For landscaping and gardening
Extra work gets quoted before it gets dug
Landscaping jobs grow on site. The client asks for another garden bed, the retaining wall turns out to need drainage, and the extra work gets done on a handshake. Then the invoice arrives and nobody agrees on what was asked for.
No quote from memory
Site photos and measurements are required before a job can be quoted.
Accepted before started
The client accepts the quote online, and the job cannot start until they have.
Extras against the job
Each variation its own record with its own approval, and a running total on the job.
Closed means billed
Invoice raised or paid in full before the job can close. Drafts do not count.
Site visit, quote, work, sign-off, invoice
Write the process down once: enquiry, site visit, quoted, accepted, in progress, completed, invoiced. Every job moves through those stages, with the client, the address and the scope captured where they belong.
Make the site photos and the measurements required on the site visit stage, so nobody quotes from memory. A job cannot reach quoting until they are there.
The client says yes in writing
Raise the quote off the job, with the GST worked out for you. The client opens a link, reads it and accepts by typing their name. That acceptance is recorded with the time and can move the job to accepted by itself.
Make the accepted quote a gate, and a job cannot start until the client has actually accepted. Not because somebody checked, but because the stage will not let it go.
Extra work raised against the job
Mark a variations stream as a sub-stream of your jobs, and each piece of extra work becomes its own record raised against the job, with its own scope, price and approval. The job keeps a running total of everything raised against it.
So the extra garden bed is quoted and accepted before it is dug, and at the end of the job the agreed extras are on the job rather than in somebody's memory.
Proof of the finished job, then the bill
Require before and after photos on the completed stage, and keep them on the job. Turn the accepted quote into an invoice in one click and connect Xero or QuickBooks so it goes across when you send it.
Put a gate on the last stage and a job cannot be closed until an invoice has been raised, or paid in full. Give each stage a target number of days, and a job stuck waiting on a client is flagged and emailed to whoever owns it.
A starting point: the Repair Jobs template
Track repair jobs from drop-off through quote, approval, repair, and customer pickup. 7 stages and 12 fields, with written instructions on every stage. Change any of it, because it is your process.
Questions
- Can I stop work starting before the client accepts the quote?
- Yes. Make quote acceptance the gate on the accepted stage. The job will not move on until the client has accepted it online, and a cancelled quote does not count.
- Can extra work be quoted separately on the same job?
- Yes. Mark a variations stream as a sub-stream of your jobs stream. Each variation is raised against a particular job as a full record with its own quote and approval, and the job shows a running total.
- Does it schedule crews or plan regular garden maintenance rounds?
- No. There is no scheduling, dispatch, calendar or recurring job built in, and no GPS tracking. Planned dates can be shown on a timeline.
- Does it work in the garden with poor signal?
- It runs in the browser on a phone, so there is nothing to install. There is no native app and no offline mode, so it needs a signal to save.
Weighing it up against
Other trades doing the same thing
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