Better Jobcosting for Landscape Companies – Avoid the 6 Deadly Mistakes

There’s probably no  topic that’s more over-talked and under-delivered than jobcosting for landscape contractors.  Every owner wants to know how they did on each job, and almost everyone agrees – you need to be doing jobcosting – but very few companies figure out how to follow through effectively.  Sure, many are collecting information every day but:

• Is the information getting used regularly?
• Is the information getting entered and processed in the most efficient way possible?
• And, ultimately, is it improving your results?

If you answered ‘no’ to any of these questions, chances are that your business is falling victim to one (or more) of the six deadly mistakes of jobcosting.

Deadly Mistake #1:   Doing Jobcosting In Your Head

 “We’re a small company.  I know how we’re doing on our jobs.”

While this may be true, this will only ever work if you want to stay small and you want to stay in the field.  Owners who can’t get out of the field are their own worst enemy!  While they keep all the information “up here” (pointing to head)  , everyone else in the company is completely dependent on them for all the answers to every who, what, when, where and why.    Nobody knows how to do their job.  Employees get frustrated because they never know how they’re doing.  The owner is frustrated because they feel like they have to hold everyone’s hand every day to get the job done right.

Even worse, if it doesn’t look like you’re doing jobcosting – tracking hours and costs and comparing them to how jobs are priced, your people won’t think being profitable is important.

Deadly Mistake #2:   Working Without a Good Estimate

A good estimate is essential for jobcosting for landscape companies.  The estimate solves 2 critical problems:

• It defines success for the job (the crew has x many hours to complete the work given a specific list of equipment).  It’s critical that the owner and the crew are clear about how long this job should take.
• It defines how time and costs should be tracked.  In our estimates, each “phase” of the job is assigned a cost code.  Our cost codes are a simple, standardized list of categories that we track revenue and costs against.   That way, no matter what we name the work on the estimate (e.g.  Front Gardens, Zen Garden, Front Gates Entrance Garden, Vegetable Garden), our bookkeeper knows exactly  how to enter those costs in accounting (e.g.  1090-Softscapes).

Without standardization from job-to-job, bookeepers and crews have to guess how you want to track their time and costs.  Some people make no effort to guess well and the results are predictably useless.  Other people try their best to guess correctly, but if they’re entering information in areas that don’t line up with your expectations, the results are still useless.

To get a better sense of what I mean, you can download a sample list of standardized cost codes by going here: 

 You want to create a list of codes for your company so that every part of every job can be assigned to one standardized code.

Deadly Mistake #3:   Too Complicated

A complicated system is another mistake made by many of us.  I know because we lived through this mistake for years.  We tried to track small details for every task on every job.  We wanted to know how much time every component of every job took…

• How much time did it take to excavate the pad?
• How much time did it take to form up the area?
• How much time to install and tie the rebar?
• How much time to pour the concrete?

With all this information, we were sure to become much better at estimating, right?  Not in my experience.  Unless I was going to pay a timekeeper to stand over this job with a stopwatch, the level of detail was far too much for any foreman to actually track.  The result should have been predictable.  Crews ‘guessed’ at time on their timesheets.  What came in at the end of the day wasn’t what actually happened in the field, it was what the foreman thought I wanted to see.  They simply made actual hours as close to estimated hours as they could, filling in hours not by what actually happened, but by what the timesheet form said should be happening.  The data was useless.

On top of that, the complex time breakdowns meant things often got missed and forgotten.  Tasks would have 0 hours applied to them frequently.  That meant another task was over-estimated.  More useless information.

Keep it simple.  Only bother tracking what’s reasonable to expect to get back from the field.  It’s not reasonable to expect our field staff to stop what they’re doing every single time they change tasks to record the time, especially when a foreman is trying to manage 3-5 other people’s time as well!  Keep your tasks general and you’ll get better, more useful information.

Deadly Mistake #4:   Punchclock for payroll.  Handwritten logs for jobcosting.

Visit 10 jobcosting contractors and 8 of them make this mistake.  A timeclock (or some timekeeping system) is used for payroll, while daily sheets are filled out by the foreman for jobcosting.  In my experience, this lead to a lot of ‘missing hours’ and a whole lot of overhead time invested in trying to reconcile the two systems.

Payroll and jobcosting should be the same system, not different systems.  Otherwise, the information coming back is rarely the same.  You’ll have 10 hours in the payroll system, but only 8.5 logged to jobcosting.  Who’s paying for the 1.5 “missing” hours and where did they go?

Here’s how the scenario always plays out.

The crew punches in first thing in the morning and works all day.  They remember to clock in the moment they start work.  Then they work all day and ignore their paperwork because it doesn’t affect them and/or their payroll.  At the end of the day, before punching out, the foreman sits down and fills out the daily log, or jobcosting sheet, to the best of his/her memory.  It has nothing to do with “memory” in reality… they are filling out time in the way that makes everything look like its going as expected.  If they spent more time on one site, they’ll shave time off another to make the sheet look good.  Everyone wants to show that they’re bringing in jobs on time… but they don’t want to look too good and have their expectations increased.  When they’re done the paperwork, they clock out.

