Create Your Lawn Care Invoice Template for Management Effortlessly

Lawn care invoice template for Management

hey what's up guys Brian here Brian's on maitenance hey hope you guys are doing well dude it is 61 degrees out it is a beautiful start to the week as we go into mid-march here in Michigan and a lot of you guys are asking me questions about CRM like job or Yard book element and QuickBooks all this stuff so here's what I want to do for five to seven minutes maybe just break some of this down down for you guys really quick and talk to you about how we're managing the backend of our business with our lawn care software and just answer some questions that I've been getting from you guys lately as we all burst in the spring and we start rocking rolling let's check it out alright guys so a lot of you have been asking me all these questions about Yard book and CRM and all this on the mess and so let's just slow it all down slow it down we got to slow down so we can speed up as we go into the upcoming season right so here's the deal if you guys are new to the lawn landscape industry or business or being self-employed there is a great way to manage your business on the back end it's called a CRM let's just call it lawn care software for short right and there is a plethora of options out there there's so many options it's not even funny I use yard book and full disclosure yard book is a partner to the channel they partner Bryan's lawn maintenance which is really cool super thankful about that but as you guys have seen there's a lot of other people promoting and using jobber LMN there's so many more to go I mean there's you know here's the deal leave me some comments down below let me know what you guys using by the end of this video here's what I wanted to do is just take five or ten minutes and talk to you guys about the value of using the CRM the differences between maybe some of the different brands that I've noticed and the options you got out there and if you're a QuickBooks guy only or you're a you know an excel file only kind of person let me give you guys some pros that you can benefit from using a CRM alright so here's the deal we have been using yard book for the last three years now yard book has been a game changer for my business because I was that guy just four or five years ago having everything on Excel spreadsheets and invoicing and carbon copies and dude it was a nightmare don'ts just be honest now as you guys know the last three or four years I have massively changed my business cleaned up my business on the back end in fact it was honestly a a sore point so if you guys are ever feeling that way like I just don't know what to do or I can't get organized or honestly here's where I was every time I go into the season I would declare that I'm going to change how I'm running my business and we would solve these problems accounting problems payroll problems HR problems like whatever they were right and then we got busy then the phone started ringing 16 times a day and I just kind of always threw it under the rug I don't know if you guys can relate but that's just me being completely honest with you guys so about three four years ago when I jumped on YouTube I asked you guys I said hey what's CRM are you guys using to manage a business like mine and I want to preface this whole conversation with a business like mine a maintenance business doing some snow removal some light landscaping soft scaping doing $250,000 a year let's just say right because that's who I am that's a lot of you guys who I'm talking to now in my observation and in my you know massive plethora of knowledge and grand context of the whole lawn care industry right I'm just having fun okay what I've noticed that if you're running a smaller business something like Yard book is absolutely all you need okay your book has so many features as is it is a massively powerful platform to run your business now here's the deal I will be a total ass with you too just like my my iPhone I only use 5% of what my iPhone does or offers right like I use email I use text messaging I use like my podcast podcasting but that's about it like I don't use but 5 or 10% of what my iPhone can actually do well yard book is the same way if you guys are looking to add a simple level organize and compile your customer data into one online software that's what I would encourage you guys to do if it's yard book job or element let's just keep it simple start there get your business out of your head get your business off papers and carbon copy this and Excel files that and dump them all into one area one part one spot that you can keep everything organized maintain you have history logs invoice logs you know customer data your emails the phone numbers their their name their addresses that's what a CRM is designed to help you guys do so I'm talking to the first camp who are maybe just getting in business or you're going from part-time to full-time you're you're starting and going part-time as a weekend warrior even if you're only doing 5 10 20 grand a year in business you should have a CRM from the beginning because here's what I'll tell you as your business continues to grow it's going to be super difficult and super frustrating to go back through 10 20 50 100 500 customers and compile all this information like their name their numbers their address or email blah blah blah right so let's just start with something simple ok now here's the deal I want to talk to you guys for just a few minutes about the difference between Jabra element and Yard book here's here's the deal I can't speak to the different features and functions about Yard about Jabra or element I don't use their software I wanted to talk to you more about the kind of the information you're consuming out there ok a lot of guys are promoting a lot of different things awesome I'm excited for those folks that have those sponsorships to promote I mean that's awesome like we have a partnership with Yard book fantastic but I have told you guys all the time that I will not you know change who I promote what brand I promote or talk about anything that we don't personally use or haven't used before to promote it to our audience now I'm not saying everybody would yeah a jobber or lmn do that by any means there's a lot of get like my friend Mike but now he's been using Jabra for a decade right so awesome he's promoting Jabra good for him you know you have to figure out what kind of business model you're running your numbers what size of your company and the different features that each one offer so that's what I would say is demo with a free trial all the different software's out there and get familiar with us see what you guys like and see if it's gonna make sense for you and your business and the way you have your workflow set up for me yard book is it's lean its mean it's great it's it's for a maintenance company like mine running a quarter million bucks a year or last weekend we can do damage with Yard book with my invoicing my charge card out file system emailing estimates using the mapping and the routing software fantastic fantastic platinum platform and here's the deal it's essentially free a lot of you guys have been asking me if we use the premium version or anything like that I still do not like even though we're working with them I don't have like a premium upgraded account now here's one question I have for you guys that are using yard book are you guys using the premium version or not if so leave me a comment in the comment section down below because I understand quick QuickBooks can integrate with everything so let me know if you guys are doing that because that's