high demand. Best of luck brother, look forward to having you on the podcast soon.
Henrik, Something to consider for next year - if you do one mowing in April, even if you feel it is not worth it to invoice one mowing, send your statements for April. Ninety mowings times the average amount you bill is adult money, which will help in May. The other thing to keep in mind is as you finish up your year in November, keep a larger reserve in the bank to tide you through until mid-June to cover your fixed costs, fixed payments, spring payroll, spring fuel, etc. Cash is King, and having cash available makes all the difference in the world on how easy it is to sleep at night. (Yes I know you have snow removal income in the winter, but given the amount of snow removal income isn't guaranteed I would not count on that to tide you over until you receive your early June payments.) Hope this is helpful.
With landscaping I always get payed upon completion or the same day as completion. You avoid people ripping you off and never forget about billing them.
Like others are saying, keep your overhead minimal and cash flow is king. Spring cleanups and landscape jobs I bill out on the same day of service, gets your bank account looking healthy for the first 6-8 weeks of the season until mowing money starts flowing in. Fall cleanups make a nice cushion going into winter, snowplowing breakdowns happen and usually costly to repair!
Card in file, bill first of each month for the month. Cash flow is extremely important with overhead. We lost 38 clients when we switched, 22 came back after a month. If you always do, what you always did. Youll always get what you always got! You got it dude, keep grinding
Typical seasonality that accompanies your business model. Have you considered setting up seasonal contracts? Possibly bill clients, the first of April for April, etc. Possibly set up 7 month seasonal payments for your client, to spread out the cost for your clients, and provide 6 months of service. Win Win. Be creative, possibly offer a 5% discount for early pay's. Meaning if the client pays in March, for April services, they get a 5% discount. Look at the cost of money, and weigh it out. You got this !!! Keep on killin it
Hi Henrik, I'm also a teen doing some lawn care stuff (not nearly on the scale you are though). Most of my year has been good. I have a bit over 2k in revenue so far this year from fertilizing, aeration, overseeding, landscaping and mowing. I a really bad breakdown witb my zt so i have had to use my backup mower which is a base model lawn tractor so that has been fun lol. Thankfully i get it back this week so back to efficient mowing! Anyways, always love watching uour stuff and if you can spare the time, I would love to see some more mowing vlogs!
I have a big landscaping company in Pa and it’s the same here. What I usually do is pay all my expenses with the smaller contracts I have that pay per cut. Then by May the checks start coming in and I’m able to start Saving and putting money away
Welcome to cash flow management Henrik. If you haven't already done this, talk to your banker about a line of credit ....a loan account that is for short term pitfalls in cash income. You tap it when things are thin and pay it back quickly when things improve.
Offering a little discount in the beginning of the season to anyone who wants to pay up front is always a good way to have that extra money for payroll, gas, and other expenses. This is my 4th year in the business and we decided to offer a %6 discount to a handful of customers. It really helped with all of the above and made it a lot less stressful waiting for that first month of billing to come around.
How I do it now is bill on the 1st and 15th of each month for lawn care. This will help cash flow and stop service incase someone can’t/doesn’t pay. I started doing this with snow this past season and it worked fine. So far no one has complained and it’s worked for me and keeping cash flow steady.
Just watch your video. You're not the only one who's having a tuff time starting off the season. I just posted a video about what I'm going thru. It was extremely hard for me to post because I'm a very private person, but I did it for the new entrepreneurs that are coming into the business. I've been doing this for 10 yrs and this is the worst start of a season and it seems almost impossible to recover from. I charge on the 1st and 15th of the month, which helps for the in-between times or rain days. But no matter if it's a 1 time mow or not, always charge. Keep hustling and grinding, young man! Hope to see you one day if you ever decide to come back to GA and visit BDS
Cash is KING! Cash flow is critical especially during the spring rush. We are Due on Receipt for residential and Net 15 or Net 30 for commercial. Credit card helps with cash flow because it allows us to pay off the COGS at the same time we are paid. We always pay off our balance (no interest and 2% cash back). 50% deposit on landscape projects also greatly helps with cash flow. If you have cards on file CHARGE them ASAP! No reason to wait. You can also increase your invoice frequency to 15th and 30th or after service completion.
Always bill either at the first of the month or at the end of service way to risky billing at the end of the month landscape projects ALWAYS due at time of completion cash flow is everything
Hang in there man. you should invoice end of each month even if for just one cut. We usually get all payments by the second week of the new month but will be changing to make it be the first week.. and landscape projects we dont do net terms unless its a big project. and those we try to get a percent up front to lock the job in. Dont want to get burned. Keep hustling man
Hey Henrik! We prefer to run our landscaping invoicing monthly as you do, but most all of our business is invoice date of service Net15. Our owner is a past banker and he believes in having a small A/R on the books, but we also run a lot of our business on the line of credit, as it sounds like you do as well. We would agree with some of the other folks in this post about making sure closer to the end of the Fall season to keep and run a good amount of cash line back into the main account to keep to use for overhead expenses and such for the beginning of the next year. This allows you to do more also for customers from year-to-year and offer easier payment options such as the ones you have now. Excellent work and enjoy the posts! Keep it up man, you got this and look to be doing quite well with the number of yards/week.
