What Types of Software do Landscape Companies Use?

Field businesses, like landscaping and lawn care providers, are unique in structure and ability. Unlike businesses that work from an office building, landscapers send their crews out into the field to work, making it more complex to monitor scheduling, inventory, and revenue. To help landscaping businesses succeed and optimize these processes, Arborgold designs software, especially for you.

Arborgold’s lawn care software is customizable software available across a variety of networks and devices. Having worked within the landscaping industry so long, we know what it takes to make a field business successful. Our goal is always to help you shine and make your job easier in the process.

Here, we will discuss some of the software types most landscaping companies use and why.

Project Management

Tracking projects is an essential part of life as a landscaping company as it allows you to monitor which projects are underway, which need to begin, and whether anything will run overtime and delay a deadline. This information is crucial not only to your clients, who are waiting to get their homes back to normal but to your staff, who will need to know if they are required to work overtime or take on additional shifts.

Project management landscape company software works by updating you in real-time on the status of your current and future projects. This information can also be made public to your clients, reducing the time you spend tracking down information and contacting customers.

Time Tracking

Another digital tool for landscapers and lawn care specialists is GPS and time tracking software. This software lets you follow your employees’ journey throughout the community in real-time, tracking them from job to job. In addition to the GPS portion of this software, many landscapers are pleasantly surprised to use the time tracking software, which works in tandem with your project management tools to deliver realistic estimates on time and cost.

Time tracking helps with a variety of additional tasks within landscaping, including calculating paychecks and navigating tax season. Much of the financial planning and organization through your landscape company software occurs automatically through this tool, leaving you time to focus on more pressing matters.

Landscape Design

No landscaping company worth their salt goes into the field without some form of landscape design software. This is the bread and butter of your business, showing customers and future clients what your company can do for them. Whether designing large builds and small garden renovation projects, landscape design software provides a visual example of tools, layouts and more.

Arborgold’s landscape design software tools allow for greater brand recognition, improved bids, and optimized estimating. All from within the same useful platform.

Estimating

Before taking on any landscaping job, clients want to know how much they will pay by the end of the job. Of course, in any field job, there is no guarantee on how many hours it will take to finish a problem, or whether unforeseen circumstances will require additional digging or materials. This means all you can do as a company is estimate the cost. Cost estimating requires a keen sense of product cost, labour value, and project type. Fortunately, through advanced estimating software, you can input the size of a property, type of job, and other features of the work needed, and the software will give you a realistic quote.

Estimating software needs to be accurate and reliable, or your customers will come to find your estimations unbelievable. To promote customer loyalty and brand recognition, and to win bids against other landscaping businesses, selecting the right estimating software is crucial.

Billing/Accounting

Billing and accounting landscape company software helps you keep financial records in check. This includes paychecks for employees, bills to customers, and the end of year tax information. Not only does the software tally the data for your billing department, but it sends automated invoices to clients, and even communicates with third-party vendors. Thus, taking much of the workload off your shoulders and placing it into an automated system you can trust.

Job Management

Job management software is an all-in-one tool that provides many of the services mentioned above in one place. Job management is a broad term and can mean everything from scheduling your team on appropriate shifts to ensuring inventory is accurate.

As a landscaping company, you manage a team of people in and out of the office each day. You also manage an organized system of large landscaping equipment, and smaller gardening tools. All of this must be properly maintained with proper fuel levels and repairs. These are all things underneath the job management umbrella.

KPI Reporting

KPI, or key performance indicator, the software provides reports on measurable data within your business. The key metrics you decide to incorporate are reported to you in real-time, allowing you to make changes to your day to day and marketing tactics as necessary. KPI can be confusing at first, but it is really just a fancy term for “business goal data”. This information tells you how close you are to meeting certain goals, and which areas you are most and least successful in. Some examples of key performance indicators include:

• Revenue growth and concentration
• Turnover of inventory
• Account receivable numbers
• Cost of customer acquisition
• Sales by county or region

Each of these, and more, help you determine where your business needs help and where it is flourishing under your current landscaping strategies. KPI software reports these facts and figures to you automatically so you do not need to go hunting for them.

Supply Chain

Supplier relations takes a lot of manpower, especially in terms of managing communication, payments, and scheduling. Supply chain software supports your supply chain management needs by minimizing external resources used to facilitate these requirements. Instead, everything you need to keep suppliers lined up and paid is a solid software setup. This includes automated e-mails, order replenishment notifications, reports on current inventory and future supply needs, and much more.

Having supply chain software combined with your other software programs lets you navigate the landscaping market on your own terms. Every landscaping company is different, which is why customizable software is often best for this industry. Arborgold recognizes the unique needs of this field and strives to consistently provide bespoke options to our clients.

File Upload

Being a landscaper, you might want to use the templates and tools available through your landscape company software, but you might want to use your own. Choosing software with file upload capability is the key to a happy medium when this is the case.

Arborgold software is consistently being upgraded to fit the changing needs of our customer base. File upload capability is something we offer, along with a variety of templates and built-in tools, so you can choose what is right for your business.

Check Our Arborgold’s Landscape Company Software Today

Arborgold believes landscaping is a sustainable and thriving marketplace. We develop digital resources for landscaping companies to help you streamline business management, customer relations and more.

Throughout this guide, we discussed a variety of landscape company software types. Arborgold combines ALL the above features, and more for landscape construction companies focus on both maintenance and hardscape projects. Take a Tour here.