There’s a few things wrong with this picture.

You, the owner, have no idea whether these hours are actual job times or just times made to look like actuals.  The latter is useless information and a waste of everyone’s time to track and enter it.   Secondly, what gets written on the jobcosting sheets isn’t the same as payroll.  All kinds of hours are showing up on the punch clocks that are “missing” from timesheets.  Time in the AM, PM and between jobs “vanishes” from your jobcosting, but not from your payroll.  If you want accurate data, you need to pay someone to sort through these differences and correct them.  This is not an efficient use of overhead resources.

You wouldn’t need a person to reconcile if jobcosting and payroll were the same system.  Employees are fantastic at tracking their time correctly… just look at how well they track their hours on their paycheques.  Make payroll and jobcosting the same system/form and make sure EVERY hour get allocated to something (it doesn’t have to be a customer job – it can be shop time, or deliveries, etc.)  and your jobcosting information will be far more accurate and complete.

Deadly Mistake #5:   Too Many Systems.

Most companies already have everything they need to use for better jobcosting… their accounting software.  Your costs need to get entered into accounting for proper bookkeeping.  To reduce errors and time, the most efficient way to jobcost your landscape projects is to use your accounting software that you already own.  Quickbooks and Sage 50 (formerly Simply Accounting or Peachtree) both do jobcosting…  but most businesses don’t use it.   Why not?  It’s not because it doesn’t work – it’s because the company doesn’t have systems or processes in place to get the jobcosting data into accounting accurately.

We’ve seen many companies who use several different sheets for jobcosting .  We’ve done it ourselves.  Crews fill out one sheet for payroll and other for jobcosting.  This sheet goes to the owner, this one is used for billing, and then the office manager goes through and re-enters the information into a spreadsheet that goes back in the design file…. The same data is getting entered and re-entered several times over and even worse… often each one shows a different picture.  Not only are you wasting too much time entering information, you can’t really trust any of the sources to be 100% accurate.

Keep it lean and keep it simple.  You don’t need information getting entered twice and three times in different systems.  You need it to get entered once, correctly.  We use our accounting because all costs must get entered there anyway.  We couldn’t change the way Quickbooks did jobcosting, but we could change the way we did jobcosting to suit Quickbooks.  Things got much easier (and leaner!) when we looked at changing our processes to suit our tools rather than using many different tools to suit our processes.

Deadly Mistake #6:    No Feedback Back to the Crews.

If you’re going to do jobcosting, share the results with your landscape crews.  Without feedback, one of the most common frustrations of your good staff will include “We never know how we’re doing.”  Your bad staff won’t care.  Without feedback, you’re driving out your good performers and you’re giving your weak, unmotivated people a nice comfortable place to pickup a paycheque every other week.

Share jobcosting information.  Give a status update on each job at least each week… more often if your jobs are smaller.  You’re not only keeping them in the loop, you’re showing your staff that being profitable is important.  For the sake of everyone’s job, and everyone’s standard of living, it is.

Mark Bradley is the president of TBG Landscape (The Beach Gardener) and the Landscape Management Network (LMN).  Look for LMN’s new timetracking application for better jobcosting coming out summer 2013!

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In the early stages of my career, when I used to sell landscaping I used to bring every piece of sales paraphernalia I had to my initial client meetings. Sample drawings, my leather bound portfolio of my installation work with my resume as the first page, and so many brochures and marketing pieces that I often had to take two trips to my car just to bring everything into the client’s house. Now looking back some 30 years later I realize how much harder I made things for myself and my clients and why my sales were so poor.

A good friend of mine, Peter Bemis, a professor at Western Technical College in La Crosse, Wisconsin emailed me a question that his students asked him last week in class. How much information is enough and how much is too much? His students were actually discussing plant schedules and if it was important to list both the botanical name and common name on your drawings. One theory is that it shows knowledge, experience and professionalism (Peter) and the other theory is that it is a lot of work that is of little value unless you are having a Latin Spelling Bee (Jody).

So let’s address this question and while we’re at it throw in some discussion about all of those other “pesky” and time consuming details and descriptions like caliper sizes, container or b&b, height, quantities along with those other silly notes that we have all been taught to use like, “must be field grown” — oh brother. By my tone you can easily guess which philosophy I support.

My design/build experience has proven that providing less information in your drawings will actually yield better results selling landscaping. Now calm down a minute and just read the rest of this before you start sending me L.A. hate email. I have very good reasons for why I say this. All of which fit perfectly into my business model, my presentation style and the exciting world of landscape design/build. It is not the “traditional” way of doing things and was certainly not the way I was trained. Then again I like to push the envelope and always “Think Outside the Boxwood”. It has taken me many years to come around to this way of thinking, but in the long run I can guarantee you, that providing less information in your drawings will speed up your process, makes much more sense, can protect you legally and will absolutely help you sell more work. The only thing is, that to be successful at it, you have to do it the right way.

