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Landscaping invoice template for Product Management

hey everybody thanks for joining me today on Monday's product tip my name is Jason Drew's I'm the director of customer success here at Elliman today we're gonna go over how to estimate faster using estimate templates so we going over how to create some estimates super quick and of course if you have any questions along the way feel free to put those in chat happy to answer them along the way if I can if not I'll make sure to to get to them at the end of the webinar so before I get into creating estimate templates within Elliman one thing to to go over first is what exactly are estimate templates so estimate templates are a basically a saved version of your estimate that you're going to produce on a regular basis so for example if you offer any sort of maintenance packages where your clients have a choice of different services that you offer different frequencies that sort of thing you'll be able to create these estimates in advance so that when you're proposing to a customer we're just simply going to create a copy of that estimate change who the customer is for and then you know if you need to change any of the quantities you'll be able to do that and it's just a much quicker way to create an estimate another question that comes up quite a bit is how do they differ from work area templates so we've got work area templates is that the same thing as an estimate template not quite a work area template actually helps you estimate consistently and faster for one particular work area or service area in an estimate which I'll show you in a little bit where as an estimate we're copying the entire estimate so both have their uses of course but for today's topic I'm going to be focusing more on estimate templates so with that being said how about we get started here and I'll jump into my element ago I hope you all can see my screen before we get started with an estimate template I'm also going to give you some tips and tricks today that you know if you are using an estimate templates already you know maybe there's a couple things here that you might learn that might help you out or help you to keep it a little more organized the first tip is I've created myself in my my webinar account here as a customer so you can see I've created myself as an employee and I've done that just by hitting the plus new button over in the top right corner essentially entered in the company information rather than a lead or client and then I just changed the type to employee so I can filter that easily now why would you want to do that well I prefer it just so all my templates are in one spot so if I'm looking for a particular template you know I can go into this client just by left clicking on them and then left click on estimates and I'll see I've got an maintenance estimate here for my maintenance template bronze package and if I had more templates you know I've seen them all listed here as well so just a little tip there that's what I've done you don't have to do that but I just find that it helps to kind of have yourself in your CRM that you can assign these templates to rather than assigning it to to one of your customers just makes it a lot cleaner so the second tip that I would have for you is you'll notice here you can select the division when you're creating an estimate in element so division pretty self-explanatory what those are you might have a division for maintenance you might have a division for installation or construction in this case I've created a division for my templates so what I've done there is on the left hand side I'm just going to go to estimate this session is being recorded by the way so if you miss anything or you know if I'm going too fast apologize but it is being recorded so you'll be able to to catch the recording as well just to add that in there so left click on estimate and then you'll see divisions down here on the left-hand side and then all I've done is created a meeting it's templates one so if you're planning on creating templates for other divisions as well feel free you know you could create a few of these or maybe you just have one and you call it templates and again how you do that just hit that + new button here and type in your division name no I already got one created so I'm not going to hit ok I'll hit cancel there but two two quick tips that I just wanted to show you it just makes filtering and organizing your templates a little easier just in case you end up you know once you get started with these templates and it's sometimes you just keep going and you might have a bunch of templates right so it's easy to organize them if you do it this way so you can see I've gone to my service estimates and again just a little recap for those of you that don't know two types of estimates in element you've got standard one time job project so installation projects and we've got service recurring type work so in this case I went to my service estimates and then I've just filtered by division so rather than looking at all divisions and it seen all my estimates I can easily filter to my templates just makes it a little easier because now when we get to it later on how to duplicate those templates for a customer just speeds it up quite a bit so those are the first two tips I had for you I'm just going to go into this bronze template to kind of show you what our goal is and then we're going to make one together so I'll left-click on my estimate here so you can see project name I did add in a hashtag just so if I did want to sort through my estimates without filtering and division that my templates will come up to the front if I want them to I've got my contract start date and end date filled in you can do that just by clicking the calendar option I've got my division for maintenance templates of course and then really important I've got this checked off as well so this is a exclude from stats so what this means is this particular estimate it's not going to get included in any of my dashboard revenue reporting my CRM reports for salespeople we're gonna exclude that because it's a template it's not not a real last map we don't want it counting towards other sales right so really important with your template so you check that off there now moving over to the services and pricing section where you actually build the estimate I've got a few things laid out here so this is a our bronze package so I've