Use Accounting As You Use Water
Landscapers know how important it is to water a lawn daily. Think of bookkeeping and accounting as tasks that help grow your small business every day and over a long period.
Landscaping companies need to take a little time every day to keep track of their books and organize the paperwork to ensure all expenses and invoices are accurate.
You might think that hiring an accountant for tax season is enough accounting for the year. However, that would be like fertilizing or watering once a year. Doing a litter bit every day will help you better understand how to grow your business and anticipate problems.
Design Systems That Are Simple To Follow
Many landscape companies find that bookkeeping is a challenging task. Designing systems that are simple to follow will help your company keep up with its accounting.
Accounting software can be a tool you utilize to make it easier to keep up with tracking your accounting information. The software will manage your financial information by inputting it into its system automatically. The software can help with managing your cash flow, tracking bookkeeping, and managing your outstanding invoices.
Many small business owners of landscaping companies find it useful to hire a professional to aid them in their bookkeeping management. Hiring someone to track your bookkeeping allows the business owner to focus more on their customers work.
Without a strategy on how to take care of your businesss books, your business will not follow proper accounting procedures.
Get New Bookings In Your Sleep
Online booking allows your customers to book your services directly from where they are at anytime your website, Facebook, Instagram and more. Never again lose business to your competitors because you weren’t available to book the job personally. More and more customers are looking to book online quickly and conveniently, so make sure to stay ahead of your competition and give your customers the advantage of booking online whenever and wherever.
Local Business Listings
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Save The File To A Secure Location On Your Computer
After youve edited and added all of the different sheets within your master Excel bookkeeping document, youll want to be sure to save the file in a secure location on your computer or drive.
As we mentioned earlier, unlike many cloud-based software programs, which house your information and allow you to log in and out of the platform via any web browserâby doing your basic bookkeeping using Excel, youll only have access to your system through this one file. Therefore, youll want to make sure the file is secure, yet accessible when you need it to perform your day-to-day bookkeeping tasks.
Lawn Care Apps For Scheduling And Routing
6 min read
What can a scheduling app for lawn care business do for your bottom line? The answer includes an array of benefits for a business including efficient scheduling and ultimately more money in your pocket.
Scheduling jobs can be very difficult due to weather, location, and other factors. Hiring contract labor can also be challenging. The business end of lawn care involves a lot of behind-the-scenes details, such as creating estimates, booking new clients and handling payments. Scheduling and routing generates many challenges for owner/operators, but the right app can transform how you do business and enable you to handle all your clients with ease.
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Collect Happy Client Review
Satisfied customers feedback is essential for attracting other lawn clients. You can post your positive clients feedback on your website and social media. You can also use them for your promotional fliers.
Most people, before taking any decision check reviews. When people see positive feedback on your site, they will interest in taking your service.
Always One Step Ahead Real
Stay one step ahead and say goodbye to wasted time, lost techs and missed ETAs. SERVGROW dispatching software is simple with effortless job scheduling on the fly.Car issues, thrown a curve-ball last minute? No problem with SERVGROW. From the palm of your hand and with a couple clicks, you can change, adjust or update a job and your entire team is notified in real-time of any changes.
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Top 7 Lawn Care & Landscaping Business Tax Deductions
If you own a lawn care or landscaping business, you know what an interesting, challenging and lucrative field this can be. While running your own business can be exciting, it is also full of challenges and sometimes, uncertainty.
One of the biggest challenges for small business owners is often their cash-flow, revenue and overall profits. After all, people go into business to make money. The same is true for landscapers and lawn care specialists. While the field has great potential, especially in certain areas, expenses can often be high and prohibitive for those just getting started.
This is where deductions come into place. It is important to have a basic understanding of the tax system in order to minimize your payments and therefore earn more money. In this post we will discuss the ins and outs of landscaping tax deductions, to make sure that you are maximizing your earning potential.
What Are Lawn Care Business Tax Deductions
As a small business owner, you know how important it is to have accurate bookkeeping and accounting services. You must record all income that comes into your business as well as keep track of all of the money that comes out.
The reasons for tracking your income are fairly obvious and clear. The tax authorities require each individual and business to submit tax returns and pay taxes appropriately according to their income. This can be a bit more complicated as a small business owner, as opposed to an employee, which is why it is always recommended to consult a trusted accountant. You will also have to pay self-employment tax and potentially other necessary taxes.
However, in order to offset some of the tax burdens, as a small business owner, you have many tax deductions that will lower the amount you have to pay. What does this mean? Every business related expense can be deducted from your income. As a result, you will owe fewer taxes, as your total profit will be lower.