So what are some simple things that you can do to minimize problems and maximize profits?

As promised I will show you that there is a method to this madness when you sell landscaping. In the design phase of design/build, your primary goal is to create a plan that will help you sell the installation. Not just create another pretty drawing that will just end up taking up space in your flat files or memory in your external hard drive. Remember, we are presenting a concept here and trying to get the clients excited about the project. We are not selling plant material, pavers or outdoor lighting – we are selling a dream, your clients dream — make sure you always keep that in mind. So if we are trying to sell a dream does it really matter if an azalea is ‘hino crimson’, ‘mothers day’ or ‘hershey red’ if they just like red azaleas?

So what do I do? First of all, I present all of my drawings in color (as should you). Next, I limit the information on the drawing because they are just distractions to the client. Distractions which can create confusion, develop disagreements and ultimately jeapordize or kill your sale. Keep your information generic and I mean generic. Patio, driveway, walkway, pool, etc. On my plans, when it comes to plant material there is no plant schedule, sizes or quantities. I will designate a plant mass as rhododendrons (actually just rhody), spruce, junipers, perennials etc and supply some additional information regarding quantities and sizes in the actual proposal. However, not much more information. Just enough to keep things legal while giving me and my subs as much latitude as possible when it comes to purchasing the actual materials. Keep in mind, this is not a scam for the purposes of allowing me to cut corners. Actually, it’s the contrary. If I can get a nicer shrub for my client because the nursery is having a sale or maybe they just got in some full beautiful plants that were slightly different than what I wanted but will do the same job, then why should I have to worry if it is a spirea gold flame or spirea lime mound? The flower is similar, size and habit is consistent and the fall color suits my needs. I do admit that I am not completely altruistic and that selfishly, this process does allow me to not have to run all over the place to find a specific plant if it is not available at the current nursery.

Many years ago, one of my mentors William Doerler Sr., expressed this philosophy to me. One day I was driving myself crazy (as I often do) trying to find a specific variety of Japanese Maple for a client. I called the usual sources, checked with various local growers and even started checking outside the state, but nobody had one available. In my freneticism I finally went upstairs to Mr. Doerler’s office and I asked him what to do because I needed to get back to the client that evening. Without missing a beat, he looked up at me and said, “Did you sell the landscaping”? Puzzled I responded, “No, I did not”. He looked down, went back to work and said, “Just get a price for the tree, finish your proposal and meet your client. Worry about finding the tree once you sell the job.” I was awe struck at how simple yet practical his solution was.

Sell landscaping – and then worry about it. Brilliant!

This is why, still to this day, instead of specifying every last perennial in my drawings, I make squiggly graphics with some hachure marks, label them as perennials and in the contract I list (150) 2 gal perennials for “X” dollars. Once I sell the work I’ll worry about what I’m going to use. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just ask the nursery to send me 15 different varieties of sun loving perennials in various colors with various bloom times and deliver 10 of each type. Naturally, I’ll ask them to send me the nicest, fullest ones they have.

So let me ask, what would you rather do? Spend hours upon hours, adding notes, descriptions and plant schedules or use that time improve your landscape plan that will excite your clients and turn their dreams into realities.

Once again, I think it is clear to see that less is truly more and that too much information can often work against you.

Jody Shilan is a former landscape contractor and award winning designer. He has sold tens of millions of dollars of installation work throughout his career and now uses his 30+ years of experience to teach other landscape design/build contractors how to dramatically increase their sales and standardize their landscape design/build/sales process. He does this through private consulting, public speaking, group workshops and his “exclusive” members only website www.FromDesign2Build.com.

Jody Shilan appears as a guest blogger for LMN Blog, Landscape Management Network’s resource hub for all things related to building a better landscape business.  For more on the Landscape Management Network, check out the website at www.landscapemanagementnetwork.com.

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Landscape Management Network’s Sales and Support and Live Chat will be closed on Friday, March 29th for the Canadian statutory holiday at Easter. We will be back online on Monday, April 1st.

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When I see companies with shops and trailers kept like this, one thing comes to mind… waste.  And how much time, energy and lost sales opportunity is wasted because crews are:

• Taking too long to find the right tools and materials
• Taking too many trips to vendors because they don’t find out they’re missing tools/materials until they go to use them
• Constantly working without the correct tools/materials and losing productivity
• Doing work incorrectly/taking shortcuts because they don’t have the necessary tools/equipment – then going back to fix it
• Cleaning and re-cleaning shops and trailers because there is no system to sustain the system after its cleaned up/organized
• Breaking tools and equipment due to poor care/maintenance
• Leaving a poor impression with customers and neighbors by leaving open tool trailers out front of sites that ‘show-off’ your company’s disorganization and sloppiness

Don’t underestimate that last point.  If your trailers and sites are a mess, people will overlook it while the job is going on, but they will not overlook it when it comes to paying that last cheque.  If your crews can’t take care of their own tools/equipment, what does that tell your customers about the level of care invested in doing their jobs with attention to detail?

