Know where every hour goes—and what it costs.
Set labor budgets for every visit, meeting, and to-do. Compare budgeted hours to actual time tracked. Identify which jobs make money, which crews run efficiently, and where your pricing is wrong. Stop guessing—start measuring.
How budgeted hours works
Set default budgets once—they apply everywhere
Go to Settings and set default budgeted hours for three event types: visits, meetings, and to-dos. A typical lawn visit might be 0.75 hours, a sales meeting might be 1 hour, and a to-do might be 0.5 hours. These defaults pre-fill automatically every time you create a new event, so you don't enter the same number over and over. Set it once and every new event starts with a realistic labor budget.
Every event gets a budget—override it when you need to
When you create a new visit, meeting, or to-do, the budgeted hours field pre-fills with your default. For most properties, the default is right. For a large commercial property or a complex landscaping job, override it with a higher number. For a small front-yard-only customer, drop it lower. The point is that every event has a target time—so when the crew finishes, you can measure performance against something real.
Crews clock in and start job timers—the rest is automatic
Employees clock in from the mobile app and start per-job timers when they begin work on a property. The time clock captures general hours and the job timer captures per-visit time. There's nothing extra for crews to do—they're already tracking time through the normal workflow. LawnPro records the actual hours against the budgeted hours in the background, building the data you need to analyze variance.
See the gap between what you planned and what actually happened
Compare budgeted hours to actual hours for any visit, customer, crew, or time period. A visit budgeted at 0.75 hours that took 1.2 hours is running 60% over budget—that's money you're losing. A crew that consistently finishes under budget is your most efficient team. The data tells you where to reprice, where to retrain, and where to double down on what's working.
What the numbers tell you
Budgeted hours turn feelings about your business into facts about your business.
Pricing Validation
That "quick 30-minute" cleanup job actually averages 52 minutes? The data shows you need to reprice the service or stop offering it. No more undercharging because you underestimated the time.
Crew Comparisons
One crew runs 30% over budget while another meets targets every week. The data shows a training opportunity—not a discipline problem. Compare crews side by side with real numbers.
Equipment ROI
Upgraded to a faster mower? Track how much time it saves per visit. Calculate exactly when the equipment pays for itself based on actual labor savings.
Accurate Estimates
Base new quotes on real data from similar past jobs. If 10,000 sq ft lawns with edging consistently take 50 minutes, you know exactly what to charge.
Pay for Performance
Budgeted hours feed directly into the Pay for Performance system. Crews who beat budgets earn more. LawnPro compares hourly and performance pay—always paying the higher amount.
Trend Over Time
See whether crews are getting faster or slower over weeks and months. Variance trends reveal whether training, equipment changes, or route changes are working.
We discovered a 30% time variance between our two crews on the same properties. Turned out one crew was taking a longer route between stops and spending extra time edging. Once we saw the numbers, we fixed it in a week. That's money we'd been losing for months without knowing.
LawnPro Customer
Simple setup, powerful insights
Start tracking budgeted hours in under five minutes.
Set Your Defaults
Go to Settings and enter default budgeted hours for visits, meetings, and to-dos. Use your best estimate to start.
Crews Track Time
Employees clock in and start job timers from the mobile app. Time is captured automatically—no extra steps.
Review Variance
Compare budgeted vs actual hours by visit, customer, crew, or time period. Identify patterns and take action.
What are budgeted hours for lawn care?
Budgeted hours for lawn care means setting a target time for how long each job should take—then tracking how long it actually takes. Most lawn care businesses have a sense of how long a property "should" take, but they don't measure it. Budgeted hours turns that feeling into data. When you know that a property is budgeted at 45 minutes and your crew spent 68 minutes, you can investigate why, fix the problem, and prevent it from happening again.
In LawnPro, you set default budgeted hours in your settings for visits, meetings, and to-dos. These defaults pre-fill on every new event you create—so every job has a target before the crew arrives. Crews track time using the clock-in/out and job timer features on the mobile app, and LawnPro compares actual time to budgeted time automatically. The result is a clear picture of which jobs are profitable, which crews are efficient, and where your pricing needs to change.
Budgeted hours also powers the Pay for Performance payroll system. When you set budgets and track actual time, LawnPro can calculate performance-based pay—comparing what employees would earn at their hourly rate vs what they'd earn based on how efficiently they completed their jobs. The system always pays the higher of the two amounts, which means crews are rewarded for being efficient without ever earning less than their hourly wage. The foundation for all of this is budgeted hours.
Frequently asked questions
Go to Settings and you'll find fields for default budgeted hours on visits, meetings, and to-dos. Enter the number of hours each event type should typically take. These values pre-fill on every new event you create.
Yes. The default pre-fills from your settings, but you can override the budgeted hours on any individual event. A large commercial property can have a 2-hour budget while a small residential lawn has a 30-minute budget.
No. Crews clock in/out and start job timers as they normally would from the mobile app. The budgeted hours comparison runs automatically in the background without any additional steps.
Pay for Performance uses budgeted hours as its foundation. It calculates what a crew earned based on efficiency—how fast they completed jobs relative to budgets. LawnPro compares the performance-based amount to the hourly amount and always pays whichever is higher.
Visits, meetings, and to-dos all support budgeted hours. Each event type has its own default in settings, and each individual event can be overridden.
Budgeted hours is available on plans that include time tracking. There's no separate add-on—it's built into the time tracking functionality.
Explore more features
See what else LawnPro can do for your business.
Time Tracking
GPS clock-in/out and per-job timers. The time data that feeds budgeted hours comparisons.
Pay for Performance
Reward crews based on efficiency. Uses budgeted hours to calculate performance-based pay.
Reporting
Run variance reports by job, customer, crew, or date range. Export data for deeper analysis.