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One number is your minimum job price. GroundCut enforces it everywhere.

Every other lawn-care tool makes you tune a minimum job price AND a separate per-visit base for subscriptions. Two fields, same idea, both go out of sync. GroundCut collapses them into one: the Starting price floors small polygon quotes and anchors your recurring monthly bill.

A tenant-wide target hourly rate is the second safety net — it flags any quote that clears the floor but still wouldn’t hit your hour.

Start 14-day free trialSee the pricing-engine mechanics

How the floor works in the pricing engine

Every step here is shipped code in packages/shared/src/pricing.ts and rides on the /api/quote response.

  1. 01

    One number is your minimum AND your recurring anchor

    Every other lawn-care tool makes you tune a per-service "minimum price" AND a separate "base price" for subscriptions. Two fields, same idea, both have to stay in sync or your math drifts. GroundCut collapses them. Each service has one number — Starting price. It floors the polygon quote when the area math comes in low, and it anchors the recurring monthly bill (× 4 weekly, × 2 biweekly, × 1 monthly). No twin fields, no drift.

    services.base_price (NOT NULL column on services)

  2. 02

    The floor wins over the area math, every time

    The quote engine computes a price from `price_per_quarter_acre × (mowable_area_sqft / 10,890)`. Then it applies the overgrown surcharge if flagged, the distance fee, and any seasonal adjustment. Then `Math.max(price, base_price)` runs — the Starting price cannot be undercut. A customer who drew a 200-sqft lawn doesn’t pay $0.83; they pay your floor. The bump is absorbed into the area line item so the breakdown still sums cleanly on the customer-facing quote.

    packages/shared/src/pricing.ts — Math.max(price, input.base_price)

  3. 03

    Max price routes oversize lots away from auto-booking

    Pricing rules also have a `max_price` ceiling. A customer outlining an absurd area gets clamped to the cap — the booking flow doesn’t produce a $4,000 instant quote that locks you into a job you can’t deliver. Big lots route to the in-person quote flow instead, where you visit the property, fill in line items, and send a real quote. Floor and ceiling are the only two guardrails you set per service.

    services.pricing_rules.max_price — Math.min(price, rules.max_price)

  4. 04

    Target hourly rate catches profitable-looking jobs that aren’t

    A quote can clear your $50 Starting price and still be unprofitable — a 90-minute job that nets $48.55 after Stripe is $32/hr, not your $50 target. The engine divides `net_after_fees` by `estimated_time_mins / 60` and returns `below_target_rate: true` on the quote response. The target is one tenant-wide number set in `/admin/settings` — most operators have one $/hr they need to clear across the whole business, not different ones per service. The floor protects against $1 quotes; the target rate protects against floor-priced jobs that still won’t clear your hour.

    tenants.settings.target_hourly_rate → below_target_rate on /api/quote response

  5. 05

    Card-fee passthrough is opt-in and respects the floor

    If you turn on `pass_card_fee_to_customer` in tenant settings, the engine adds Stripe’s 2.9% + 30¢ on top of the quoted price so you net the full quoted amount. The floor still applies to the pre-passthrough price — the passthrough is layered on after, never used to dodge the floor. `card_fee_included: true` rides on the quote response so the booking page can display "$X (card fee included)" without confusion.

    pass_card_fee_to_customer flag; fee added after the base_price floor in pricing.ts

“What about customers who want a discount?”

The discount conversation comes up in every lawn business. A commercial account wants a per-job rate below your residential floor. A long-time customer wants a “loyalty rate.” Your neighbor wants the buddy price. The Starting price floor sits in the booking-page flow — it doesn’t have to apply to every customer.

Recurring price overrides take precedence. Set a recurring schedule with a lower price for that customer and the booking-page floor never enters the picture — the recurring schedule carries its own price snapshot through every generated job. The floor is for new-customer instant quotes, not for established relationships.

customer_price_override on a one-off job. From `/admin/jobs` you can create a job with a custom price; the engine clamps it at your Starting price so a typo can’t zero the job, but otherwise the override wins. The line breakdown shows “Custom rate” and the booking-page math is bypassed.

On-site adjustments are signed and auditable. The crew can adjust the price on arrival if the customer pushes back; increases require a signature, decreases don’t. Every adjustment writes to the audit log with the actor, the before/after, and the reason.

Where each field lives

  • /admin/services — each service has a Starting price, a per-¼-acre rate, a Max price, and an optional overgrown surcharge. That’s it for instant-quote pricing. Edit one service to test, save, and refresh the booking page to see the new math.
  • /admin/settings — the target hourly rate lives here (tenant-wide). When set, `below_target_rate` rides on every quote response; when blank, the flag is silenced.
  • services.base_price + services.pricing_rules.max_price — the underlying columns. Both required. No separate `min_price` field.
  • POST /api/quote — the runtime endpoint. Returns the full quote shape including the floor-applied price, the line-item breakdown, and the target-rate flag.