Messy trailers tell your customers and your crews that you’re not in “control”.  Neat, organized trailers demonstrate the opposite.

Anytime is a good time to improve your trailer and shop organization, but late winter/early spring – just before work picks up is the best.  Here are a few tips we have on how to organize your landscape trailers for better productivity.  The same principles apply to your shop as well.

1.  Start with a trailer that looks good on the outside!  Your trailers are the cheapest roaming advertising you’ll ever invest in.  Make sure they are painted well, that they shout out your image or brand, and that they include website/phone/email information so people (especially neighbors) can contact you if they like what they see

2.  Now open that trailer and gut it.  Pull everything out.  Start from scratch.  Throw out anything broken or unused.  If you haven’t used it in a year, keep it in the shop, you don’t need it taking up space in a trailer.  Get rid of anything that’s not useful.

3.  Think about how to organize a spot for everything.  Tools and materials used often should get located closest to the doors.  Or if all the equipment is coming off your trailer, organize it by order-of-operations to minimize moving and re-moving tools/equipment to get at other equipment.  Shelves and racks can help you take much better advantage of the space and will help keep things organized.

4.  Re-Assess Your Inventory.  Is there anything you need to add or re-stock?  What unnecessary trips to vendors or shop could you eliminate by having more inventory on your trailer?

5.  Sweep and Clean.  Give the inside a good sweep and clean.

6.  Label everything.  Buy a labeller at an office supply store – but buy a good one that can produce durable labels.  Put labels on every shelf, drawer, hanger, etc. to indicate exactly what goes there.  This step is essential if you don’t want to look in your trailer 2 months from now to find everything back to a mess again.  Labels take away any excuses for disorganization.  If there’s a spot for everything and it’s easy to see, there’s no reason the trailer (or shop) should ever get back to a mess.

7.  Check tools and equipment before replacing.  Look at the condition of your tools and equipment before reloading your trailer.  Look for cracked handles, fraying cords, dirty/clogged filters or triggers.. anything that might indicate a safety hazard or potential repair.  The last thing you want is someone getting hurt as a result of your equipment.  The 2nd last thing you want is losing productivity because of a tool/equipment that breaks when it’s needed that day on site.

8. Reload Your Trailers.  If you added any new tools/equipment/materials make sure they were assigned a spot and a label.

9. Assign Accountability.  Make it somebody’s job on each crew to be responsible for the upkeep of their trailer.  Don’t make it your job to stay on top of this.  Hold your assigned people accountable for the upkeep.  We prefer to assign this to a crew member, not the foreman.  The foreman should be thinking about the job and the goals for the day, not whether the shovels are put back properly.

10.  Get Better Results.  Better landscape trailers are guaranteed to reduce:  job completion times, unnecessary trips to vendors/shop, employee morale, company image/professionalism, equipment repair and maintenance costs, tool replacements, and much, much more.

For a sample of one of our general landscape landscape trailers as it is being re-organized, have a look at the gallery below:

TAP

Landscape Management Network is business management and landscape estimating software built by landscape contractors for landscape contractors.  For more information about LMN, check out their website at www.landscapemanagementnetwork.com.

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Every landscape contractor would like to be able to charge more for their services.  Who wouldn’t?  The reality is, landscape contractors don’t charge enough for their services.  Recent benchmarks say the average landscape company loses money each year.  It’s also a sad reality that many contractors feel that they’re trapped in this ‘race to the bottom’.  If you’ve ever told yourself…

• If I charge more, I won’t win any work..
• Clients are already telling me I’m too expensive.
• I just lost a recent big job to a competitor who won it for far less.

… then you might well find your company already running in this ‘race to the bottom’.  Associations are working to help educate and train the industry, but it will be a long time before anyone can shift an entire industry.   Until we get there, here’s a few different ways you can charge more this year, and still thrive in this competitive industry.

KNOW YOUR PRICING, AND REFINE THE DETAILS

I’ve written several articles on the value of a running your business from a budget, so I’ll keep this point brief.  Knowing exactly how much your company needs to charge is essential.  Maybe you don’t need to charge more… maybe your crews need to do more work in less time.

There are 2 more valuable benefits to pricing using your budget.  First of all, small changes can mean a big difference.  If I ask a group of 40 contractors “What do you charge per hour for labour?” most will answer with a very even, round number.  $40/hr or $50/hr.  Very rarely will you hear something odd… or something with change.  I’ll almost never encounter someone who says:  “$52.45”/hr.  The fact is, small changes can add up to a big difference.  Just adding 50 cents an hour on a 10-employee, $1M company would increase your net profit by about $10,000 or 1%.