got a spring cleanup I've got some mowing some bed maintenance for fertilizing visits I'll explain this in a second and then I've got a fall cleanup and pruning so the reason I've got my fertilizing split up this way is just so when I'm importing this two element time in this type of scenario I maybe I only want to show my customer on the proposal one line for fertilizing with four visits I don't want to show them you know all four separated it just makes the estimate a lot longer than it needs to be and then maybe the clients think they have the option to pick and choose which ones are gonna get so for showing the customer I hide these four and just show them fertilizing but when I want to import this to element time so say I sold this estimate to a client I would just switch it and what that does is when I import this to time you know all my service for each visit it's going to come over nice and separated so I can track all those independently in element time something that I typically recommend just in case you have different clients getting different numbers of visits which is pretty common and it allows you to kind of search in element time for a particular fertilizing visit based on who gets you know spring versus who gets the early summer visits so just a small recommendation there you do have any questions on that of course feel free to reach out to us on the live chat or email support at Goleman calm and we'll go over all the support options for you at the end of the webinar of course - so I just wanted to highlight that why I did that and this is you know our basic bronze fertilizing or sorry basic maintenance template that I've created now let's create one together but this time you know we can create a silver maintenance package or gold if you will to show you the difference so to actually create one of these templates you might actually already have something like this in your account you might already have it in your account and you just don't know it yet right so you might not have to create a brand new estimate to create a template maybe you go back to an estimate that you've already done and I'll show you what you can do there in a few minutes for now we're gonna create a new one from scratch just to make sure we're all on the same page here so from my estimate list again if you want to get back here its estimate and then service and then we're gonna hit plus new and now we have to pick a customer or a lead so in this case again I recommend you know adding yourself in here if you planning to create templates just a little easier if you haven't added yourself yet you know you could do it just by hitting the plus new button there don't forget so I'm gonna select myself after I pick my division of meeting as template and let's just change up the name here so maintenance templates I will do so so that it all looks good I'm just kind of hit okay awesome so now a couple things to do right we can set their contract start date so when does it normally start maybe it starts in May depending on where you are if you're in the north way up north if it's early April we can pick April first and then if you want to switch your month pretty quick I like to just click on the month rather than click click click just a little small tick pre there and then again let's not forget to check off exclude from stats and then always a good idea to save as you go so I'm gonna say the top right just to lock that in awesome so we're doing good so far we've got our maintenance division maintenance template division sorry we've named our project we've excluded it from stats now we just have to build the estimate so going to services and pricing we're going to need to add a tea service so in this case we're going to click the add service button and service type these populate in element time so if you're wondering where they come from its element time top right corner you'll click on the Settings gear icon and then it's jobs and then services is where you'll set those up so if you're in a basic or pro account you should see a clock up here on the top right if you're on a free camp and then time is something that only element basic and proconsul will get so if you're on a free account you don't need to worry about that service type for me though just to show you guys I'm gonna pick lowing so the service name how do you want it to appear for your customer on their proposal so we could just call it lowing and call it weekly mowing like so pick your billing type so how are you planning on charging the customer do you charge per cut per currents per visit however you want to call it you charge them a monthly season all right so you know every month they get the same dollar amount per bill no matter what was done that would be per season and then of course hourly so if you charge someone hourly for mowing you can pick per hour most cases that I see is usually per visit or per season I'll pick per season here and how many visits are we gonna do I think in these parts where I am in Ontario Canada it's usually like 26 to 28 so I'll just pick 28 there to be safe and then I want to select my cost code so what are we matching the revenue to the revenue from mowing is gonna go to grounds maintenance and that looks good so we're gonna hit okay all right so we've created a service for weekly mowing but now we just need to add in what it's gonna take to get that mowing done for each visit so we need to add in some items so our labor our equipment and that should do for for mowing so if I go to add items there you'll see this item catalog pop out and I'm just gonna hit the plus button to add in my maintenance labor then I'm going to go up to equipment and I'm going to hide in my crew truck and maintenance trailer so these are all samples it came with my account and then just gonna hit the red X there to close that screen so you can see here I've got two items added to weekly mowing I've got the labor and I've got a crew truck and meet Miss trailer so since this is a template you don't really need to worry too much about the quantity but I will say if my maintenance crew is a crew of three and they're all going to be on the property for one hour I would put three labor hours here in the maintenance labor section and then my crew truck is going to be there for one so let's say the crew is there for three total combined but really they're only there for for one hour if that makes sense so the crew is there for one hour but individually if