Yeah all my residential prop cards get charged after each mow same day as service.. commercial Props are net 30 so it is what it is.. Recommend having both so you kinda avoid cash flow problems
Samething here, I’ve had 10 clients that are 8 months behind on payment just for a $50-60 cut which is cheap but not too expensive. Not bad for 10 clients, but still it’s annoying and can help a lot with my expenses. They just aren’t responsibility people like us. How disappointing!
Also maybe try seasonal contracts for mowing. Id say 70% of my customers pay for the whole mowing season upfront. Worked great that way for my father for 32 years and been working great for me the past 3 years. Get a strong base of loyal customers and your golden my boy.
Hey henrik! I noticed you still have your gator.. is that something your still using or not because of your trucks? I’m 14 so I can’t drive yet so I have one and am looking to start a business, is that something that will help me, it’s nice because it has the power dump for things like mulch, thanks!
Hay man I'm starting out in New Zealand just got my zero turn an im in a similar situation because I have as much work as I want but it's a international property investment company my end goal is similar to yours an I wanna be able to invoke once a month for my corporate clients do you feel this is the right direction to head in to seem like a more professional choice or should I stuck to a 7 day follow up on payments Thanks Aidan
Hey Henrik, love the honesty. Two things I'm doing to avoid that- I know you do a lot of commercial props, so this doesn't apply for that scenario, but I offer to let my residential props either pay up front for the season, or have a card on file for weekly automated billing. We get some push-back, but when you do good work, work is always in high demand.
Best of luck brother, look forward to having you on the podcast soon.
Henrik, Something to consider for next year - if you do one mowing in April, even if you feel it is not worth it to invoice one mowing, send your statements for April. Ninety mowings times the average amount you bill is adult money, which will help in May. The other thing to keep in mind is as you finish up your year in November, keep a larger reserve in the bank to tide you through until mid-June to cover your fixed costs, fixed payments, spring payroll, spring fuel, etc. Cash is King, and having cash available makes all the difference in the world on how easy it is to sleep at night. (Yes I know you have snow removal income in the winter, but given the amount of snow removal income isn't guaranteed I would not count on that to tide you over until you receive your early June payments.) Hope this is helpful.
With landscaping I always get payed upon completion or the same day as completion. You avoid people ripping you off and never forget about billing them.
Like others are saying, keep your overhead minimal and cash flow is king. Spring cleanups and landscape jobs I bill out on the same day of service, gets your bank account looking healthy for the first 6-8 weeks of the season until mowing money starts flowing in. Fall cleanups make a nice cushion going into winter, snowplowing breakdowns happen and usually costly to repair!
Every business goes through rough patches. Just gotta overcome the obstacle. Stick around long enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel
Card in file, bill first of each month for the month. Cash flow is extremely important with overhead. We lost 38 clients when we switched, 22 came back after a month. If you always do, what you always did. Youll always get what you always got! You got it dude, keep grinding
Typical seasonality that accompanies your business model. Have you considered setting up seasonal contracts? Possibly bill clients, the first of April for April, etc. Possibly set up 7 month seasonal payments for your client, to spread out the cost for your clients, and provide 6 months of service. Win Win. Be creative, possibly offer a 5% discount for early pay's. Meaning if the client pays in March, for April services, they get a 5% discount. Look at the cost of money, and weigh it out. You got this !!! Keep on killin it
Hi Henrik, I'm also a teen doing some lawn care stuff (not nearly on the scale you are though). Most of my year has been good. I have a bit over 2k in revenue so far this year from fertilizing, aeration, overseeding, landscaping and mowing. I a really bad breakdown witb my zt so i have had to use my backup mower which is a base model lawn tractor so that has been fun lol. Thankfully i get it back this week so back to efficient mowing! Anyways, always love watching uour stuff and if you can spare the time, I would love to see some more mowing vlogs!
I have a big landscaping company in Pa and it’s the same here. What I usually do is pay all my expenses with the smaller contracts I have that pay per cut. Then by May the checks start coming in and I’m able to start Saving and putting money away
Welcome to cash flow management Henrik. If you haven't already done this, talk to your banker about a line of credit ....a loan account that is for short term pitfalls in cash income. You tap it when things are thin and pay it back quickly when things improve.
Offering a little discount in the beginning of the season to anyone who wants to pay up front is always a good way to have that extra money for payroll, gas, and other expenses. This is my 4th year in the business and we decided to offer a %6 discount to a handful of customers. It really helped with all of the above and made it a lot less stressful waiting for that first month of billing to come around.
How I do it now is bill on the 1st and 15th of each month for lawn care. This will help cash flow and stop service incase someone can’t/doesn’t pay. I started doing this with snow this past season and it worked fine. So far no one has complained and it’s worked for me and keeping cash flow steady.