While each business should check with a CPA about its specific deductions, there are many common landscape business tax deductions.
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Use The Software To Help Determine Future Financial Strategy
Once youve been using the program for a while, youre going to start to notice patterns. There will be expenses that may seem unusually high, or invoices that are always paid late. Take notice, and make notes. Create a new financial strategy for the future by deciding if there are ways you can cut expenses by doing things differently, or if you should change the payment terms for customers who always pay late.
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Create Steady Income And Customers For Life
Nothing builds long lasting customer relationships and loyalty more than recurring service plans and agreements. We make it easy to create, track and bill for any type of service plan available. Whether it’s weekly, monthly, seasonally or annually, you have the ability to create any type of service plan and automatically bill whenever you’d like. Creating consistent recurring income, amazing your customers and building lifelong loyalty has never been easier.
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Gotomeeting Video Conferencing & Online Meetings
Host meetings for up to 250 participants, free during the 14-day trial period, and join any GoToMeeting session without signing up. This app allows you to share your screen, hand off control to other attendees, and video conference with up to six shared webcams. Its a professional, reliable choice that has been around for years before the pandemic.
Microsoft Teams group chat and video conferencing software replaces the Skype for Business app. Teams gives users voice and video over wireless, instant messaging, conferencing, and calling features in one easy-to-use, classic interface that integrates with Outlook. Hosts require a valid licensed copy of Microsoft Office 365while anyone invited to a meeting can attend without an account.
Used by more than 500,000 organizations and with a focus on customer satisfaction, ZOOM makes online meetings and group messaging with up to 100 people easy with this free video conferencing app. You can do interactive calls or view-only webinars. Joining and hosting meetings is free, but free group meetings get limited to 40 minutes.
Lawn & Landscape Magazine
This free lawn care app delivers award-winning Lawn & Landscape Magazine content about the industry alongside digital enhancements, such as animation, video, touch points, audio podcasts, and interactive advertising. Lawn care specialists and landscapers receive monthly issues that cover profit-building ideas, new landscaping techniques, and innovative products to keep their businesses blooming.
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Excel Cash Book Template
My Most Popular Excel Bookkeeping Template
The excel cash book is the simplest and easiest way to start recording and tracking your business income and expenses and bank balance, for your day to day bank accounts.
You can add or delete unwanted columns and delete or insert more rows.
Balances are calculated automatically with built-in formulas so all you have to do is enter how much you earned or spent and the expected bank balance is calculated for you! You can then perform a bank reconciliation within the cashbook to make sure the cashbook reconciles with your bank balance.
This cash book also includes an Income Statement report so you can see if the business is making a profit or a loss each month.
Develop A Marketing Plan And Decide On Prices
When it comes to marketing your landscaping business, you already know where to start: Facebook and other social media, as well as SEO tactics, will increase your search visibility on Google and other search engines.
Of course, word-of-mouth marketing is always the best, especially in hyper-local markets, but that comes with doing good work overtime. So while you wait for the glowing reviews to be passed around town, consider setting up your social accounts first as you start your landscaping business.
Clayton says that mastering all of the typical marketing channels, and putting a starting budget of $500 to $2,000 in place to acquire your first 10 to 100 customers, is the best way to start. A digital marketing expert may be necessary to bring your game to the next level once you expand your landscaping business.
When you’re first starting your landscaping business, you should also decide on the prices of your services so you can include those in your marketing efforts. Any potential customers will want to know what they’ll be charged for the various landscaping services your business will offer.
When you’re deciding on your rates, it’s a good idea to check out the competition and see what prices similar businesses are offering, then go from there. But remember, you can always adjust rates as you go.
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Does It Allow For Multiple Users
If youre running your own small business, consider letting all members of your staff enter their own expenses. This will save you time, or it will save time for the staff member normally delegated to do this task. So, make sure the software allows for multiple users, and that it can restrict access to certain features .
Implement Email Marketing To Keep Track Lawn Customers
Email marketing is excellent to Keep track of all lawn customers because you can send emails to specific client lists or automate essential emails to send out at crucial times or milestones. For example, you could email customers:
- After service is done to send an invoice
- When you need to share a new upgrading lawn care service.
- When you want to inform about upcoming promotions or discounts.
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Calculate Your Rate When You Have Employees
Employees can speed up your operation tenfold. But, theres an art to pricing out their labor.
Jason explains that when including labor in your price, you should consider how much effort is required per person.