you add up at one hour for each person we have three hours total that we're charging for and that should do for mowing so I can close this here that gives me based on my sample numbers you know price per visit of 145 26 and if I click on the per season box there you can see that moves over to 4,000 because it's multiplying the per visit price by 28 so now I would just continue to create these services so let's say we did a spring cleanup and again we're gonna put that two per season now let's say we just do one visit for a spring cleanup and then hit okay go a little faster at that time and again we can add in our labor go up to equipment and then maybe if there's disposal we can look for a disposal so some yard waste that in and of course obviously anything else that you think you might need we kind of want to include everything that our estimator is going to be thinking about while they're creating one of these bits and if they don't need something so say they don't need the disposal or the nerd waste when we copy this later we can simply just click the trashcan there to remove that item so spring cleanup is done again we don't we're not actually creating the estimate here fully because we're not doing it for a particular property we're just creating a template so again saving changes as we go we've got a spring cleanup so if I wanted to add a fall cleanup now rather than you know adding service here and going through those steps and then having to add the items again a little quick tip again we can click the down arrow here and then copy that service now you can also save these as a work area template if you want to but again we're gonna focus on an estimate as a template today so what we want to do is just copy the service and we're going to call it fall cleanup so just like that I've got my fall cleanup created with the same items a little bit quicker that time and now if I wanted to add some more well again I can create them or I can copy and adjust the name or we also have this import feature which I wanted to highlight today the import allows you to bring in work areas or service areas from other estimates so another way that you can estimate faster is by using this import button so if I do that what I want to do is I can search for my bronze template so there is at the top there so I'm gonna select that and that's going to show me everything I've already got in that bronze template so I can take those and pull them into this estimate so if you've already got you know it doesn't have to be a template but an estimate that you've created in the past you can pull that information into the new template that you're working on to save yourself some time so fertilizing bed maintenance and pruning are all things that I want to bring in because it's gonna be the same as my bronze template I'm just gonna have a higher frequency in in my case at least so for example instead of doing you know for fertilizing business we're gonna do five so I can make that adjustment there and then perhaps instead of two prunings it's four and bed maintenance maybe we go four times as well instead of two of course if you're making your own templates you know maybe you add in additional services like aeration lawn defy chain something like that which could differentiate your maintenance packages a bit but for me I'm just going to adjust the visit quantities and that's gonna separate out my my bronze from my silver package there so just like that you know we've created a quick estimate again gonna save that template now the only other thing that you might want to do before completing this it's adjust your your notes so keep in mind that if you're using an estimate as a template you can set up your client notes in advance so when you copy this estimate your notes are going to come over as well so that way like literally all you're gonna have to do is copy this estimate adjust the quantities here based on the property size perhaps and then away you go so really suggests you know adding in your client notes again like your footer terms and conditions maybe your warranty terms you know maybe you offer some annual colors right so maybe you go a few times through the year to to do some planting as well and maybe that's part of your your template and you want to put it to scrip you know the plants that you're gonna use anything like that feel free to include that in the client notes you know maybe in the header you want to put a thank you for giving us the opportunity to bid on your property I'm sure you can come up with something more clever than that but you get the idea and then every estimate again that we use this template for those notes again carry over as well another tip would be you know a lot of people like to put a description underneath the service so if you want to describe the work that you're doing because again keep in mind you have a lot of options when you go to print the report as to what you show the customer so keep it in mind you know my customers are not gonna see the maintenance labor and the crew trucking trailer unless you want them to most people take the less is more approach there so if they can't see the items then maybe you want to describe the work that's going to be done so you know weekly mowing visits trim edges and blow debris again I I'm sure you guys can create some more creative notes there than me right now but you kind of get the idea so when I when I print that proposal I'll have a description that shows up underneath that header so again just went over to print reports here and then I picked the service proposal and you can see my note showing up there so if you want to add a description underneath the contract of weekly mowing for example then you can if you prefer without the description if you think that looks cleaner the choice is yours of course but I just wanted to highlight that so now we've come once you've completed your estimate again whether you create that from new or you use an existing estimate so if you're using an existing estimate and you're ready to create an estimate template here's what you need to do so you go into that estimate or stay in the current one that you're in and then we're just going to go down to the copy button and now when you click copy the default is to copy it for the same customer same project so the thought process it would be you know if you want to create a different version maybe you want to show different options that's what that could be for but