---
title: "Landscaping bookkeeping services | Ledgerbrook"
source: https://ledgerbrook.com/industries/landscaping/
description: "Landscaping bookkeeping services in QuickBooks Online: service-line revenue, snow contracts, job costing and equipment."
---

[Industries](/industries/)

# Landscaping bookkeeping services

## What do landscaping bookkeeping services include?

Landscaping bookkeeping services split revenue by service line (maintenance, installation, snow), cost plants, materials and crew hours to each install job, hold prepaid seasonal contracts as a liability until the work is done, and collect W-9s from subcontractors before the first payment. A monthly close reconciles every account by the 5th business day.

Common for landscapers

- Maintenance, design-build and snow income all post to one Sales account, so nobody can say which service line actually makes money
- A snow contract paid up front in November makes November look like the best month of the winter and March look like a loss
- Every install shows the same margin because plants, stone, mulch and crew hours land in general expense accounts instead of on the job
- A new mower or trailer hits the P&L as one big expense in April, the month the season starts and cash is already tight
- A subcontractor who ran a crew all summer gets no 1099 in January because no W-9 was collected before the first check

In detail

## Why landscaping books need more than one income account

Landscaping bookkeeping services start with the revenue side, because a landscaping company is usually three businesses sharing one bank account. Recurring maintenance (mowing, pruning, fertilizing) is steady, low-margin route work. Installation and hardscape are project work with materials, crew hours and sometimes subcontractors on each job. Snow removal is a winter business with its own contracts and its own equipment. Posting all of it to one Sales account hides which line pays for the others. Give each service line its own income account in QuickBooks Online, and the profit and loss shows whether the install crew is subsidizing the mowing routes or the other way round.

The job costing side is close to what a general contractor needs, and our page on [construction bookkeeping services](/industries/contractors/) covers it in more depth: projects per job, deposits held as a liability, and subcontractor tracking. What is specific to landscaping is the season and the equipment.

## Snow contracts and prepaid seasons are a liability first

A seasonal snow contract paid in full before the first storm is money for work you still owe. On accrual books it goes to a Deferred Revenue liability when it arrives and moves to income month by month as the season runs.

Say a property manager pays a $6,000 fixed-fee snow contract on November 1 for November through March, five months at $1,200 each:

| Date | Account | Debit | Credit |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Nov 1 | Business Checking | 6,000.00 | |
| Nov 1 | Deferred Revenue | | 6,000.00 |
| Nov 30 | Deferred Revenue | 1,200.00 | |
| Nov 30 | Snow Removal Revenue | | 1,200.00 |

Repeat the November 30 entry at the end of each month through March, and Deferred Revenue is back to zero when the contract ends. Per-push or per-inch contracts do not need this: bill each event when it happens. Books kept on the cash basis record the whole $6,000 in November instead; which method the business uses is a decision to make with your CPA. The same pattern, with more examples, is in our post on the [journal entry for deferred revenue](/blog/journal-entry-for-deferred-revenue/).

## Job costing for installs and hardscape

An install job is where landscaping margins are made or lost. Plants, stone, pavers, mulch, rented equipment, crew hours and any subcontractor all belong to the job that used them. In QuickBooks Online that means a project for each job, a feature Intuit offers on the Plus and Advanced plans and in Intuit Enterprise Suite. Tag every supplier bill and receipt to its project when it is entered, not at year end.

A nursery receipt with no project attached is a cost that never shows up against the job, so a patio that lost money looks as good as one that cleared 35%. The same goes for a crew lead who buys stone on a personal card and never turns in the receipt: the job’s real cost is understated by exactly that amount.

## Trucks, mowers and trailers: expense or capitalize

A trimmer, a set of blades or a load of fertilizer is an ordinary expense. A truck, a zero-turn mower, a trailer or a skid steer that lasts more than a year is a fixed asset that goes on the balance sheet and is depreciated over its life. Our post on the [journal entry for depreciation](/blog/journal-entry-for-depreciation/) shows the monthly entry, and the fix for [recording a vehicle purchase](/fixes/record-a-vehicle-purchase/) covers a financed truck.

Two elections change the default, and both are decisions, not habits:

- **De minimis safe harbor.** A business without audited financial statements can expense items costing $2,500 or less per invoice or per item under Treas. Reg. §1.263(a)-1(f), if it has an accounting policy in place at the start of the year to expense such items and attaches the election statement to its timely filed return each year.
- **Section 179 or bonus depreciation.** Larger equipment can often be written off in the year it is bought for tax purposes. That is set on the tax return with your CPA. The books still record the asset, so the balance sheet shows equipment the business owns.

Expensing a $14,000 mower the week it arrives in April makes the first month of the season look like a loss that has nothing to do with how the work went.