On each job, it makes a tiny difference.  But over an average year, for an average company, it could buy you a great website, or a nice bonus for you or your key staff.   The point is, you should know exactly how much you need to charge because every little bit counts.  If you’re worried about customer perception, ask yourself who you’re hiding your hourly rate from?  It’s not often that we ever show it to a customer on an estimate, so who is really going to care whether your rate is a nice round number?  Even if you show your rate, you’ll have the confidence to explain how you arrived at that rate and confidence wins negotiations.

THE WALLFLOWER GOES HOME ALONE

The same scene’s been played out 1,000 times in the movies.  There’s this nice guy who’s smart, good hearted and well intentioned stands against the wall, staring at a girl who’s his crush while the not-so-good hearted  alpha-male steps in and sweeps her off her feet.  In the movies, the good-hearted kid usually goes through some sort of redeeming story and wins the girl over, but if that happened more in real life, well, they wouldn’t be making movies about it.

What does this have to do with price?  Your value isn’t just about what you do, it’s about how people perceive your value, and in the construction/service industry, perception is everything.  Relying on the story that “We do quality work” is like the wallflower at the dance standing there hoping that his redeeming qualities win over the girl.   Everyone knows he’s a better “catch”… but the girl goes home with guy who looks like the better catch.  Even stranger, the alpha male gets the girl even when the girl knows she “shouldn’t”.    It’s human nature to be persuaded.

The same principles that win that at the prom can also help you charge more and still get the customer.

• A killer website is like your reputation.  It shows your work, your brand and is getting checked out constantly without you knowing it, or being able to defend yourself.  If you’ve ever said to yourself “Our website could be better”, then make it better!  If you’re saying that to yourself, your customers are leaving your site to spend more time on a better one, and you’re not there to defend yourself.

• Sales meetings – when you meet the customer, impress them!  Want to charge more?  Look like you’re worth it.  Show up on time (even a bit early!).  Dress well, drive a clean truck, have a folder to leave with the client.  People want the cheapest price might get turned off… that’s OK, those aren’t the people who are going to pay more anyway.

If you believe you’re worth more, you need to act like you’re worth more.  Strut your stuff.  Go out on a limb.  Ask for the work with confidence, or you’ll end up like the wallflower at the dance – a great catch, that never gets the girl they deserve.

RE-FRAME WHAT YOU’RE SELLING

Some customers are looking for the best value/lowest price.  But most customers don’t actually buy that way.

Nike doesn’t advertise that their shoes won’t fall apart after a year.  That’s because, most customers don’t buy shoes for durability… they buy Nike shoes to look good/get compliments, or because they believe that these shoes are going to increase their athletic performance.

There are hundreds of cars on the market.  If ‘longest lasting’ was the customer’s biggest concern than the most expensive cars would have the longest warranties.  Ironically, it’s the opposite.  Kia’s and Hyundai’s try to relieve quality concerns with the industry’s longest warranty, while high-end brands have some of the industry’s shortest.  Only a few customers buy the industry’s ‘best value’ car.  Most customers spend more money for different reasons.  Here’s a few ways you can sell to those reasons:

• You’re ahead of the curve – better/more efficient lighting, outdoor-sound systems, ‘green’ equipment, methods and products
• You’ll improve their social status – hot-tubs, seating/gathering areas, outdoor kitchens
• You’ll impress their neighbours – unique features/design, unique plant material, perfectly manicured lawns and gardens
• Your after-sale service is best-in-class  – how can you enhance their property after the sale?  What if they have questions about how to care for their garden?  What can you offer, in writing, that’s different than your low-price competitors
• You will improve their quality of life  - your designs or services will save your customers time (e.g. less household maintenance), enhance their lives (e.g. more family time), and long-term expenditures  (e.g. heating bills or water usage)
• You’ll improve their financial status – better looking properties drive more sales + traffic and help your customers charge more, safer conditions in the winter = more customers and higher sales

Question:  Which architect is designs the most indestructible homes and buildings?

Answer:  Nobody cares.

The top-paid architects command big dollars for creativity and innovation.  People can buy a reliable house kit off-the-shelf at Home Hardware.

Shoes market on these different levels.  So do cars, watches, clothing, even something as simple and competitive as coffee.  Why do people pay $5 for Starbucks coffee?  Hint:  It’s not that their caffeine is any better.

If you want to charge more for your services, there are thousands of examples of companies creating their market all around you.  You also have an incredible opportunity to create this market… people are actually interested in what we do.  Gardening is a popular hobby.  Nobody’s hobby is life insurance, building codes, or furnace repair.  What we do interests people.  Increase the value of your services by stroking their interest, and by reading your client’s unspoken needs correctly.

Nobody expects that there’s a high risk that their patio will sink after 2 years, or that they’ll need your insuranceDon’t spend too much time competing over this.  Shift their focus to something that nobody else is talking about, something that will truly excite your customer.