Just watch your video. You're not the only one who's having a tuff time starting off the season.
I just posted a video about what I'm going thru. It was extremely hard for me to post because I'm a very private person, but I did it for the new entrepreneurs that are coming into the business.
I've been doing this for 10 yrs and this is the worst start of a season and it seems almost impossible to recover from.
I charge on the 1st and 15th of the month, which helps for the in-between times or rain days.
But no matter if it's a 1 time mow or not, always charge.
Keep hustling and grinding, young man! Hope to see you one day if you ever decide to come back to GA and visit BDS
Cash is KING! Cash flow is critical especially during the spring rush. We are Due on Receipt for residential and Net 15 or Net 30 for commercial. Credit card helps with cash flow because it allows us to pay off the COGS at the same time we are paid. We always pay off our balance (no interest and 2% cash back). 50% deposit on landscape projects also greatly helps with cash flow. If you have cards on file CHARGE them ASAP! No reason to wait. You can also increase your invoice frequency to 15th and 30th or after service completion.
You are a good person I support you
Always bill either at the first of the month or at the end of service way to risky billing at the end of the month landscape projects ALWAYS due at time of completion cash flow is everything
Hang in there man. you should invoice end of each month even if for just one cut. We usually get all payments by the second week of the new month but will be changing to make it be the first week.. and landscape projects we dont do net terms unless its a big project. and those we try to get a percent up front to lock the job in. Dont want to get burned. Keep hustling man
I’ve been having my best year yet! All my big landscape jobs I request half down on check to get scheduled and I cash the check 1 week before.
Oh yea we all go through it. Only advice I can give is to put some money away for next season to start off with.
Your not the only business...struggle is real
Hey Henrik! We prefer to run our landscaping invoicing monthly as you do, but most all of our business is invoice date of service Net15. Our owner is a past banker and he believes in having a small A/R on the books, but we also run a lot of our business on the line of credit, as it sounds like you do as well. We would agree with some of the other folks in this post about making sure closer to the end of the Fall season to keep and run a good amount of cash line back into the main account to keep to use for overhead expenses and such for the beginning of the next year. This allows you to do more also for customers from year-to-year and offer easier payment options such as the ones you have now. Excellent work and enjoy the posts! Keep it up man, you got this and look to be doing quite well with the number of yards/week.
someone told me when you have a company always have a savings that you can still run with no problem
That’s why i collect a few prepays for full year in March with a 5% discount
Yeah all my residential prop cards get charged after each mow same day as service..
commercial Props are net 30 so it is what it is..
Recommend having both so you kinda avoid cash flow problems
It happens bro but youll get through it was in the same position before.
Man I hope it works out for u Henrik🤨🇺🇸
Are you still in school right now? Bc for me it’s so hard to balance it with mowing and doing landscaping on the weekends.
Samething here, I’ve had 10 clients that are 8 months behind on payment just for a $50-60 cut which is cheap but not too expensive. Not bad for 10 clients, but still it’s annoying and can help a lot with my expenses. They just aren’t responsibility people like us. How disappointing!
What camera are you filming with? It is a VERY clear picture. Nice work.
Also maybe try seasonal contracts for mowing. Id say 70% of my customers pay for the whole mowing season upfront. Worked great that way for my father for 32 years and been working great for me the past 3 years. Get a strong base of loyal customers and your golden my boy.
Dont need all these apps to track shit for you , get a notebook and pen and write everything down , you’ll know when to bill people lol.
Hey henrik! I noticed you still have your gator.. is that something your still using or not because of your trucks? I’m 14 so I can’t drive yet so I have one and am looking to start a business, is that something that will help me, it’s nice because it has the power dump for things like mulch, thanks!
You should ask for either a quarter or half of the initial charge for your landscaping jobs
With $1,000 plus landscaping jobs do a contract that states payment due at end of completion
Hey henrick I'm a young entrepreneur wanting to start lawncare whats the best way to start
What happened in Florida just curious no follow up
Everybody struggles in lawn care
I get paid after every mow and after every job! I have a few that pay once a month. Im not a fan of that
Do you have any tips for advertising my lawn care business?Im 15 looking to start a business and gain clients with come friends.
Hay man I'm starting out in New Zealand just got my zero turn an im in a similar situation because I have as much work as I want but it's a international property investment company my end goal is similar to yours an I wanna be able to invoke once a month for my corporate clients do you feel this is the right direction to head in to seem like a more professional choice or should I stuck to a 7 day follow up on payments
Thanks Aidan
Hey bro yesterday was bad 2 new 8560 fell out of my trailer brand new and I’m 16 loss of 1300 😢
What software do you use? I’ve been using Jobber which is great, just expensive.
I use jobber, It’s great.
Find other people who use jobber, and use their creator code. I used a couple codes and got like $500 credited to my account
I give 7 days to pay
Do they pay within those 7 days? I give my clients 2 weeks and they still don’t pay on time
mowe mine and can i work with you