More and more organizations are opting to make formal accounting provisions for lawn care. This shows just how highly lawn maintenance has come to be regarded. Not many years ago, the few organizations which cared about lawn care would only provide for it under ‘miscellaneous allocations.’ Today, regardless of whether they want to do it in-house or by contracting it to third party lawn service providers, most organizations are making specific (and increasingly generous) allocations for lawn care.

In the course of making these budgetary allocations for lawn maintenance, many administrators find themselves faced with a major challenge, namely the challenge of estimating lawn care costs properly. The problem here is in the fact that estimates which turn out to be too high are bound to raise eyebrows. And should some of the allocated monies not be expended, it is the policy in some organizations that the budgetary allocations would be severely slashed in the next budget period. On the other hand, if your estimates are too low, chances are that you will get limited allocations and the lawn care work won’t get done to the required standard.

Now it is rather hard to tell, beforehand, what (exactly) lawn care will cost. Indeed, this is the reason as to why you can only come up with ‘estimates.’ Nobody expects ‘estimates’ to be a hundred percent accurate. But the first key to coming up with reasonably good lawn care cost estimates would be by taking into consideration all the factors which are likely to influence the lawn maintenance costs. What is the size of the lawn in question? What is the present state of the lawn in question? Is it an already existent lawn, or is it a lawn you will be creating from scratch? If it is an already existent lawn, what have you paid for its maintenance in the last few years? More specifically, what did you pay for its maintenance in the immediate past budget period? And what fundamentals have changed, during that budget period, which are likely to make you either end up paying more or less in the next accounting period?

Of course, the issue as to whether you will be doing the lawn care in-house or whether you will be outsourcing it will also have a bearing on the proper allocations to make.  It is thus a relevant consideration here.

There are instances where outsourced lawn care turns out to be costlier than in-house lawn maintenance. There are also instances where in-house lawn care turns out to be costlier than outsourced lawn care. So there are no general rules we can talk of here.

Your estimates have to be based on the reality on the ground. This means that you have to make the relevant enquiries, before actually making the final estimates. If, for instance, you are considering outsourcing the lawn maintenance work, the least you can do is to call up the firms you are considering outsourcing it to, and getting quotations from them, in order to understand what the average rates are. If you are considering doing it in-house, the ideal thing to do would be to check out the cost of the various things you are likely to be in need of – so that that lawn care (cost) estimates you come up with are actually based on the reality.

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