Landscaping (Garten)
Paving can be accepted on the day it is laid, but the planting is only accepted by the following spring. This is the one trade where the work ends a year after the invoice.
How it is billed
Paving and slabs go by the square metre, edgings and kerbs by the running metre, excavation, sub-base and soil disposal by the cubic metre, lawn by the square metre, plants and trees by the piece, fencing by the running metre, posts and gates by the piece. The sub-base has a thickness, and thickness has a price — exactly as with screed, and just as easily forgotten in the quote. Maintenance after handover is an item of its own with its own period, not goodwill. Areas and volumes are worked out in the program itself: you enter the dimensions area by area, name every measurement your own way, and the total goes into the quote as a finished item with the breakdown — you can see where the figure came from.
What disappears on paper
What disappears is the soil. A trench always yields more than the drawing said, and disposal is paid by the cubic metre and by the load. The weather disappears: after two days of rain you cannot get plant onto the site, and the programme runs on regardless. Maintenance disappears: watering, cutting back and making good during the period when the plant has to take — months of trips after the job is closed. And the line of responsibility disappears: if the customer did not water and the shrub died, then without a handover record stating what to care for and how, you plant a second time at your own cost.
Work it out yourself
Take the last larger job. Compare the cubic metres of soil in the quote with the number of loads that actually went out. Add the trips for maintenance and the making good after winter — count them and check whether the quote held them as an item with a period. Multiply by the number of such gardens in a year. That is not a loss on the paving but on everything that happens after acceptance.
Five minutes a day
A photo of the sub-base before the paving goes down — after that nobody can check how much went in or how it was compacted. A photo of the planting on the day of handover: it shows the state the plant left your hands in. In the evening: hours, disposal loads, material used. At handover one sheet stating how to care for it — that is what later decides whose fault it is.
What the program watches for you
In landscaping the tax line runs fine: earthworks, paving and fencing are one thing, planting and maintenance another, and that decides whether a job for a construction company is invoiced under the reverse charge of §13b. The program lets you set this per invoice — on the first mixed one, ask your accountant. It watches the §48b certificate, the instalment invoices and the deadlines: it keeps the maintenance period and the warranty date on the job, so you do not have to remember how long you answer for a planted tree. Additional work is kept as a variation with the date it was announced.
At the end of the year
Paving, soil, plants, disposal, plant hire, paid hours, kilometres — all recorded against the jobs. The annual accounts and the VAT returns read finished figures.
What matters is entering things regularly — a photo of the sub-base and a care sheet at handover cost five minutes and defend you for a whole year.
