Most of our ongoing maintenance customers prefer to be serviced under an Annual Service Plan. What is this?
The Annual Service Plan includes all of the services we will execute during your plan period (which is fiscal and not calendar… your plan year could be April through March, or July through June… most of the time your plan calendar starts with your first month of service). We will work with you at the beginning of your service plan year and discuss all of the services that you want included in your plan – which is typically some combination of the following:
- Mowing and trimming (trimming refers to maintaining a crisp edge along lawn edges using a line trimmer)
- Weeding, raking and general garden care – this is calculated based on increments of time, starting with 5 minutes a week for very small gardens, to 90 minutes a week for large gardens that require detailed attention
- Pruning and/or hedge trimming
- Dog waste removal
- Fertilizing
- Irrigation services including spring start-up and fall blow-out/winterization
- And many other options
Many of our Annual Service Plans include only mowing, trimming, and blowing off hard surfaces. These customers prefer to do their own garden work, or they hire us per-diem for those services.
Other annual plans include custom items that the customer wants done… these could include checking your landscape lights, aerating, etc. The services included in your Annual Service Plan can be tailored to fit your specific needs.
Service Frequency
We then calculate the number of visits you’ll receive over the plan year. Your plan will include a service calendar which shows you the number of visits each month. Most of our customers prefer weekly service through the normal growing season, with biweekly service on the shoulder months of March and November, and either once/month service or no service at all during the winter months.
But we also have customers with biweekly service throughout the year, and for customers who need no mowing or lawn care and only need garden work, we’ve also had plans that called for service visits once/month throughout the year. The frequency of your visits will depend on what you want, your budget, your neighborhood and the tolerance for grass that might get a little long between visits, what your shade and drainage situations are, and a host of other factors. We’ll work with you to create a service plan schedule that works for you.
Calculating The Cost
We multiply the number of visits in the plan year by all of the services you’ll be receiving to come up with a total annual cost; and then we divide that number by 12 to determine your flat, budgetable monthly amount which is the same every month. Customers with automatic banking prefer this option as it eliminates a paper bill to pay. It also eliminates seasonal spikes – in other words, your spring and summer invoices will be less than if you were being billed per visit.
Making Changes
In the event that you move during the plan year, or determine that our services no longer fit within your needs, there is no cost for termination. We do require 30 days’ notice so we can plan our schedules and routes accordingly, but we realize that life can be unexpected and people’s needs change. What we’ll do is calculate the services actually received and deduct payments made to determine if there is a balance on the account. Aside from that, there is no termination fee or penalty for canceling service within the plan year.
We also are flexible with the services in the plan itself – some of our customers start as mowing-only customers and look forward to gardening themselves, and then decide it isn’t what they want to do after all, and revise their service plan to include garden care in our scope of service. Or perhaps you started with weekly service and then determine that biweekly service really works fine. With the caveat that all service plan changes will require calculations to determine if there is a balance owed on services already rendered, we are always happy to discuss revising the scope of service to best address your current needs. The annual service plan is not locked in stone and we happily work with you on that.
Interested in discussing what an annual service plan for your yard might look like? Just ask!
