Ranges, rounding & limits
After a tier’s total is calculated, three more settings decide exactly what number the homeowner sees: how wide the range is, what it rounds to, and the floor and ceiling it can never cross.
The range spread
Section titled “The range spread”Each tier’s total isn’t shown as a single number — it’s turned into a low end and a high end, calculated as a percentage below and above that total. The starting defaults are 10% below and 20% above. A $1,000 tier total becomes a range of roughly $900 to $1,200 before rounding.
The low and high percentages are set separately, so you can make the range narrower, wider, or lopsided in either direction.
Rounding
Section titled “Rounding”Both ends of the range are then rounded to the nearest $25 by default. This is what keeps a homeowner from seeing an oddly specific number like $927 — ranges read as clean, deliberate figures instead.
The floor and ceiling
Section titled “The floor and ceiling”Every range is checked against a minimum and maximum before it’s shown:
- Minimum quote — $300 by default. No range’s low end ever displays below this, no matter how small or heavily discounted the job.
- Maximum quote — $100,000 by default. This exists mainly as a display guard against a runaway number, not a price you’re likely to hit in practice.
If a tier’s total is small enough that the minimum swallows the whole spread — the low end would round to $300 and so would the high end — the estimator doesn’t show a $300–$300 range. It shows that tier as a flat minimum instead, so it reads as “starting at $300,” not as a range that looks like it’s broken.
Why a range, and never a single number
Section titled “Why a range, and never a single number”Every price your online estimator shows a homeowner is a range, always paired with a note that it’s confirmed on-site — never a firm number. That’s true at every tier, on every job, with no setting that turns it into a single figure. The range is what protects you from being held to an exact quote before anyone has stood in the yard and looked at the tree.
What to watch out for
Section titled “What to watch out for”A minimum set too close to your real smallest job stops doing its job as a floor — it’s there so a heavily discounted or single-small-tree quote never undersells the baseline cost of showing up. If you widen your range spread significantly, check your minimum still makes sense against it; a wide spread on a low total can push the low end below what you’d actually accept.