Minimum-job-price FAQs

Why is your "minimum price" the same field as your subscription price?+
Because an operator’s mental model is "I won’t show up for less than $X" — and that number is the same whether the customer wants a one-off mow or a weekly subscription. Splitting it into two fields was a leaky abstraction every competitor has: you’d set a $50 minimum and a $45 per-visit base, the two would drift apart over time, and then your weekly subscription would price at 4 × $45 = $180 while your one-time floor said $50. One number, one knob — the polygon floor and the recurring anchor are the same thing.
What about a long-time customer who wants $10 off the minimum?+
Two outs. First, the crew can override the price on-site with the Adjust Price flow in the mobile app — every adjustment is logged with a reason and a signature for increases. Second, you can book that customer manually from `/admin/jobs` and set `customer_price_override` on the line, which uses the override as the quoted price (clamped at your Starting price floor so a typo doesn’t zero-out the job). Recurring schedules carry their own price snapshot from when they were set up, so an existing recurring customer at $40 stays at $40 even if you raise the booking-page Starting price to $50 mid-season.
How does the floor interact with a customer who draws a tiny lawn on purpose?+
They pay your floor — that’s the whole point. The area math returns a sub-floor number, the engine clamps it to your Starting price, and the line items show the bump rolled into the area line so the customer sees a coherent quote. The crew arrives, sees that the real mowable area is bigger than what was drawn, and adjusts the price on-site with a signature for the delta. The floor is a safety net against $1 quotes; the on-site adjust handles the gap between drawn area and real area.
Can I have a different floor for weekly vs one-time customers?+
Sort of. The Starting price is one number that floors one-time polygon quotes AND drives the default recurring monthly bill (× 4 / × 2 / × 1). If you want recurring to be cheaper than one-time, set per-frequency overrides on the service: `monthly_price_weekly_override`, `monthly_price_biweekly_override`, `monthly_price_monthly_override`. Those replace the area math for recurring bookings and act like a frequency-specific floor. So a $55 Starting price + $180/mo weekly override means one-time quotes floor at $55 and weekly subs bill $180/mo (≈ $45/visit) regardless of lot size.
Where does the floor live in the database vs the UI?+
It lives on the `services.base_price` column — required, NOT NULL. The admin UI is at `/admin/services`; each service has a Starting price field. The booking page reads it through `/api/quote` and never directly. The same number drives recurring monthly billing math, so you set one price and both flows use it. No separate `min_price` field exists anymore — that was the simplification.
Does the minimum apply to in-person quotes too?+
No. In-person quote services (`quote_type=in_person`) skip the instant-quote engine entirely. You visit the property, fill in line items in `/admin/jobs/[id]`, set an optional deposit, and send the quote. The floor is an instant-quote concept — it doesn’t apply to a quote you wrote by hand. If you want a floor on in-person work, the workflow is to decline low-dollar in-person requests at intake rather than producing a low-dollar quote.
What if my market is so price-sensitive that the floor loses me bookings?+
Lower it and re-run the math. There’s no hard-coded GroundCut minimum — just whatever you set per service. If you’re seeing high abandon rates at $50 and lower at $40, the floor is doing what it should: telling you where price elasticity lives. Tune the Starting price, then tune your tenant-wide target hourly rate in `/admin/settings` to match — and let the below-target flag tell you which floor-priced bookings still aren’t clearing your hour.
How is this different from just setting a high price-per-quarter-acre?+
Price-per-quarter-acre scales the quote with lawn size — a 0.4-acre lot pays more than a 0.2-acre lot. The Starting price protects the small end: when the area math is below your floor, the floor kicks in. Without a floor, your $20 quarter-acre rate produces a $5 quote for a 250-sqft front strip, and a tap-tap-tap drawing produces $0.50. With the floor, both quote at your Starting price. They’re different jobs (scaling vs flooring) and both belong on the service.

Related reading

Instant quoting

The eight protections that prevent gaming the quote itself.

vs Jobber

Lawn-care pricing rules vs a generalist form-builder.

For solo operators

Setting a floor and a target rate when every minute is your minute.

Stop unprofitable jobs →Service area limits →Profit per job →

Stop quoting below your floor

14-day free trial. One Starting price per service plus a tenant target hourly rate is the whole setup. Run a few real bookings; see the engine clamp small lawns to your floor and flag the rest.

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