Kenelle

Gardeners and yard-work professionals can invoice their work as light entrepreneurs without setting up a company. You agree on jobs and prices yourself, and Truster takes care of invoices, tax withholding according to your tax card, and reporting to the authorities. The account is free and you pay nothing during months without invoicing, which makes light entrepreneurship especially well suited to the seasonal nature of garden work.

#What kind of yard work do light entrepreneurs do?

The season kicks off in spring with yard clean-ups: raking, planting, setting up flower beds and vegetable patches, and trimming hedges. Summer brings lawn mowing and general yard maintenance, while autumn means leaf clearing and end-of-season tidying. Come winter, many gardeners take on snow-clearing and gritting clients, so income keeps coming in all year round.

Customers include homeowners, cottage owners and elderly people who need help with the heaviest tasks, as well as housing companies and small businesses ordering green-area maintenance. Specialised skills, such as fruit-tree pruning and planting design, have their own steady demand too.

#Pricing, expenses and the household tax credit

Yard work is usually priced by the hour, and regular maintenance, such as weekly lawn mowing, is often agreed on a seasonal or per-visit rate. Bigger one-off jobs, like a full spring clean-up, can be priced as a fixed job. Make sure your price covers equipment use, fuel and travel between sites.

Typical expenses include lawnmowers, trimmers and other equipment along with servicing, fuel, hand tools, plants and soil when agreed with the customer, and travel to job sites. Expenses and mileage are logged in the Truster app and automatically taken into account in your pay.

Yard and garden work done at a customer's home or holiday home qualifies for the household tax credit, so your customer may be able to deduct part of the cost. Mention this in your offer, since it lowers the barrier to ordering the work on invoice. Your customer can check the current terms at vero.fi (the Finnish Tax Administration's website).

In spring, yard-work customers are easy to find through local Facebook groups and notice boards, and the best clients come through recommendations: a tidy result in one yard brings the neighbours in as customers too. For housing companies, it's worth offering a maintenance package directly through the property manager. Looking after seasonal customers pays off, since the same yard needs someone every year.

#Invoicing and pay with Truster

One-off jobs are invoiced as soon as they're finished, while regular maintenance work is billed with a summary invoice, for example once a month. Housing company customers appreciate a clear, itemised invoice, which you can create in the app in just a couple of minutes. Maksuvahti keeps track of your receivables and sends payment reminders on your behalf for €1.99 per invoice.

At the start of the season, money goes into equipment and supplies, so fast payment helps. HetiPalkka pays your wages even before the invoice due date, for a fee of 5% of the invoice amount. Monthly-package users get Truster Turva included at no extra cost, so you're insured while working in customers' yards.

Seasonality is an advantage for light entrepreneurs: in busy months you invoice a lot, and in quiet months you pay nothing at all. The percentage-based service fee flexes with the season, and in months with heavy invoicing you can switch to the fixed monthly price instead.

Light entrepreneurship fits the seasonal rhythm of the garden industry better than running your own company: you have no fixed costs or bookkeeping during winter months when there's no invoicing. You can also combine yard work with other gigs, such as snow removal or small repair jobs, and invoice everything through the same account. The pace of work and number of customers stay entirely in your own hands.

In winter, the same customers often need snow clearing and gritting, so don't hesitate to offer a year-round package: it evens out your income, keeps your equipment in use during the cold months, and locks the customer in with you for the whole year at once.

#How much do you actually take home?

Truster's service fee is 3.99% of invoicing, or a flat €55/month. The service fee and statutory payments are deducted from the invoice amount, and tax is withheld from your pay according to your own tax card. Yard and garden services are usually invoiced with VAT at the general rate of 25.5%.

Of the service fee models, the percentage-based 3.99% flexes with seasonal variation, while the flat €55/month can work out cheaper during the busiest months of the season. Price your jobs so the rate covers equipment, fuel and travel — not just the time spent in the yard.

The amount you take home depends on how much you invoice, your expenses and your tax rate. On our Calculators page, you can try your own numbers and see straight away how much of your seasonal invoicing ends up in your account.