September 30, 2026 · Mitt Patel · 6 min read
You're staring at a November bank balance that looked fine in October, and now the truck payment, the insurance bill, and a loan installment are all due before the first plow job pays out. Nothing went wrong this year. This is just what happens when a business built on April through November revenue has to cover twelve months of fixed costs. The good news is that this is a planning problem, not a bad-luck problem, and your books already have the numbers you need to fix it.
Why the squeeze happens every year
Most landscaping revenue lands in a seven or eight month window. Mowing, planting, cleanups, and irrigation work all cluster in the growing season. But the truck loan, equipment financing, insurance premiums, and any other fixed costs don't take the winter off. They bill monthly or quarterly, all year long.
When the money comes in unevenly but the bills go out evenly, the business feels flush in July and tight in January, even if the full year adds up fine. That gap leads to bad decisions: skipping a slow-season insurance review because cash feels tight, taking on a bad-fit snow contract just to generate deposits, or leaning on a credit card in December and paying it down all spring. None of that shows up as a single bad month in QuickBooks. It shows up as a pattern, year after year, that looks like surprise when it's actually predictable.
The second piece of this is annual maintenance contracts. If you bill a season-long mowing contract in equal monthly installments, the billing doesn't match when the work happens. You might deliver four visits in a light month and get paid the same amount as a month with eight visits. That smooths your revenue on paper, but it also hides which months and quarters are actually profitable. An owner who only reads monthly profit can end up thinking summer is thinner than it is, and winter richer than it is, because the billing schedule flattened the real pattern of costs and work.
A worked example
Say your fixed costs, the ones that don't pause for winter, run $2,400 a month: a truck payment, insurance, and a small equipment loan. Over the four slow months, December through March, that's $9,600 you'll need regardless of how much work is coming in.
Your season runs eight months, April through November, and you take in $120,000 in revenue over that stretch. To cover $9,600 in winter fixed costs, you'd need to set aside $1,200 a month during the season, about 8% of an average season month's $15,000 in revenue.
Here's how it plays out. Each month from April to November, $1,200 moves out of the main operating account into a separate winter account, right after deposits clear. By the end of November, that account holds $9,600. When the December truck payment, January insurance bill, and February loan installment come due, the money is already sitting there, waiting, instead of competing with payroll and fuel for whatever's left in the main account.
The exact percentage will differ for every business, depending on how large your fixed costs are relative to your season's revenue. The point isn't the 8%. It's that the number comes from your own books, not a guess.
How to set it up
- Pull last winter's fixed costs from QuickBooks. Run a profit and loss report filtered to December through March. List every cost that showed up regardless of work volume: loan and lease payments, insurance premiums, storage rent, any salaried staff you kept on.
- Total those costs to get your winter number. This is the amount you need banked before the season ends. If last winter is known to have been unusually light or heavy, adjust up or down using your best judgment.
- Divide by your number of season months. If your season runs eight months, divide the winter total by eight to get a monthly transfer amount. If it runs seven, divide by seven.
- Open a separate bank account for this money. It should be separate from your operating account so it's not sitting there looking like spendable cash every time you check your balance.
- Set up a recurring transfer timed to your typical deposit pattern, whether that's weekly or monthly, so the transfer happens automatically rather than depending on you remembering when things are busy.
- Recalculate every spring using the prior winter's actual costs, so the target adjusts as your loan balances, insurance premiums, or headcount change.
Where this breaks down
- Treating the winter account as a cushion instead of a plan. If you dip into it in August because a slow-pay customer left you short, it won't be there in December. It works only if it's off-limits during the season.
- Sizing it off guesswork instead of the P&L. An owner who picks a round number without checking last winter's actual bills risks finding out in February that the number was too low.
- Billing season-long contracts evenly without checking them against delivered visits. If you never compare billed amounts to visits performed, you won't notice a contract that's underpriced for how much work it's actually generating, and you won't catch it until the season's over.
- Reading profit only by month. A single slow month can look alarming, and a single flush month can look like everything's fine, when neither reflects the real seasonal pattern. Quarterly profit tells you more.
- Forgetting to adjust the transfer amount when a new loan or a bigger insurance premium comes in. The transfer that worked last year may not cover this year's fixed costs.
Monthly checklist
- Confirm the winter-account transfer went through on schedule.
- Check the running balance in the winter account against your target for this point in the season.
- Compare contract billings for the month against visits actually delivered.
- Review the profit and loss report for the month, and again for the quarter.
- Note any new or changed fixed cost, so it's ready to fold into next spring's recalculation.
Common questions
How much should I set aside if this is my first year doing this?
Use your actual costs from last winter as the baseline, even if you didn't plan for them at the time. If you're a newer business without a full winter behind you, add up every fixed cost you're currently carrying and multiply by four or five months as a starting estimate, then refine it once you have real numbers.
Should the winter account earn interest, or does that not matter?
It can be a plain business savings account. The main requirement is that it's separate from your everyday operating account, so the balance isn't easy to spend by accident. Whether it earns a little interest is a secondary detail.
What if my slow season includes snow work that brings in real revenue?
Then your fixed-cost target should account for that income when you're deciding how much to set aside, since snow revenue may cover part of the winter gap. Track snow billings separately in QuickBooks so you can see clearly how much they actually offset, rather than assuming.
How do I know if my maintenance contracts are priced right if the billing is smoothed out?
Track the number of visits scheduled versus visits actually completed each month, alongside the flat monthly billing. If a contract consistently delivers more visits than the price supports, that's a sign the pricing or scope needs a second look.
North Hudson Bookkeeping sets up this kind of winter planning inside QuickBooks and keeps it current as your loans, insurance, and contracts change. The first call is free.
