Transform Your Lawn Care Business with Our Lawn Care Invoice Template for R&D

Lawn care invoice template for R&D

hey everyone it's mike andes here from augusta lawn care we have over 50 locations around north america that do lawn care but today i'm talking about my number one tip when it comes to scheduling jobs on projects so if you have any sort of projects whether it be pulling weeds for four hours or trimming some bushes or doing a big leaf cleanup or property cleanup or installing a massive paver patio and a retaining wall it's gonna take three weeks regardless of the project size today is extremely important because we're going to be talking about how you should put those on the schedule to make sure you can serve your customer the best and you stay organized because when people call command center at augusta lawn care we give them a specific time that we're actually start on their project the reason we can do that is because of the way that we schedule our projects so it's very important that you use any sort of method to keep track of your jobs and when they're on the calendar so what i mean by that is whether you're using a whiteboard whether you're using google calendar whether you're using your crm whether you're using a software like we use for called team up regardless of what you use you know google calendar it's another great free software all of these things the reason you want to use this is be able to give your client an exact day when you're going to come and do their project when they call or email and accept service so if they call say yeah i got your email i love it when can we get on the schedule instead of just saying oh we'll get to in a few weeks which is just basically the the traditional response from every landscaping company instead of getting the hell you'll be in a couple weeks or three weeks and then you're kind of like shuffling papers on your desk of like who's in next in order uh and there's just no rhyme or reason to it whereas if you have a calendar and you have exact times of when jobs are going to be on the calendar you can give them an exact time of oh it looks like we are booked out to the 13th we can put you starting on the 14th we'll be there now how do you do that is how what are the budget hours on that project so you should be able to do is look at your entire week and ask yourself how many budget hours is my capacity and how many budget hours do i have on the calendar let's just let's make simple numbers let's say three employees we have three employees and we're just gonna assume that they can get eight budget hours of projects done every single day so that's 24 hours per day and let's say we work five days a week so that's going to be 120 budgeted hours that should be completed every single week now i've done lawn care and landscaping enough to know that if i have three employees there's gonna be at least one or two of them call out get sick have a family something's gonna happen so i might say you know what instead of putting 120 budget hours on the schedule i'm gonna put 110 budget hours on the schedule just to be safe make sure we have some cushion if someone calls out if someone gets sick or if they have an emergency so 110 budget hours is my capacity and i'm going to put on if i divide that by five 22 hours per day so what i'm gonna do now is i'm gonna literally look at my entire calendar for the entire month say okay well i've got to have eight budget hours every single day for one mowing crew so why got one person going out and mowing every single day well if i take 22 budget hours take out eight budget hours for one person mowing all day long to get the mowing done i now have a grand total of 14 budget hours every single day for capacity for projects so if a client calls and they say i want to accept my paper patio and that paper patio is 28 budget hours that means it's going to take 14 budget hours my capacity per day it's going to take two days to get that project done and most likely i'm gonna have one person mowing and two people on that paper patio for both of those days so again if now i can if someone calls the next day and say oh i got this uh no i got this 140 budget hour job accepted massive cleanup massive mulch installation no worries we know exactly what we're going to do we're booking out 14 budget hours every single day therefore 10 days worth of work is two weeks so for two weeks i'm now booked out for that capacity because i got one person mowing out doing lawns for eight hours a day and the other 14 hours out of my 22 hours capacity is gonna be spent on projects so projects is almost always the biggest thing that people struggle with because mowing is easy you know if you get one or two lawns a day or lawns a week accepted you just throw them on the schedule you put them in your days and maybe over the course of a few months you have to change the schedule up because you're getting more mo's on a specific day when it comes to projects i see a lot of people simply printing out the estimate putting it on their desk and like oh yeah we'll get two in a few weeks and just kind of like shuffle them up and oh well that job we don't have the materials yet so we're going to move that down oh i totally forgot we got to order the excavator and put that on rental oh we totally forgot about that we'll have to shuffle that one down it should absolutely have a rhyme and reason to it whether being a right white board on a google calendar using team up or your crm to visually be able to quickly look and see what day you're booked out till and how you do that is use budget hours to know your capacity and that's that capacity to determine how many people you have on your staff and then you can predictably and accurately know months out in the future we can book ourselves out months into the future and know exactly what days we are going to be able to put people on the schedule it's a great thing for customers to be able to call accept an estimate and know exactly the day you're coming even if you're six seven eight weeks booked out you can do this again if you lose an employee capacity is gonna be hurt you're gonna have to replace them so build into the fact that your capacity is not always gonna be 100 and if you do lose somebody you're gonna have to replace them quickly otherwise you will fall behind i'm mike andy's check out landscapebusinesscourse.com lawncarewebdesign.com and lawncaremedia.com to grow your lawn care business we'll see you tomorrow