Fixed price or hourly rate: how to price recurring garden and cleaning work
Every service business with regular customers faces the same pricing fork: charge a fixed price per visit, or an hourly rate. Strong opinions exist on both sides. The truth is duller and more useful: each fits a different kind of job, and a healthy round usually contains both.
What fixed pricing really trades
A fixed price says: this visit costs twenty eight pounds, however long it takes.
Customers love it because it is predictable. You benefit because efficiency belongs to you: as you get faster at a garden you know well, your effective hourly rate rises, and that is fair reward for skill.
The risk sits on your side. Underestimate the job, or let it slowly grow, and you are donating time every visit. Fixed prices suit work that is stable and knowable: the same lawn, the same hedge, the regular clean of the same house. They suit it best when you have seen the property before quoting, and when you re check occasionally that the job has not quietly doubled.
The classic fixed price failure is not the bad quote. It is the good quote eroded by three years of "while you are here, could you just". Scope creep is a pricing problem wearing a politeness costume.
What hourly rates really trade
An hourly rate says: my time costs twenty two pounds an hour, and the job takes what it takes.
You are protected: overgrown, oversized or unpredictable work cannot sink you, because every hour is paid. Hourly suits restoration jobs, gardens that vary wildly with the seasons, and new customers whose properties you have not yet learned.
The costs are subtler. Customers experience hourly rates as uncertainty, and uncertainty generates scrutiny: was it really three hours? Efficiency now works against you, since the better you get, the less you earn from the same job. And hourly billing demands honest time records, which is one more piece of admin every single visit.
A simple rule for choosing per customer
Price the predictable, meter the unpredictable.
Regular maintenance you can see and size: fixed. First visits, clearances, restorations and anything you cannot confidently estimate: hourly, often converting to fixed once the job settles into a rhythm. That conversion moment, usually after two or three visits, is a natural and easy conversation: "now I know the garden, I can give you a set price of X per visit."
Whichever basis a customer is on, write it down: the basis, the amount, and what the visit includes. Most pricing disputes are really memory disputes.
Keep both honest over time
Fixed prices need an annual review, because costs move and jobs grow. Hourly rates need the same review, plus honest hours. And every year, glance across the business for the outliers: the fixed job that now takes twice the time it is priced for, the hourly customer whose job has been identical for a year and would be happier fixed. Ten minutes with the list keeps the whole round fair in both directions.
How RotaRound helps
- Each property carries a fixed price per visit or an hourly rate with the hours per visit, and the date it took effect.
- Reviews land on one list when they fall due, so both kinds of price are looked at once a year.
- The invoice download prices each visit at the rate in force on its date.
- The customer's page shows what they pay and what was done on each visit.
- An agreement writes down the basis, the amount and what the visit includes.