Easy as A-B-C… Always Be Closing

And finally, one more way to ‘sell for more’ is to upsell your current customers – they’ve already bought into you and your company.  You need to help them increase their investment.

Maintenance contractors should inspect properties regularly and send customers ‘reports’.  Check conditions of plant material, concrete, drives, signage, retaining systems, drainage, visibility… you shouldn’t be able to find a property that doesn’t need some enhancement.  I recently met a contractor who challenged his supervisors to a contest… each would inspect properties and upsell these improvements to their existing clients.  The winner would be determined by who could generate the most invoiced revenue based on these recommendations. The winner won… with over $70,000 of work sold as a result of those inspections.

Construction contractors shouldn’t try to upsell everything up front.  The initial budget can quickly exceed the customer’s comfort level, then they get scared off, or embarrassed (that they can’t afford to approve more of your suggestions).   Give them what they want up front… then introduce some ideas once you’ve got the job and as the job progresses.  Get the ‘while we’re here’ incentive working for you.  Share some ideas for some enhancements that would really benefit their yard, then explain how it would save them money, cost and hassle to do it now vs. later.  Like every other sophisticated marketing plan in the world.. capture your customers with your initial offering, then make some good profit on upsells.  It’s a model that works.

The post How to Charge More for Your Landscape Services appeared first on Landscape Management Network Blog.

New Feature:  Export Estimates to QB

Something we’ve been working on for a while is the ability for LMN’s landscape estimating software to export estimates to Quickbooks.  After some initial hurdles getting a tool to integrate with the different versions of Quickbooks (US, Canadian, etc.), it’s finally here.

Now, after creating an estimate in LMN’s landscape estimating software, you can export the estimate into Quickbooks.  The Quickbooks export is able to:

• Export an estimate for an existing customer, or add a new one on-the-fly
• Export an estimate to an existing Job, or add a new one on-the-fly
• Create an estimate in Quickbooks using several different styles – you can choose the amount of detail you want to show/hide in Quickbooks
• And because we create an estimate, not an invoice, you’re still able to create monthly invoices, memorized transactions, or progress invoices (by %) using the same Quickbooks systems that your bookkeeper is familiar with

Unlike the rest of LMN, the Quickbooks tool is downloaded to the computer that runs Quickbooks (or any computer that is connected to the Quickbooks server).  You run the desktop sync tool anytime you want to push estimates from LMN into Quickbooks.

Since not all our users are Quickbooks users, LMN’s standard fees will not change but users wishing to use the Quickbooks integration can activate it in their account for $19/mo.  If you can save just an hour a month by exporting estimates (and you will!), the integration tool will more than pay for itself.

To download the Quickbooks integration tool and activate it in your account, click the Quickbooks menu and choose the Activate button.

… or if you just want more information on how it works, click the Quickbooks menu and click the Quickbooks Help button to watch videos on installing and setting up the QB Sync, exporting standard (design-build) estimates, and exporting service (maintenance) estimates.

NOTE:  Quickbooks sync is not supported by Quickbooks Online, Quickbooks for Mac, or Quickbooks Basic Versions.  We apologize for the inconvenience, but Intuit does not provide the necessary tools for us to make integration possible with those versions.

New Feature:  Estimate Cost Codes for Better Jobcosting

LMN’s landscape estimating software now supports Cost Codes – standardized lists of cost categories that you assign to your work areas and services for better jobcosting.  Cost codes make for better jobcosting, whether you’re using LMN’s new Quickbooks export or not…

Each Work Area (standard estimates) or Service Group (maintenance estimates) is now assigned to a cost code.  By assigning all your work areas/service to cost codes, and by entering all your timesheets/vendor invoices against these cost codes, you can track invoiced revenue vs. invoiced costs against each cost code.  This can show you, using your accounting software, the areas of your business that are the most (and the least) profitable work.

Note: Cost Codes in LMN are matched to Service Items in Quickbooks for the Quickbooks export

To best implement cost codes in your business, we recommend the following:

1. Create a standardized list of cost codes for your company, ideally a list for each different division (if you have different divisions)
2. Keep your list simple!  Too many cost codes means too many errors when tracking time and costs.
3. We recommend that 3-10 cost codes is usually enough for any division.  You can have more, but the more you have, the less accurate you will be.  For a list of sample cost codes, check out our tutorial video on exporting Standard Estimates from LMN to Quickbooks and look in the DOWNLOADS section.
4. Now – assign every work area or service in your LMN estimates to one of these standard cost codes
5. Track employee time against the job name (or address) and the cost code that they were working on.  Cost Codes show up on the Job Planner report, so it should be obvious to your crews where there time should be tracked…
6. Have your crews also write the cost code (or cost code number) on any vendor invoices or packing slips for the job so that accounting can charge those job costs to the correct job and cost code

Now, not only will you have better jobcosting information on each job (what tasks were on budget, what tasks went over budget) but you’ll also be able to see which cost codes consistently deliver high profit margins, and which ones don’t.  This information can be used to improve your estimating, your field productivity, and your bottom line.

