For lawn maintenance routes, seasonal contracts, and one-off landscape installs.
Start a Landscaping & Lawn Care Invoice →Opens with the landscaping & lawn care lines already listed. Free, no sign-up, PDF download.
Lawn care runs two completely different billing shapes out of the same truck. Maintenance is a route: high volume, low value per stop, and the invoice only works if it is cheap to produce and covers a whole month at once. Installs are projects: plants, hardscape, materials, disposal, and a deposit, where the invoice needs to look like a construction document. Using one shape for the other is the usual cause of both slow payment and unbilled work.
The line that most often goes unbilled in this trade is disposal. Clippings, brush, stumps, and old sod all cost you dump fees and truck time, and none of it is visible to the client once the truck leaves. If disposal is not its own line, it silently comes out of your margin. The same goes for material markup on an install — plants and stone bought at wholesale and installed at retail is a legitimate, standard part of the business, but only when the invoice shows materials and labor as separate lines.
Maintenance is per cut or per month on a seasonal contract (total season price ÷ months, billed evenly). Installs are quoted per project with a deposit, materials and labor separated. Cleanups and one-offs are per job or hourly with a minimum.
These are the lines this trade actually bills, the unit each is measured in, and what each one prevents. Every line below is optional — use the ones that match the job.
| Line item | Billed as | Why it belongs there |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly mowing — 4 cuts (dates listed) | per cut, billed monthly | One monthly invoice per property. Per-cut invoicing on a 60-stop route is unpayable admin. |
| Seasonal contract — monthly installment 4 of 8 | per month | Number the installment. It stops the 'we already paid you' call in month six. |
| Spring / fall cleanup — leaf and debris removal | per job or hourly | Scope by property size and leaf load. Cleanups blow past estimates more than any other line. |
| Mulch — 6 cu yd installed | per cubic yard | Quantity in the unit the client can verify. 'Mulch — $480' invites a challenge. |
| Plant material — per plant list attached | per unit | Separate from labor. Bundled plant-and-labor lines get compared to nursery retail prices. |
| Debris disposal and dump fees | per load or per job | The most commonly unbilled cost in the trade. Make it a line every single time. |
| Fertilizer / weed control application | per application | Note the product and application date — several states require it on the record anyway. |
| Equipment charge — stump grinder, aerator, skid steer | per day or per job | Rented or owned, the machine is a cost. Bill it as a line, not inside a labor rate. |
Nearly every unpaid or short-paid invoice in this trade comes down to one of these.
A downloadable template means fixing the layout, re-entering the formulas, and reformatting every time. This one fills in on screen, does the maths, and downloads a clean PDF — with the landscaping & lawn care lines already listed.
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How to invoice for lawn care and landscaping →The full guide — rates, payment terms, deposits, and what to do when the invoice goes unpaid.
Business name and contact details, any state pesticide or landscape license number, the client and the property address, a unique invoice number, the service dates covered, itemized lines separating labor from materials and disposal, subtotal and tax if applicable, and payment terms. For seasonal contracts, add which installment this is out of the total so the client can reconcile it against the agreement.
Price the full season, then divide it into equal monthly installments across the months you agreed — commonly 8 payments covering a March-to-October season, or 12 to smooth the client's cash flow across the year. Bill the same amount on the same day each month and label the installment number. The whole benefit of the seasonal model is that neither side re-negotiates in a heavy-growth week or a drought month, so the invoice should never vary with the number of cuts.
No — a markup on materials is standard across the trade and covers your sourcing, hauling, waste, and warranty on plant material that dies. What matters is that materials and labor appear as separate lines so the client sees a coherent structure rather than one large unexplained number. If a client asks you to pass materials through at cost, price the labor accordingly; you cannot do both.
Put the cancellation window in your service agreement and repeat it in your invoice notes. A route stop cancelled the morning of is a slot you cannot resell, and it is billable — but only if the policy pre-existed the cancellation in writing. Under a seasonal contract, skipped cuts normally do not reduce the installment, which is exactly why the contract terms should be stated on the invoice itself.
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