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