something I'm going to evaluate as we go into this upcoming season now here's the deal you still have to run your back-end accounting and saw finances and your taxes with a good office management tool like a QuickBooks like we use QuickBooks Online my bookkeeper gets to tag in with that conversation my CPA gets to tag in they talk to each other in fact they tell me what to do okay I'm just gonna be honest with you guys I my role is to sell and grow the company now let's go back full circle to jobber and element' as you guys have seen like jobber to me and again i'd love to hear you guys as thoughts is running a company that might do more than just maintenance more than just mulch if you're running crews maybe a little bit larger company so on and so forth that's what maybe you might want to graduate to with java now lmn you guys who saw on my one of my most recent videos with Troy Clark Troy clog runs a couple million dollar year business and to me that's that enterprise level software like the service autopilot pros and the LMS and some of these larger softwares here's the thing they come with a premium price point for about $300 a month now again there's always different promotions and trial periods and this and that so again you know filtered through a brain cell do your research and figure out what makes the most sense for you but when I look at a larger outfit that is using lmn to me that makes more sense I don't think my sub $250,000 company is gonna benefit from running a CRM that costs $300 a month just to be honest with you guys I'm not you know making any points or digs or anything like that I'm just talking about my personal opinion and observation $300 a month is a brand new zero-turn for me it's half my truck payment it's a third of a mortgage or rent like I don't know if my business doing ten fifteen twenty twenty-five thousand dollars a month needs to spend $300 on a CRM when I can use a free CRM like Yard book that might have a 1% processing fee so on and so forth when you do credit card payments okay so again I don't have all the answers I want to lean on you guys what are you guys using out there again don't just look at what people are using now look at what people have used in the past if they've used jobber and they're promoting jobber now and they've used it in the past send it right if they're not using something and they're using it now filter it through a brain cell and you know what maybe those people weren't using something and they're finding a ton of value on what they're using now that's totally fair just maybe shoot some DMS ask some questions see what makes sense and again take their opinion and this is what I was take on YouTube say I need to take somebody else's opinion my reviews and then go and do your own demos trials and reviews on your own that's the only thing I'd say now again Troy clogs using lmn I know some of the larger outfits are using that some of the medium-sized companies might be using jobber and if you're doing quarter million for half a million dollars or less yard book is absolutely all you need in my observation in my opinion so one other thing I want to just cover was a couple of frequently asked questions you guys get and some that I have that I want to ask you guys as well while I got you number one is fees who processes the credit card fees or do we do we tag those onto our customers in the past I have always said no because I came from stripe not stripe I came from Square and from square I was just running credit cards it ask where is to process payment but it's not to build customer profiles necessarily okay so I don't know their routes where they're on my route their yard size how much yards of mulch it took I can't build out a customer profile on just a credit card processing platform like Square now it might has changed since the time this videos come out but for me three years ago that's all I was using was process credit cards process credit cards well yard book is processing credit cards but it's also being able to manage my business so there's two oars in the water when you have a good CRM like a jobber lmn or yard book does that make sense okay so last thing I would just wrap up with was the the thought about credit card processing fees in the past I never did charge the percentage base or the the $3.00 minimum I think it is processing fee and I'd love to hear your guys thoughts about whether or not you guys do or are or have in the past because in the past I never did I ate that cost as a business owner it's it's a deduction we can write it off but when you having four to five thousand dollars of fees that adds up so here's what I'm thinking in 2020 more than likely I'm gonna enable the three dollar processing fee feature to be applied for our residential clients that we do the charge card on file it's a nominal fee for them it's a convenience fee as we'll call it but it's a good way for me to recoup that five thousand dollars of operating expense again it all adds up to three years ago I was transitioning everybody from just an invoice system to a charge card on file system I was already rocking the boat if you will and I didn't want to upset anybody more than we already have right two to three years now later and as a new client sign up I think that we're able to bridge that gap with starting with that charge card on file fee for three dollars it really really helps no again my commercial clients a lot of guys always ask we still invoice all those are net 30 so that fee wouldn't really apply to them any which way all right so that's my quick update I love Yard book they're doing great if I was not sponsored by Yard book I wouldn't care like I would be like oh no and there goes some sponsorship money on the channel but I don't even care anymore like I don't care about that kind of stuff I want to continue to bring value to the guys shoot the truth with you guys and just tell you how I'm running my personal business and even if we weren't sponsored by Yard book I would absolutely still use them to manage run and grow my business and by the way nothing against Yard book or I'm sorry nothing against job or nothing against element of course great CRM is great options for you guys again just figure out your profile of your business what makes sense for you demo and trial see if you like the lay the land of everything see if it integrates with QuickBooks and no matter what the bottom line is that all these different companies there are resources and tools for you guys to grow a more successful business and as you guys know that's what I'm all about okay that's what this channel is here for so again I think we're all doing a great job at elevating the professionalism of the loan and landscape industry we're all trying to run real successful businesses and that is huge and so if you aren't using a CRM you pick your favorite one you pick your poison doesn't make any difference to me I think if you guys are looking for a great CRM if you're just running 0 to 250 you got yard booked if you're running maybe a little bit larger company maybe Java and if you're running a little bit more of a enterprise-level business model and he got multiple crews in multiple different spinning plates maybe check out an S ap or an element all right no sponsorships in this video not nobody's paying me to make this video I'm just shooting it straight with you guys hope you guys appreciate the truth the honesty and you guys just want to continue to grow out go out there and grow and crush your business hey it's 61 degrees I'm gonna get out of here go grab some lunch and start working on some estimates all right we'll see you guys