## Seasonal crews and subcontractors

Payroll in a landscaping company can triple between February and June. Crew members who work your schedule, on your jobs, with your equipment are usually employees, and the IRS looks at behavioral control, financial control and the relationship to decide. A subcontractor who runs their own crew on an install is usually a 1099 vendor.

Collect a W-9 before the first payment to any subcontractor. For payments made after December 31, 2025, Form 1099-NEC is required once a contractor is paid $2,000 or more in the year (it was $600 before). Payments made by card or through a payment app are reported by the processor on Form 1099-K, so they do not go on your 1099-NEC. Set each sub up as a 1099 vendor in QuickBooks Online from the start, and the year-end form builds itself from the payments.

## Sales tax on materials and labor

Sales tax on landscaping varies by state. Some states tax lawn care and landscaping services, some tax only the materials, and some tax neither. Whatever your state does, list plants and materials separately from labor on each install invoice. That way QuickBooks Online can apply the right rate to each line, and the sales tax liability in the books matches the return you file.

## Is QuickBooks good for a landscaping business?

Yes, for the accounting. QuickBooks Online Plus handles service-line income accounts, projects for install jobs, class tracking by crew or division, fixed assets and 1099 vendors. It is not built for quoting, crew scheduling or route planning, so most landscapers run a field-service app such as Jobber or Aspire alongside it and sync invoices and payments into QuickBooks. The books stay in QuickBooks; the app runs the day. That also answers which bookkeeping software a landscaping company should use: QuickBooks Online Plus for most, with Xero the common alternative.

## How much does landscaping bookkeeping cost?

Fixing a landscaping file usually means going back through a season or more of bank and card transactions, splitting income by service line, assigning install costs to their jobs and moving equipment onto the balance sheet. That is a [cleanup](/quickbooks-cleanup/) engagement, scoped to the number of months affected. The [cost calculator](/tools/pricing-calculator/?months=12) totals it with the monthly fee for any number of months. [An illustrative contractor worked example](/results/contractor-cleanup/) shows how nine months of miscoded job costs add up, and our post on [what a QuickBooks cleanup costs](/blog/quickbooks-cleanup-cost/) explains the pricing.

$99per month of backlog20% off 6+ months

Once the file is set up, a [monthly close](/monthly-bookkeeping/) keeps every account reconciled and every job coded through the busy season, closed by the 5th business day. That is $149 a month (up to 3 accounts, up to 200 transactions a month), and $199 past either limit or with class tracking by crew or division. For what bookkeepers charge across the market, see [how much a bookkeeper costs](/blog/how-much-does-a-bookkeeper-cost/). More on how we work with owners is on the [small-business bookkeeping page](/for-business-owners/), and other trades are on the [industries page](/industries/). Full pricing is on the [pricing page](/pricing/).

Or [send your file for a free review](/contact/?from=industries%2Flandscaping), with a written answer within 48 hours.

Ledgerbrook

Behind on your QuickBooks books?

Cleanup or catch-up

$99 per month of backlog, 20% off 6+ months

Turnaround

5 business days for a typical year

Monthly close

From $149 a file a month

[Get a free file review](/contact/?from=industries%2Flandscaping)

Free, no card, no obligation. A written answer within about 48 hours.

[See every price](/pricing/)

[![](/_astro/omkar-moraye.BHiWb4KG_2p9N2A.webp)Omkar MorayeQuickBooks Certified ProAdvisor](/about/)

- [![Intuit QuickBooks Certification Level 1](/_astro/level-1.BokmyvzE_Z2cyGo6.webp)](https://www.credly.com/badges/7ceaf1c4-83da-4a1b-b19f-7e15cb5c0ac7/public_url "Intuit QuickBooks Certification Level 1. Verify on Credly.")
- [![Intuit QuickBooks Certification Level 2](/_astro/level-2.D-GWLUNI_Z1Sh5RD.webp)](https://www.credly.com/badges/02426568-00bb-46e1-a939-9063497c54d6/public_url "Intuit QuickBooks Certification Level 2. Verify on Credly.")
- [![Intuit Bookkeeping Certification](/_astro/bookkeeping.C82JE0Dn_Z1YzPBj.webp)](https://www.credly.com/badges/30b70ae2-e369-4a8b-9fee-d6db3a47b70c/public_url "Intuit Bookkeeping Certification. Verify on Credly.")
- [![QuickBooks Online Payroll Certification](/_astro/payroll.r5Yo2XnL_VxspM.webp)](https://www.credly.com/badges/2fc8fb7d-90d1-43ba-961b-aff161fe8491/public_url "QuickBooks Online Payroll Certification. Verify on Credly.")

Issued by Intuit, verified by Credly.

Updated October 16, 2026 · [Omkar Moraye](/about/)