Business Management Tools for Landscaping

The key to managing a profitable and long-lived landscaping business is an effective business plan outlining your goals and how you plan to reach them. As your landscaping business grows, you’ll need the right business management tools to ensure your organizational abilities grow with you. Tools such as fleet tracking, time reporting, online invoicing and payments, and customer tracking will allow you to manage every aspect of your landscaping business for greater efficiency, organization, and ultimately, success.

Fleet and Job Tracking

As a business in a service-based industry, your employees will work almost exclusively off-site to complete jobs and tasks. This makes tracking your fleet and your active jobs an essential part of managing your landscaping business. Thus, you should opt for business management software that allows for real-time updating and tracking of employee movements, as well as task reporting to determine the status of each ongoing project. Your software should include the ability to input information such as estimated time to arrival and completion as well, which can boost your planning capabilities and help you better manage employee tasks. Staying up to date on the location of every employee and vehicle will help your business run more smoothly on a daily basis, as well as help you budget for factors such as gas and fleet maintenance. Looking at the long-term distribution of your resources can also help you plan for future projects and determine when expansion is necessary to grow your business further.

Online Invoicing and Payments

In today’s digital world, the ability to generate invoices and receive payments online is a valuable asset. As a landscaping business, your clients may be spread across a large geographical range; sending invoices and receiving payments via mail can take time, affecting your business’ resources until you have obtained final payment. Online invoice generation allows you to send information about completed jobs and the payments due immediately, as well as provides your clients with the ability to pay you more quickly and easily. Additionally, you may wish to charge clients incrementally or periodically for recurring services—online invoicing and payments will streamline this process significantly, leaving a clear electronic trail of invoices and receipts so that you and your clients will always know the state of any ongoing services and payments.

Customer Tracking

Landscaping businesses often grow their clientele via word of mouth. Additionally, your landscaping business may provide recurring services, such as lawn care, spring clean-up, and sprinkler maintenance. The best way to maintain your current business and expand your client base is to stay in touch with your customers via customer tracking. Your business management software should allow you to input all the information you need about every client, as well as set up reminders for periodic communication and follow-up on each job. Additional tools you may want to consider include a customer access portal that allows each client to track the progress of their job, as well as request estimates and information about additional services or future tasks.

The right business management tools can help your landscaping company thrive by providing the organizational system you need to manage employees, tasks, and clients. Please take a look through our website to find out more about our effective and easy-to-use business management software to discover how you can use these tools to benefit your business, or to sign up for our free 14-day software trial.