keeping track of when you do your lawns

[PRAIRIE STATE LAWN]

im going into my 3rd year of business and i need a new way of keeping track of my daily cuts. this is what i do on regular notebook paper.
June 200?

johnson 2nd 9th 16th
parker 3rd 10th 17th

i write the names and the date i mow them in a list like above, on the 4th mow i write the date cut in red to remind me to bill on the 4th cut, then when i recieve payment i circle all the dates. now this system has worked but id like to change and need ideas on how to keep track. thanks

[J man]

why fix what isnt broke if it hasnt failed you and it works??

[dave_n_mulberry]

palm pilot
all the names and phone numbers...
note of houses with for sales signs or moving vans to keep track of new owners in area and send a letter or make a point to watch for the moving van.
address of all other's that are using a different lawn service and send them a letter.
keep track of all cash spent
all property mgmt groups to send a letter and call.

and the list goes on....

much better than a piece of paper.

[P&C Lawn Care]

Yep I have a handspring (Palm Pilot) to keep track of mowing, billing, reminders, buy lists and the weather. It can put in a schedule for mowing on certain days. It can upload or download info from my P/C. But I have also used a personal planner (on paper) before and it works great too. I would like to get a color Palm so I could get images of plants and flowers to show customers, it is much easier to show something than try and explain it.

[GrassMaster]

Back in the Old Days...

We Transferred everything over to a Little Ledger Book or something similar. One Line Per Job, LOL we had a Million Abbreviations! It saved our butts several times!

I still have the Records somewhere of every job I did between 1985 & 1990.

If I did it now, it would be done on my LapTop in My Truck & then Transferred over VIA Wireless Network at My Shop, My Shop would be at my House!

If I had other Crews Running, I would Probably just have them use paper & then move info to the Computer. LOL, I'm real particular about my Electronic Stuff & don't know if I would want one of them using a Palm Pilot. What if they put their eye out with it?

[thillteamsource]

Hey Prairie

If you are looking to use PC software, we have used GroundsKeeper Pro for scheduling and invoicing. It is great and the cost is low.

See the other thread "lawncare software" by Phillip Baker for more details.

A lot of folks are also using Gopher for scheduing and invoicing. It seems very comparable. We have looked at it recently because it will interface with Quick Books.

Good Luck
Tom

[Phillip Baker]

If you want to keep up with your yards w/o the palm pilot we use yard cards i had them printed at Kinkos the first time on thick light blue construction paper very durable even when they get wet. At the top they have all the cust. info including areas serviced and blade height for that yard, frequency, and services performed. Then at the 1/2 way point of the card starts the Date lines 22 lines on two sides for a total of 44 columns including the date mowed , the techs initials so I know who mowed that property and whether or not they collected when it was mowed or if I need to invoice. It's pretty easy keeping up with them everything goes in a soft sided file that I keep and thier mowed on the same day of the week each week, very easy, If you want i will mail you a blank one just give your address or e-mail it to me MFFWHB@sbcglobal.net if i knew how to scan it over id post it so you could see it But i aint that smart HAHA

[stoph]

I am also in the process of getting a new system in place i have researched gopher and i can't think of a better way of doing it. They sell a wand that goes with there software so you give your crew or yourself a printed out sheet of what has to be done for the day and next to every job or lawn there is a barcode so when you get back to the office you run down the list and scan every job that was done and it automaticaly invoices the job for you and at the end of the month you hit the generate button and the invoices are ready to be printed. What a beautiful thing no more hours of entering info. Also a bunch of other neat features.

Chris