we're gonna use it to create a whole new estimate for another person so when I after I hit copy I'm gonna click Change so I want to change who the client is so rather than it being myself let's click Change and I'll search for the customer that I want to copy it to again if they don't exist you can create them brand new and add them in but I'm gonna click on this person here and then I just want to make sure I'm changing the division so I'm changing it from template to maintenance and then that's all I have to do I can hit OK so that's just a warning saying hey this new estimates going to use the same budget as last estimate so that's fine just a one thing to look out for there if you are using maintenance templates you know if you're on a new budget this year make sure you go back to those templates and update the budget a little quick tip there - and you'll see now I've got this new estimate for psych Hyman from the Toronto Maple Leafs and everything is already filled in so now super easy I don't have to create all these services I don't have to add in all these items I don't have to add in my notes I just have to adjust the quantity so I just have to adjust this and of course you know if you want to use your production rate calculators if you've got any of those feel free to to use those we've also under customer info we have our measure sight tool so if you need to measure the actual sight of the property you know you can just click around to to get a measurement tool there that gives you the calculated area and then you can just plug that into your production rate calculator and away you go so so I sort of recap what we did I'll do just the copy part now so assuming you have a template that you want to try this with I'm just going to go back to our service s tonight section and again I'm still to my template so I've got my silver project template so if I wanted to create a silver template or you know maybe you don't use packages but you just have common requests you know you could have a template created for that and we're just going to left-click into it go down and click the copy button hit change type in the customer adjust the division hit OK and again and then now I've got two estimates created in two minutes here so the two estimates an estimate a minute if I go to services and pricing I'm sure I could go a little quicker than that even two and I've got all the information in here my client notes are still here everything's ready to go I just need to quickly adjust the quantity based on the size of the lawn some people I know also create templates for different lot sizes pre pre done in advance so like you know 0 to 10,000 square feet you've got a template for that 10 to 15,000 square feet and template for that that's another possibility that you could do but I hope that shows just how quick you know you can create an estimate either using the import button here or this copy feature so I hope that helps just looking here through the chat to see if we have any questions we did have a question to ask if we can do this for standard estimates as well because we're in service right now so absolutely if you have a standard estimate that you wanted to to create a copy of for sure same same process you just go to standard click on the standard estimate and then we can click copy here and let's say you know Zack and Mitch play on the same team so maybe it's a classic be what Mitch had done it okay so now I've got a new estimate for Zach and all the same information is already there probably the more useful thing for standard estimates might be like the import button too because I don't allow you to pick and choose which work bring over so if a neighbor reaches out to you after you've done work at a particular client's house and their neighbor reaches out you know you could copy over what you did for the neighbor really quick using that in portable let's see any other questions can I still add in though can you make adjustments even if you're using a template absolutely so if I created this from a template I can still add in additional work areas I can still delete things out I can hide things so let's say Mitch here or sorry Zack doesn't want the backyard barbecue I can put that on hold so the template is like a really quick way to create an estimate and it gives you a solid base but for sure yeah you can you can make any adjustments after you've made the copy there very easily any any questions that you guys want to throw in to chat again doesn't look like there's there's any more but I hope you know utilizing that copy button or that import button will save you a bunch of time we do have additional resources available to you should you want to learn more so if you're a basic or pro subscriber you do have access to our forms library where we have over 700 documents available to download in Word or Excel for the most part so that's available on the left hand side on the estimating menu under forms of course you can you're welcome to join our Facebook user groups we've got Facebook and LinkedIn available great spot to ask questions around you know production rates or how other people are creating different situations and in their element account getting tips and tricks from your peers and then of course you know we've got the element academy training that has been updated for the customer portal so if you haven't checked that out make sure you check out those customer portal videos you know there are five to eight minutes each super quick and give you a really great understanding of how to use our new customer portal elements support so if you have any questions whatsoever feel free to reach out to us on live chats phone us email support at goal element calm happy to set up a one-on-one with your account rep to go over setting up templates in your account for instance and then we've also got our free webinars and virtual workshop so a virtual workshop coming up later this week I believe and a webinar with our CEO mark Bradley tomorrow on Tuesday so if you haven't registered for that make sure you do and you can find all of our webinars pre recorded or sign up for the new ones that haven't happened yet by going to go element comm slash webinars or if you want to see everything you can go to go element calm slash resources so I hope you've learned a thing or two today and if you have any follow-up questions feel free to hit us up on chat or send us an email thanks everyone for attending and have a great day