When I say $60 per hour, Im talking about the rate per person. So if you have a two-man crew, youre looking at $120 per hour. If you have a three-man crew, $180 per hour. If Ive got a two-man crew and were cutting grass and it took us 30 minutes to cut, thats a $60 lawn. Although it took half the time to mow this lawn, it required two times the effort for labor for Jasons team.
Or, you can take Edwards approach:
We bid per hour. I like to walk the site, get the job requirements, and decide how long and how much labor it will take. For example, a job might take an hour and a half with three people. So Ill bill three people on the site at $45 an hour, $45 per employee, so that $135 for labor alone.
Notice that this price doesnt include overhead, equipment, and materials costs yet.
How To Run A Successful Lawn Care Business
There are countless tasks to manage, that much is clear, so we want to take the time to share some quick-fire tips on how to run a successful lawn care business.
- Organize your team to work efficiently
- Organize your clients and schedule wisely by using a lawn care scheduling app
- Focus on repeat business
- Keep tools and equipment clean and in working conditions
- Improve internal communication
- Send reminders to clients of upcoming appointments
- Follow up after completing a job
- Use great marketing strategies
- Have a clear weather policy
- Use lawn care business apps to automate processes
All of the following tips above ensure you have happy clients, happy employees, and a happy bank account.
You may find yourself wondering, what is the best way to make sure that all of the above to run a successful lawn care business are even possible?
I think we have established by now that a lawn care app gets you ahead of the competition and simplifies your internal processes to make your lawn care business run smoothly.
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What To Include In Your Lawn Care Business Expenses
We’re going to outline popular categories and features to include in your lawn care business expenses spreadsheet. This way, you’ll be able to see exactly why it’s so important to have these sheets in your business. Each customer should have a sheet of their own to streamline the record-keeping process.
How Do You Do An Expense Spreadsheet
A business expense spreadsheet is a comprehensive report created on a regular basis. It accounts for all of the expenses your business has incurred. This document only tracks the money that you have spent. You may create your own monthly expenses template by following these guidelines:
- Begin with a blank spreadsheet Its recommended to start with a clean sheet when creating the report. Its like clearing your mind so you have that option to customize the document to serve its purpose.
- List all of your expenses If you list down the expenses, it becomes easier for you to create categories or add to existing groups.
- Sort your expenses into categories From the list you have gathered, start categorizing the operating costs into either variable, periodic or fixed expenditures.
- Be as honest as possible Never try to exclude any purchases. Their inclusion gives you the opportunity to make improvements so that the next time around, you will only concentrate on what matters. Without honesty, you will never improve. You should concentrate on making an expense sheet that is both effective and perfect. For this, you can either create it yourself or use a free template that you download online.
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Planimeter Measure Land Area
A planimeter, also known as a platometer, is a measuring instrument used to determine the area of an arbitrary two-dimensional shape. In this case, a planimeter app for landscaping measures two points on a 2D satellite-based map, whether its a customers lawn or an area youre fencing in for a project.
Rated 4.8 out of 5 with over 1,200 reviews in the Apple App Store, this planimeter ranks above other similar, cheaper or free planimeter apps. This is one of the best apps of its kind, writes one reviewer, while the following landscape contractor calls this lawn care app the best tool ever.
I have used this app for 2 years and it changed my life, writes Artistic Landscaping Services in a 2020 review of the app. Bold statement, I know…This allows me to give estimates over the phone, thus reducing or eliminating the cheapskate contact.
I Wanted To Go Out Into The World And Be My Own Man
The only problem was that I quickly found that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I had to work hard and earn little and my life was pretty much dictated by my boss. I mean if I wanted a paycheck, I had to work when I was told, right?
So after a few years of this, I began re-thinking my decision not to go to college. Maybe I should’ve just done it and then I’d get a degree and a real job
That is until I started really looking around at some of my friends and acquaintances who had gone the college route!
Were they any better off? Not really. They worked long hours and were probably more tied to their corporate jobs than I was.
Yeah, they got to sit at a desk in an office in cubicle hell rather than do some of the jobs I did landscaping, bartending, laying sod, driving a forklift you know the drill yet they weren’t’ any happier and often weren’t making any more money, either.
And hey, at least when I went home after work I was done with work. I shut off the forklift and went home. I mixed the last drink, clocked out and was done with it. On the other hand, my corporate friends were always talking about “being on call” or having to go in on Saturday or were even kind of proud of the fact that they’d hang out at Starbuck’s for a few hours on Sunday morning so they could use the WIFI and do some work
What the hell? No thanks!
Sound crazy?
As the Navy SEALs say, “Plan your dive and dive your plan.”
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