Forum

Gardeners Prices 2014

I'm setting up a gardening business later this year, having completed a college course and having great experience working in my families garden nursery. What are people charging for general maintenance (i.e. pruning, mowing, hedge cutting, small tre

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Taking card payments using iZettle from Santander

Morning all...
I have just seen that Santander are offering a card reader machine for taking payments to businesses on the move.

I am just curious to see if anyone uses this machine or if there is anything better / more user friendly or has a better p

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An extra hour to the working day as clocks go forward

I hope everyone remembered to put their clocks forward one hour last night?

We may have lost an hour in bed but at least we've gained an hour of gardening time in in the evening. That's, potentially, an extra 5 hours of profitability.

Do you take adv

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Landscape Juice Premium membership renewals

We have just started to send out renewal notifications for Premium Practitioner and Premium Supplier memberships.

If you have not received your renewal invoice then please watch out for it in the next week or two.

Members already on recurring payment

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what pidgeonhole do you site your business in ??

M.I.B Services pidgeonhole themselves as landscape maintenance contractors for the simple reason 99% of our work is commercial. However many of my customers still refer to us as a gardening company.

I always try to stress that we are not gardeners, we

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The day I took on the tradesmen's guild

When Simon Read, The Independent's personal finance editor, hired a roofer to repair storm damage, he was shocked to see that half the bill consisted of travel time. So he wrote about it – and all hell was let loose

"I still wasn't convinced. A locks

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how do you keep track

Hi im getting work coming in now and need a way of keeping on yop of where and when im working and how has payed or not .What is the best way to get control any help will be aprshatedGbanks craig

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What would you do?

Just been to look at a garden that requires renovation of two wildly overgrown shrubs beds that are full of weeds.

The job is straight forward however the garden is covered in broken sofas and chairs, but more importantly COVERED in dogs mess to the p

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Is client chatting in working time - 'working time' ?

Two of our guys spent a day at a job yesterday carrying out maintenance for a client, I was very surprised to then get a phone call accusing them of 'not working a full day'.

It later transpired that the woman assumed we had left early when she went t

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Is it time people changed their attitude towards gardeners?

I've published a guest post this morning from Stephen Titton.

"There can be few other industries, where the knowledge and skills needed to effectively carry out the job, and the resultant pay, are so disproportionate"

It's a passionate open plea from

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Have you got more than one Limited Company

I would be interested to know if anyone has more than one limited company, for example one for Lawn Care, another for Landscaping, and perhaps another for Garden Maintenance.

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Garden designer insurance, public liability etc

Hi, I need to renew my insurance to trade as a garden designer and I also carry out planting etc. Can anybody recommend a good insurance company?

Thanks so much

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What does a gardener charge 2014

Thought it would be interesting where we are at now with prices

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Landscape Juice Network joins in call on government to slash refurb VAT to boost economy by £15 billion

A VAT reduction on housing renovation and repair could boost the UK economy by more than £15 billion from 2015 to 2020 according to a new independent research report by Experian.

This reduction could also create more than 95,000 jobs and save 240,000

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How much to charge for garden maintenance

Hi,

I have put off increasing my rates for a while now but with ever increasing overheads I have to put them up. Is £18 to £20 per hour in the Hertfordshire area unreasonable. I have already had two of my regulars give up my services because of this.

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Over run by a day,do you bill extra

Customer paid deposit for the materials,we agreed on a balance of £700,job was to take 3 days to complete,100x 600mm sq paving stones,shed base and install a shed,running about a day behind,do I bill the customer for the extra day,blagg extra materia

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Health insurance

Hi

How many of you guys have yourself insured for things like broken bones ect?

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Terms and conditions - when to send?

Forgive the possible naivety of this question but I'm still new to the self-employment game!I have drawn up a standard set of T & Cs (page of a4) for my maintenance business however slightly unsure of when to send them?- do they go with the quote? An

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Moving business and starting again - any tips?

Due to personal circumstances I have recently packed up my general garden services business in Leeds and relocated permanently to the Wirral. A whole new area in which to operate.

I have sorted all of the basics out over the course of the last month -

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Think I may need to start looking for somewhere to work from.

I currently run my garden maintenance business from home but I am thinking I might have to look for somewhere else to work from. What puts me off, obviously is the costs and the pressure it puts on what you have to charge the customer, but in this ga

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