Price patios, retaining walls and walkways from your own costs
You set up your hardscape company once: the yard, the crew, the season and the machines. After that, every install is priced from those numbers instead of a round figure per square foot.
- Know what a crew hour really costs Yard rent, insurance, trucks and every wage, yours too, spread over your real season, become one break-even rate per crew hour.
- Price the whole install, not just the pavers The dig, base, screeding, laying, cuts, the wall, poly sand and clean-up each get their own crew hours, and the machines are charged on the stages they run.
- Still give a per-square-foot number You get the job total and what it works out to per square foot, from the same numbers.
- Stop losing the dig-day costs Driving the whole crew, loading up each morning, a rain-day buffer and leftover pavers sit on a checklist that has to be answered.
- Hand over a quote that looks professional A one-page customer quote with scope, measured size, deposit and hardscape terms, ready to print or save as a PDF.
- Find out which installs made money The Job Log tracks every quote, won or lost, and the real crew hours each job took.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
How it turns tons, pallets and crew hours into a patio quote
Six tabs. You fill in the first three once, then each new patio or wall is one quote.
- Start HereA short walk-through; the setup takes one evening.
- Shop SetupYour overhead, crew (you included), season length and machines, turned into a break-even rate per crew hour plus a running cost for each machine.
- Price ListPavers, base gravel by the ton, bedding sand, poly sand by the bag, edge restraint, wall block and caps at your yard's prices, each dated so old prices get flagged.
- QuoteMaterials, crew hours by stage, machines on the stages they run, deliveries and spoil loads, and the don't-forget list, with the price and price per square foot.
- Customer QuoteThe page the homeowner signs: scope, size, price, deposit and terms.
- Job LogEvery quote sent, won or lost, and the real hours and materials after the job.
What is a break-even rate per crew hour? It is what one hour of crew time has to bring in to pay the wages and every cost of the business, before profit. Hardscape crews in cold places only build for part of the year, so a year of yard rent and insurance has to be earned in those months. The paver hourly rate page works it through.
Prefilled example built-in
The file comes filled in with a made-up hardscape company and its $15,042 patio quote, so you see a finished quote before you type in your own numbers.
The example company is an owner, a crew lead and two labourers, with a break-even of $59.47 per crew hour. The job is a 400 sq ft paver patio on a 6 inch compacted base, a 20 ft curved seat wall 18 inches high, polymeric sand, and sod along the lawn edges.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Part of the price | Amount |
| 2 | Materials with waste | $3,969 |
| 3 | Crew labour and equipment (about 67.5 crew hours) | $4,633 |
| 4 | Deliveries and spoil disposal | $930 |
| 5 | Easy-to-miss costs | $1,350 |
| 6 | Markup, cushion and profit | $4,160 |
| 7 | Price before tax | $15,042 |
That is about $37.60 a square foot with the seat wall included. The $4,160 is what is left after the owner and crew are paid, and the crew's time earns about $108 per labour hour. The full walk-through is on how much to charge per square foot for a paver patio.
$1,350
That is what the easy-to-miss lines alone added to this one example quote. It is about 27 times what the calculator costs. Miss them once and the file has paid for itself.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
Why a round per-square-foot price loses money on hard yards
A lot of patios get priced at a round number per square foot heard from another contractor or an online group. That number assumes an average yard. Yours might need a deeper dig, a machine that can't get through the gate, or base carried in by wheelbarrow, and the number can't know.
The sample Job Log shows what happens. One $8,900 job was quoted at 70 crew hours and took 104. At the example's $59.47 break-even, those 34 hours over the quote cost $2,021.98, and a job priced to make $1,400 lost $884.85 instead.
That is why this estimator prices each install from the dig, the base, the lay and the wall first, then shows the per-square-foot number at the end. You still get a number per foot for the customer, but it is one that covers the yard in front of you.
Crew drive time, spoil loads and the other dig-day costs it catches
The Quote tab won't mark a quote ready until every line has a Yes, No or N/A:
- Driving the whole crew, every day: days on site times the people in the truck times the round trip.
- Loading, setup and packing up each day, time that happens on every job and rarely makes the quote.
- Runs to the stone yard for the pallet that came short.
- A buffer for a rain day, a redo or a slow dig. If the job goes well, it turns into profit.
- Lawn repair where the machines went in, and blades worn out on the cuts.
- Leftover pavers from buying a full bundle, because special-order pavers only come by the bundle.
Exactly what you get
One spreadsheet, delivered as an instant download when you pay. It opens in Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. There is no subscription, no app and no login.
- The six-tab estimator, ready for your own yard and crew.
- A complete example hardscape company, including machines with their own running cost and a finished patio quote.
- Hardscape customer terms you can edit, covering what turns up in the dig, extra soil loads, a bigger area than measured, lawn repair and weather.
- A Job Log with a sample job that ran over its hours and lost money, the mistake it is there to catch, as covered in job costing.
How it compares
Most owners price a job one of these ways. Here is what each one gives you.
| Copying another company's price | A free estimate template | Estimating software | This calculator | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starts from your own costs | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Makes you answer the easy-to-miss costs | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Shows which jobs made money | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Works in Excel and Google Sheets | – | Yes | No | Yes |
| Cost | Free | Free | Usually a monthly fee | $49.95 once |
Who it's for: patio, wall and walkway crews of 1 to 15
It fits owner-operators and small hardscape and landscape companies building patios, walkways, retaining walls and landscape installs, including owners who quote per square foot from memory and want to see what the number covers. A two-person crew with a skid steer or three crews running all season, it works the same way, because the rate, machines and prices are all yours.
It is not for companies already running estimating software with production rates and job costing, or for weekly maintenance priced per visit. Check your rate first with the free true hourly rate calculator.
Stop pricing patios from a round number per square foot. Price every patio, wall and walkway from your own crew hours and costs, catch what the dig usually costs you, and see which jobs made money.
Hardscape & Landscape Pricing Calculator
$49.95 one-time
Buy now and download- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets