6 Expenses for a Pet Waste Removal Business You Didn’t Know

Having a general idea of what expenses you may have in this business will empower you to charge the appropriate rates for your services and eventually scale your business to make even more money!

By the end of this blog you will learn the top six categories of expenses for your pet waste removal business, so you can best prepare as an entrepreneur and succeed with your business.

A quick side note I recommend saving receipts of everything you spend for your pet wish removal business including all of the items listed on this blog.

I cannot give financial or tax advice but you may be able to claim most if not all of these items on your taxes as business expenses to lower your tax liability. Please consult with a tax professional to learn what options are available to you.

The first main expense that comes to mind with the pet waste removal business is all the gas you spend driving to your clients houses.

Since our line of work requires us to travel between locations, be prepared to fill up your tank of gas at least one time per week depending on the kind of vehicle you drive and the gas mileage it has.

This is very important to keep in mind especially when you provide quotes to new customers because you want to ensure that whatever rate you specify will include the cost of driving to and from their house.

If someone is outside your general area of service, do you really want to add an additional 20 to 30 minutes of commute time to your route if you’re not getting paid appropriately for that time and gas?

Price yourself correctly and you will not worry as much on how much gas it takes to complete an appointment.

The second category of expenses for your pooper scooper business are the supplies needed to perform your services.

When starting out you will need a rake. preferably metal or aluminum, a container to hold the waste like a bucket or dustpan, your plastic bags (I buy 13 gallon bags to put in my dustpan and then double bag them in large black trash bags) and bleach to sanitize your equipment in between appointments.

You are going to buy a lot of plastic bags and bleach, trust me!

Along with your plastic bags and bleach, other reoccurring expenses you’ll have are paper towels to wipe and clean your equipment, plastic booties for your shoes to prevent bacteria from being transferred from one location to another, rubber or plastic gloves to keep your hands clean during your appointments and any other product you use to stay clean and sanitary.

Poop scooping is a messy business and you want all the supplies available to keep yourself healthy and ensure you don’t bring any germs back home to your family and pets!

Since you’ll be utilizing your vehicle all the time for your pet waste removal business, vehicle maintenance will be considered the third expense you can expect in this line of work.

Because of how much driving you’ll do you will need to keep up on any maintenance checkups and regular oil changes to keep your vehicle running as smooth as possible. This also includes tire rotations and replacements with all the wear and tear your vehicle will go through.

You may also consider investing in roadside assistance programs if you do not have the equipment to change a flat tire by yourself because you will experience a flat tire eventually.

Be extra diligent with maintaining your vehicle especially if you do not have the means to borrow or replace that vehicle if anything else were to happen.

You should make it a business goal to eventually buy a truck or secondary vehicle only for your poop scooping business as that would be considered a depreciating asset for your business come tax season!

Having a separate vehicle will help you better track your business miles and gas usage and keep your personal vehicle cleaner for your own use.

Owning a truck for my pet waste removal business is one of my business goals for 2022 that I’m most excited for.

Outside of gas, the money you spend on marketing and advertising will probably be one of the biggest expenses you have for your business.

Both Facebook and google ads are a “pay-to-play” system, where you have to pay the platform some money for them to actively promote your ads to a specific audience.

As a general rule of thumb, I like to spend at least 10 to 20 percent of the revenue I made in the last month as my budget for paid advertisements. But this will change depending on the demand for scooping services.

For example, spring time is the most lucrative for pet waste removal businesses since the snow is starting to melt and dog owners don’t want to deal with an entire winter’s worth of thawing poop on their lawn.

Along with paid ads, you may also consider investing in business cards so you have a way to promote your business to anyone who comes up to you during the middle of your scoop or in conversation.

Other marketing materials may include flyers and door hangers if you’re looking to do more gorilla marketing in a specific town and lawn signs you can stick on the ground at some of your clients houses.

Don’t be afraid to invest in marketing material as this is just one of the ways you will expand the potential reach of your pet waste removal business.

The next expense you want to keep in mind is any seasonal clothing you will be purchasing to keep you comfortable regardless of the weather.

During the winter season, you will want to buy some warm hats and thermals for your body and legs as well as water resistant gloves and boots for all the snow.

For the summer time I also bought myself a large brim straw hat to protect my bald head from the sun.

Whatever you decide remember this is something you’ll be wearing for longer periods of time when you scoop so make sure it’s comfortable and doesn’t get in your way.

Now the expense I’m going to talk about will typically creep up on you the longer you operate your business.

Eventually you will get to a point where it makes sense to start investing in software or licenses for apps and platforms that help you automate many of your business processes.

It’s true what they say, the more money you make with the business, the more expensive it is to manage that business!

For almost a year I only use my Facebook business page and receive payments via venmo or cash.

I decided to invest in technology for my pet waste removal business to take care of a lot of the administrative and invoicing work that was taking too much of my time.

You may grow to a size where you want to pay for a subscription to a routing app so you can best determine the routes you take for your scoops each day or pay for QuickBooks so you have a paper trail all the invoices and transactions made with your business. Right now, QuickBooks is offering 30% off for 6 months, so try it out if you’re looking to automate your business processes even more!

Disclaimer: Some of these links are affiliate links where I’ll earn a small commission if you make a purchase at no additional cost to you.

I decided to invest in the CRM Jobber to help me keep track of my schedule, create automated invoices when I complete my scoops and have customers sign up for auto payments so I don’t have to chase anyone down for my money!

I also bought a subscription to Nicejob so my customers can receive an automated message to leave me a review and get my website built to convert even more potential clients to my business.

Both of these platforms cost me a monthly fee, but the additional work I’ve been landing since the beginning of the year has already paid off the subscription costs.

You can check out CRM Jobber or Nicejob via these links and save yourself some money when signing up through that link! I highly recommend it if you want to take your business to the next level! Disclaimer: Some of these links are affiliate links where I’ll earn a small commission if you make a purchase at no additional cost to you.

Since you got this far into the blog, I’m going to leave you with a bonus tip you’re probably not really thinking of.

Using a payment provider like Venmo, Square or CRM Jobber , they all take a small percentage of the transaction as a fee to process any payments.

These fees may be small but at scale it can get to hundreds of dollars a year that you spend utilizing their platform to manage payments. Some of these platforms will have different tiers that you can sign up for which all have different fees and rates depending on how much you spend on a monthly basis or the amount of transactions you’re doing.

On the Connect plan I’m using with CRM Jobber, their fee is 2.9% plus 30 cents of the transaction. So this means a $20 transaction will have around 88 cents in transaction fees jobber will automatically take to process that transaction.

Personally this is a small price I’m willing to pay for all the automation and features I’ve been able to utilize on CRM Jobber for my pet waste removal business and I’ll happily give my money to a company or provider if they can make my life a little easier.

Speaking of making your life easier, don’t forget to save a portion of your business income into a savings account that is hard to access so you have money available to pay for your taxes as well as hire someone to do your taxes.

Depending on if you have a business set up as a dba or doing business as or an LLC, these company structures will have different requirements on how you’re expected to file your taxes.

Even though tools like TurboTax are great for most things, if you do not feel comfortable filing your taxes as a business, hiring a CPA or certified public accountant to do your taxes can be one of the best investments you make for your pet waste removal business.

Please note, cpas are not cheap! At least the good ones. But they’ll be able to provide additional strategies you probably haven’t thought of to save you even more money with the business.

Since CPAs and taxes can get really pricey, you need to keep in mind which times of the year are the best times to maximize how much money you can make with this kind of business.

One of those times is during Spring Rush!

The spring rush where every dog owner has a winter’s worth of poop thawing in their yard. It’s very common for pet wet removal businesses to make close to 30 to 50 percent of their annual income during the spring rush because of how much demand there is for our services.

The spring rush can be very taxing on your mind and your body, even though the money can be extremely lucrative.

If you want to learn how you can best prepare for the spring rush and maximize your money during the busiest time of the year for your pet waste removal business, click onto the next blog now!

And I’ll see you on the next scoop!

And As Always, Acknowledge The Now. Bye!