You can create cost codes by entering them in LMN manually using the Estimate Setup | Cost Codes menu

… or by importing Quickbooks Service Items as LMN Cost Codes using the LMN Quickbooks Sync application installed when you activate your Quickbooks Sync.

New Feature:  Internal Notes for all Catalog Items and Estimates

Ever wanted to enter notes on estimate line items for internal use only, but not have them show up on the customer proposal?  Now you can use the Internal Notes box, available on each item type (Labor, Equipment, Materials, Subcontractors, and Other) in the Estimating Catalog or you can enter them individually on any estimate.

Internal notes will not show up on any customer proposals, but will show up on Job Planner reports for the crews…

Updated  Feature: Simpler Equipment Budgeting Information

We’ve reduced the data needed for equipment budgeting.  Gone are the Make/Model/Year and VIN fields  and they’re replaced by 2 fields:  Name/Description and Comments.  You can still enter the same data, we’ve just reduced the data needed to enter equipment items in your budget

Updated  Feature: Better Average Wage Calculator (Labor Catalog)

If you’ve grouped roles or employee types together in your landscape company budget, then you’ve probably been frustrated with this one.  The average wage calculator in the labor catalog used to allow you to check off the employees to include… but if you had 2 or more of the same employees, you had to reach for your calculator and do the math on your own… but not anymore.

Now you can choose both the employees to include in the average wage calculation, and the number of each to include.

Updated  Feature:  Better IE10 Compatibility

IE10 is now shipped with all copies of Windows 8… but not without its challenges.  It seems like every time IE updates itself, it changes “the rules” of how websites behave and IE10 was no exception as many applications that used to work in IE9 now do not in IE10.

Although we don’t recommend using IE10 as our browser (we recommend Google Chrome or Firefox – they’re free and faster!) , LMN is compatible with IE10, as long as you set IE10’s compatibility mode to ON!

What’s compatibility mode?  Great question.  It helps IE10 work like IE9 so that websites that used to work in IE9 now work again in IE10.  If you’re using IE10, it’s essential that you turn compatibility mode ON for the LMN website… don’t worry, you’ll only have to do this once, IE10 will remember your settings for future.

To turn compatibility mode ON for any website, just click the little ripped paper button beside the URL until is shows blue (or shaded).

Updated  Feature:  Customer Proposals With Less Clutter

We’ve simplified the footer in Customer Proposals with 2 frequently-asked-for-changes

1. No more client intials boxes… you can still get your clients to sign on the line if you miss this feature
2. Page numbering on every proposal layout… some proposals were missing page numbers.. our bad.  Every proposal now has numbered pages.
3. Better logo adaptability – we’ve improved the way your logos adapt to the area in the header.

NOTE:  For the best logo quality, make sure you’re using an image of no less than 300 DPI.  All the issues we get concerning blurry logos are due to poor image quality.  A 72 DPI logo looks perfect on screen, but will look blurry and poor when printed.  Ask your designer for a 300dpi logo if you want a better looking printout!

Landscape Management Network is landscape estimating software and systems built for landscape contractors.  Find out why their software is the most-talked about estimating software in the industry by checking them out at www.landscapemanagementnetwork.com.  Take a free trial and you’ll never look at your landscape business the same way again.

The post LMN’s Landscape Estimating Software Updated! Quickbooks Integration is Live. appeared first on Landscape Management Network Blog.

Here’s just a few of the changes coming up in this update…

1. Export Estimates to Quickbooks!
2. ‘Internal Description’ (vendor name, notes etc.) available on Estimates
3. Simpler equipment screen on the LMN budget
4. Cost/Accounting Codes on LMN estimates (standard and service)
5. Improvements to customer proposals
6. Better IE10 compatibility
7. Improvements to the Average Wage Calculator on the Labor Catalog screen

We’ll get the application back up and running as quickly as possible to avoid minimal downtime on your part.

Thanks for your co-operation.

The post LMN Will Be Offline Feb 5th (8PM – 10PM EST) for Update! appeared first on Landscape Management Network Blog.

What you will not get:

• A ‘software’ guy to get you setup and running
• A ‘consultant’ who talks the talk, but doesn’t walk the walk

What you will get:

• An LMN trainer who IS (not WAS but still IS) running and managing a multi-million dollar landscape company (guaranteed!)
• A trainer with years of experience using and implementing LMN in their business for budgeting, estimating, and operations efficiency

Landscape Management Network’s landscape business consultant services are designed for the landscape contractor who wants to:

• Create a profitable, realistic financial picture for their business
• Streamline estimating with templates for quick and accurate pricing
• Take full advantage of the LMN systems library to build repeatable systems in their business for less waste and better efficiency
• Use Landscape Management Network’s software to its full capability
• Motivate crews around common goals and rewards for improving productivity and results

There are only a few available dates left for our landscape consultants this winter/spring (2013), so first come, first serve.  Rates are $1500 per day plus travel expenses (air + hotel) to your place of business.

