Forum

Voluntary customer charter

I have created the first draft customer charter that can be downloaded. I am sure it is not exhaustive but never the less, it gives us the basis to move this forward. Because it has been produced with you in mind, it is important that you are complet

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Fixed quotes?

Hi All.

I always tended to try and offer the client a fixed price quote so they could budget ok.

However, i keep overrunning and incurring extra costs which im currently absorbing, but im wondering whether i need to actually offer fixed price jobs.

For

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Using associates/subs

I've been running my garden maintenance business for a year and am getting to the stage where I need additional help, any tips for approaching and using associates/subs 'v' employing help?

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Gardening chargeout rates and mindset management

You are all adding some great stuff and I can tell you that the feed back from members about the site, and members on other members, is so positive and I am delighted it is going so well. I would like to draw attention to this post from Phil Luscombe

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Small business advice - free downloads

I hope that you are find the resources here of great use. I intend to add to these resources over time as when I find the right one to promote. I do not have all the answers to the potential problems that your business my encounter, either as a start

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Get shot of under performing contracts

Let us assume that you have five separate contracts each week and that four of them are accurate when it comes to the charge out rate.

The fifth one however only covers one fifth (20%) of your yearly cost (assuming it is a day a week for the year).

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Try this simple hourly rate test

Establishing what is the right rate to charge yourself out at is the tricky bit and nobody will get it 100% correct -but how do you know where to start?

Below is an example of how a one man band should approach setting a charge out rate.

My first con

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Treating your travel as a cost of landscape sales

Imagine quoting for two separate jobs? One job is located just 2 miles from your operating base and the other job is located 30 miles away.

For the sake of this exercise, let's say that both landscaping projects are exactly the same specification.

H

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It is never too early to seek advice

This is probably the hardest time for garden companies since the early 90's when a bleak recession gripped the United Kingdom. Many businesses ceased trading as work dried up and competition cut margins to negative figures. We are now very close to e

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What is the legal status of a verbal contract?

I'm looking for advice on how you would all deal with this situation.I had looked after all of the maintenance needs of a small hilltop estate in Ayrshire for a Lady for 2 years. She was extremely satisfied with everything we did, how we went about d

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Business - turnover

Would be interested to compare turnover with you.We generally aim for a turnover of £8000 a week. We have reduced our work force to three from 9 guys with only a £2000 drop in turnover. And still its all very tight and we aint wealthy by any means.

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How is everyone finding the present economy?

Just returned from a visit to a local farm where we store the Safety Scene trailer and spent a while chatting to the farmer and his staff.They are predicting bleak times for food and milk (milk???) yup the farming community have seen 100% increase in

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What does a gardener charge?

For those of you who are new to Landscape Juice, you might want to check out a post called 'what to charge per hour', I wrote in early 2007. Attached to that post is a method for charging out machinery and how to charge-out your travel costs in the p

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