The #1 Budget Line You’re Still Getting Wrong

We were reading Lawn & Landscape magazine’s article “Taking the Burden out of Budgeting” when we stumbled across this quote from Brian Lahr of Supreme Lawn and Landscaping:

“Even after 33 years it’s always hard to nail down estimating labor hours into a job. There’s so many variables… Materials are usually always dead on. That’s the easy part.”

That line stopped us. Because it captures the exact challenge most landscapers face: materials don’t lie, but labor does. And that’s the #1 budget line companies get wrong—sometimes by thousands of hours a year.

Materials arrive on a truck. You can count them, order more, and account for price changes. Labor, on the other hand, slips through the cracks. Weather changes, crews move at different speeds, drive times creep up—and suddenly the estimate you built in January doesn’t match the hours your crews are burning in June.

And here’s the kicker: labor is your biggest cost. Which means the hardest thing to get right is also the thing that makes or breaks your margins.

The Problem: Hidden Drift Between Estimates and Actuals

When labor hours drift, it’s tough to catch it in the moment. Jobs look fine on paper, invoices go out, and crews move on. The inefficiency hides in plain sight until renewal season rolls around and margins feel thinner than expected.

Why is this drift so dangerous?

• It compounds. A 5% miss here and 8% there quietly add up across the season.

• It’s invisible. Crews still finish the job, so no one waves a red flag.

• It’s cultural. Without visibility, everyone assumes “that’s just how long it takes.”

What the Best Companies Do Differently

The companies that win aren’t perfect at estimating labor. Nobody is. But they’ve built systems to spot variances early and learn from them.

• At Greenscape, leaders realized their labor data looked “perfect”—almost every job hit 100% of budgeted hours. Statistically impossible. They were adjusting hours to make payroll, not tracking real performance. Their fix? They pushed BomData leaderboards into every branch, reviewed labor weekly in operations meetings, and shifted culture toward real accountability. Result: +8% crew efficiency and 70% less time wasted on ticket cleanup. (Read the full story.)

• At Level Green, managers didn’t wait until year-end reviews to talk about efficiency. They set up a 30-minute weekly huddle around a live crew leaderboard. Crews saw where they stood against peers, and route managers had real data to coach from. Result: a 10% efficiency gain year-over-year and crews that actually ask questions about efficiency. (Read the full story.)

What can you do right now?

• Share the numbers and the “why it’s important” with your crews, even just a few minutes during morning rollout.

• Spend 15–30 minutes each week as an ops team asking: Were we off because of the estimate, or because of execution?

The key isn’t perfection—it’s the feedback loop.

Example Crew Leaderboard: simple visibility turns estimates into targets crews understand and act on.

A Better Way Forward

If you can measure and talk about estimated vs. actual hours every week with the field team directly, you can start to:

1. Price smarter. Know whether the problem is in the estimate or the execution.

2. Coach better. Crews understand what’s expected and can improve over time.

3. Protect margins. Catch and adjust for small inefficiencies before they roll up into big losses.

Because in landscaping, materials might be the easy part—but labor is the budget line that decides whether you hit your profit goals or fall short.

💡 Curious how other commercial landscapers are tracking estimates vs. actuals—and what they’re learning from it? Let’s swap notes. Book a demo today