To book your company’s date(s), email us at workshop@landscapemanagementnetwork.com.

Email us

Landscape Management Network is business management and estimating software built by landscape contractors for landscape contractors.  For more information on Landscape Management Network software, check out www.landscapemanagementnetwork.com or watch a series of videos on budgeting and pricing with their free online virtual workshop at www.landscapemanagementnetwork.com/lmn/VirtualWorkshop/

The post Onsite LMN Training + Landscape Business Consultants : Horsepower For Your Landscape Business in 2013 appeared first on Landscape Management Network Blog.

Whenever I consult with a landscape contractor to help him improve his company’s sales I ask him to give me three reasons why a homeowner should choose his company over another company. In other words, what makes his product, company or service different from his competitor’s?

Before I go any further, I want to ask you the same thing.

I want you to write down the three things that make your landscape contracting business better than all of your competitors.(Now go to the bottom of the page to find the three most popular answers to this question. Hey – no peeking).

If you really think about it, it makes perfect sense. What landscape contractor is going to run around telling clients that they do horrible work, are completely unreliable and will do everything that they can to rip you off or price gouge you?

I’m thinking not too many. As much as I travel around, meeting with landscape contractors, I still have not found a company called “Screw U Landscaping” – hire us and you’re screwed.

Now that I’ve burst your “uniqueness bubble”, let’s embrace this new reality and discuss what you can do to really differentiate yourself from your competition.

The best way to do this is to just sit down and think about what really does make you or your company unique.

First, start with yourself and your value structure. In other words, what is important to you or what do you strive for?

As a landscape designer, I provide excellent “concept plans” that could easily be built by a qualified landscape design/build contractor. Contractors that understood the value of working with the types of drawings that I produced and the flexibility they provided would come to me for their design work.

However, if a contractor needed detailed drawings, dimension plans, or a “sketch up” drawing, I was not the man for the job. There were other companies that provided this service, for much more money.

So you see, even though we all provide design services, we all had very different business models that catered to a different clientele.

Now let’s brainstorm a little and look at your design/build business and what makes you truly unique.

If you’re a larger company, what can you do that a smaller company can’t?

Can you complete a project quickly and efficiently because you have the resources, manpower and equipment to get it done? Does your size give you “purchasing power” that allows you to buy for less and to pass that savings along to the consumer. Or maybe you do all of your work in-house and don’t use sub-contractors, letting you manage the project better, which is a big plus for many homeowners.

Then there’s the fact that you have been in business for “X” amount of years assuring a client that you will be there to service them now and in the future. Long term security is a big selling point to homeowners when it comes to dealing with potential problems in the future and or truly standing behind warranties and guarantees.

Now let’s look at the flip-side.

What if you’re a smaller company? What are some of the unique things that you have to offer a customer that a larger company probably can’t?

The first thing that comes to my mind is that a smaller company can provide “personalized” service. For those of you that are owner operators, you can make the client feel at ease by letting them know that unlike large companies that can have designers, salespeople, foremen, account managers and billing departments; they can be comforted knowing that they will be working with just you (and a few guys). Highlighting the fact that you are personally managing and/or installing their project shows them that you are always available to them.

When they call the office they get “you” and not some secretary.

You might even give them your cell phone number to use during the installation so they know that they can contact you if they are worried or have a question or problem, even if it’s at night or on the weekends. This is a very powerful tool and most people will respect it and only call you if there is a true “landscape emergency”.

So the next time a potential client asks you what makes your company different, instead of giving one of the canned responses listed below, like everyone else, you can explain to them what truly makes you different and the value of working with you.

I can tell you from experience, that you can easily make a very strong argument as to why a customer should choose a larger company over a smaller one or a smaller company over a larger one. You just need to need to say something besides:

1. We do quality work and provide great value

2. We are reliable and dependable

3. We’re not the cheapest but we’re also not the most expensive.

Thanks!

Jody Shilan is a former landscape contractor and award winning designer. He has sold tens of millions of dollars of installation work throughout his career and now uses his 30+ years of experience to teach other landscape design/build contractors how to dramatically increase their sales and standardize their landscape design/build/sales process. He does this through private consulting, public speaking, group workshops and his “exclusive” members only website www.FromDesign2Build.com.

Jody Shilan appears as a guest blogger for LMN Blog, Landscape Management Network’s resource hub for all things related to building a better landscape business.  For more on the Landscape Management Network, check out the website at www.landscapemanagementnetwork.com.

The post Improve Your Sales: What Really Makes Your Landscape Company Different? appeared first on Landscape Management Network Blog.