Pet waste removal is easy to underprice. The visits are short, the equipment is cheap, and it is tempting to set a low price to grow quickly. But a scooping business is a volume business, and a price that is a few dollars too low per visit becomes a large loss across a few thousand visits a year. Good pricing starts with what a stop actually costs you, then adjusts for the things that change the work: the number of dogs, the frequency and the yard size. This post walks through that math with illustrative numbers, plus minimums, travel, and how to check your prices once you have real data.
Start With Cost Per Stop
Before setting prices, figure out what each stop costs you. Add up the tech's hourly cost (wage plus taxes and workers' comp), vehicle costs (fuel, insurance, wear), supplies (bags, sanitizer, gloves), disposal fees if you haul waste, card processing, software, insurance and a share of your marketing and office time.
Then divide by stops. As an illustrative example, say a tech costs $22 an hour all in, the vehicle adds $8 an hour, and supplies and overhead add another $6 an hour. That is $36 an hour. If the tech does three stops an hour on average (including drive time), each stop costs about $12. That is your floor. Your price has to be well above it to make a profit and cover slow weeks and skipped visits.
The biggest variable is stops per hour. Three stops an hour and four stops an hour change your cost per stop by a quarter. That is why density, covered in our post on laying out weekly routes, is a pricing tool as much as a scheduling one.
Per-Dog Pricing
More dogs means more waste and a longer visit. Most scooping companies price by number of dogs: a base price for one dog, and a set amount for each additional dog. Some add a step for very large dogs, since a Great Dane leaves a lot more than a Chihuahua.
As an illustrative example, a company might charge $18 per weekly visit for one dog, $4 more for a second dog, and $3 more for each additional dog. A three-dog household would pay $25 a visit. The exact numbers depend on your market and your costs.
Ask for the number and size of dogs on your signup form, and verify on the first visit. Customers sometimes leave out a dog to save money. If the tech finds three dogs where the form said two, note it on the property and adjust the price before the next billing period. A short, polite message usually takes care of it.
Frequency Pricing
Weekly visits are faster per visit than biweekly ones, because there is less waste to find. Your per-visit price should reflect that. Biweekly visits usually take more than twice as long as weekly, so a biweekly per-visit price should be noticeably higher.
If weekly service for one dog is $18 a visit, biweekly might be $28 a visit. The weekly customer pays about $78 a month, and the biweekly customer about $61. The biweekly customer saves, but you are paid fairly for the bigger job each time.
Twice-weekly service, when offered, can be priced a bit lower per visit than weekly, since each visit is lighter. Monthly service is closer to a cleanup each time. Our post on weekly versus biweekly plans covers how to present the options.
Yard Size and Difficult Yards
A small fenced backyard is quick to walk. A half-acre yard with trees, shrubs and gravel areas takes much longer, even with the same dogs. Many companies have a standard price for yards up to a certain size and add a charge for larger ones.
Outlining the yard on the satellite map with the measure map gives you its square footage before you quote. Set tiers: a standard yard, a large yard and an extra-large yard, each with its own adjustment.
Difficult yards get adjustments too: steep slopes, heavy ground cover, gravel or mulch areas where waste is hard to pick up, or several separate areas (front and back, a dog run and a yard). Note what makes a yard difficult on the property, so the next estimate or price review has the reason.
Minimums, Travel and Initial Cleanups
Set a minimum per visit. Even a tiny yard with one small dog costs you the drive and the setup. The minimum keeps those stops from losing money.
Set an out-of-area charge for customers outside your main zones, or decline them until you have more customers nearby. One far-away yard on a route can cost more in travel than it brings in.
Price initial cleanups and one-time jobs separately, based on how long the waste has built up. They are not weekly visits, and pricing them as weekly visits is one of the most common mistakes new companies make.
Put all of these on your website and signup form. Clear pricing up front reduces the number of calls and emails asking for quotes, and customers who sign up already know what they are paying. In IndustryBossPro, a plan for 2 users, 1 truck and 500 texts starts at $59 a month, which is a small cost per stop once a route is full.
Check the Prices With Real Numbers
After a month or two, check your prices against what the work actually costs. Job costing shows labor from crew clock-in times multiplied by each worker's pay rate, materials used, planned hours against actual, and profit and margin on each job.
Look for patterns. Are biweekly yards losing money? Are certain neighborhoods taking much longer between stops? Are three-dog households priced too low? Adjust the prices where the numbers say to.
Raise prices on a schedule, usually once a year, with notice to customers. A modest yearly increase is easier for customers to accept than a large one every few years. Explain it simply: costs went up, and you want to keep the same quality of service. The reporting and analytics features show where job costing and the employee hours report fit in.
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