If you run a landscape (or any) business in Ontario Canada, you likely have heard the news released at the end of May that Ontario is planning to increase its minimum wage to $15/hour by 2019. The wage increases will start soon by going to $14/hour in January of 2018 and then increase again to $15/hour in January of 2019 if all goes according to plan.
Whether you’re for or against this jump in minimum wage, as a business owner you will need to plan for this increase if you have employees making minimum, or close to minimum wage. Keep in mind it’s not just the minimum wage earners you need to think about. For instance, if you have a supervisor making $15/hr currently and labourers making $12/hr, your supervisors are likely going to want to see some compensation as well when everyone else is making their wage.
If you do have labourers affected by this wage increase, likely one of the first questions you’re going to ask yourself as a business owner is “How will this affect my bottom line?” and will you need to raise your prices to accommodate this rate change? If you’re not currently on top of your financials or using a budget, these could be some tough questions to answer. The obvious answer could just be “yes” but how much do you increase your prices by? You don’t want to negatively affect your business by increasing prices too high, and on the flip side, you don’t want to miss out on profit by not increasing your prices enough!
By using a system such as LMN, you can be confident when changes like this occur. With LMN, you can create a copy of your existing budget and simply change the wage information so you’re ready when the minimum wages increase and LMN will price your new work accordingly. You can even try out a couple different scenarios just to see how it affects your pricing and bottom line. We really mean it when we say we take the guesswork out of pricing your work!
Interested in trying us out? We offer free 30 day trials with no credit card required! Start your budget today and estimate confidently.