Method:Classic General Q&A

Re: Any lawn care companies?

Marcelo11756 — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 04:33:52 GMT

John

Can you give me a sample of how do you guys use the route list field?

We assign our jobs to crews, for example crew01 does the mowing and crew02 does the fertilizer. And we assign our clients to Zones depending where they reside.

How can the route list help me?

Re: Any lawn care companies?

John M — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 15:46:41 GMT

I see where your coming from now.

For my business i cant do that. We are not going after the lawn feeding jobs. We go after the gardening the small corner house where that home owner only wants 3 fertlizing apps a year and she will spray the weeds all the way to our city contracts where we have to use liquid and dry material at certain rates at certing times of the year. Now if i was to go after the lawn care jobs and to make life easy this is what I would do.

You can do this in Method BUT to make it the way you are talkin, programming is going to need to be done. You have to remember that Method gives you the basic platform then its up to you to make it the way you want it and thats where programming is going to come into play.

I have been thinking of comming up with somthing along your way of thinking beause I do want to get into the lawn care side of the business.

I was thinking along the lines of having the customer go to a website where they could choose from different plans say a organic plan or a standard fertlizer plan where they can pay with their credit card. Somthing along those lines.

I would say talk to a programmer here and get their ideas about this. The investment would be you would not have to make any clicks and method would take care of the rest including payments. That alone would be less work for you and more work you could go after.

John M

Re: Any lawn care companies?

Marcelo11756 — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 14:41:04 GMT

Thank you for your help.

Quick question.

Do you schelude the steps one by one, instead of the complete program?

The software that we use now , has what they call JOB PACKAGE, we set the packages at the begining of the season with all details, including labor and materilas and when the customer returns the renewal letter is just a one or two clicks to schelude the 6 steps program.

Makes things a lot easier.

Marcelo

Re: Any lawn care companies?

Method_Adam — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 15:42:59 GMT

Thanks for the input John.

- Adam

Re: Any lawn care companies?

John M — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:52:37 GMT

Greetings,

Was reading your post and thought i could help you out. I own a gardening co here in California and this is what I do.

We set up custom fertlizer and spray programs for our clients. About 80% of the time the people that call us up want a certain program that they think is right. We also do work for cities where we have to adhear to a contract when it comes to fertlizing and weed control spraying. Some cities its 3 times a year other cities its 6 times a year. So, to make life easy for me i did the following.

1. Created a inventoy item for each product. Say 21-7-14 fertlizer or Roundstar.

2. Created a service item for each application. So you want 6 step program so i would create 6 service items one saying Spring weed/feed and another as Summer Feed/Aeration.

That way if you do that you can send emails to clients as to what they are going to be getting.

3. Create a work order for each visit. Add your inventory items of the products you will be using and/or jobs that need to be done like aeration. Add one of your 6 service items to track the labor. By doing this way, you can keep track of your labor but also your chemical usage by date. We have to keep track of chemical usage here in cali and its incredible what data we have to keep track of. Doing this way you can see how much fertlizer or what ever product you will be needing.

5. When creating a work order use the route list field, its your best friend when you have alot of jobs to do.

6. create a custom grid so you can look at all your jobs and maybe another grid for all your inventory you will need. Using the Round List field use that to break down areas.

7. I dont use the waitng list intell 2 weeks before the job date. I keep all my future jobs as Not Started.

Hope this helps. I kind of confuse things some times but i get the numbers that i need to get the job done.

John M

Re: Any lawn care companies?

Method_Ashur — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:11:04 GMT

Understood, hopefully some of our Community members who have something similar implemented can shed some light on this for you.

- Ashur

Re: Any lawn care companies?

Marcelo11756 — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 15:21:34 GMT

I was hoping to see how other companies are doing this.

Ideally, I would like to create a 6 step program that after entering the price for each step, the total price is reflected somewhere so the customer can renew the entire program.

Don't know if I am clear

Re: Any lawn care companies?

Method_Ashur — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 22:15:54 GMT

Hey Marcelo,

Are you referring to the inquiry in this post?

- Ashur

Any lawn care companies?

Marcelo11756 — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 20:16:14 GMT

What would be the best way to schelude a 6 step lawn program?

Recurring?

Projet?

Using item gruoping from quickbooks?

The six steps would have to be on the waiting list, since we do not know the exact day of the application.