Can landscapers trust their numbers? Part Three.

This is the last post in a three part series on business process and financial management for landscape contractors. (Read Part One. Read Part Two.)

Stop mismanaging your paper workflow by abdicating all paperwork management to your Administrative staff.

You must have Sales and Operations staff involved in managing the key business transactions: 

1. Estimate
2. Work order/ticket
3. Purchase
4. Time-sheet
5. Invoice   

You Just Can't Leave This To The Administrative Staff.

Here's why. Your Administrative staff has very little to do with the creation and execution of any of these transactions. There is so much information they DON’T have that it almost impossible for them to manage the numbers without responsible Sales and Operations staff involved daily.

It Takes A Team.

Salesmen and Account Managers initiate the estimate and create the work ticket. Operations Managers make the purchases and manage the time sheets.  Sales and Operations people usually must cooperate to get the invoicing right. What does the Administrative staff know, except that which they are given?

Yes, I’m saying your Administrative staff needs more respect and the best way to give them that is for Sales and Operations to manage the paperwork for these transactions. I think just made some friends (Administration) and some enemies too (Sales and Operations)!

It's Not Complicated But You've Got To Execute To Get Trusted Numbers

Click to enlarge

When you think about it… it’s a pretty simple process.  

1. For each transaction someone must initiate it (with proper and complete information),
2. Someone must review it while it is in progress (with real-time reporting on transaction/ticket status), and
3. Someone must correct, complete, approve and finalize it (by producing accurate estimates, work tickets, purchase orders, time-sheets, and invoices).  

Who? Together both Administration and Sales/Operations must every day to keep the numbers right through IN PROGRESS reporting on ticket status… or else you will have a mess at the end of the month.

What Happens If You Don't Have A Trusted System For This Work?

Transactions won’t be corrected and financial reports will suffer accordingly because there is no time to do all the research to fix all the mistakes that naturally get made every day and if not corrected within 2-3 days they often become permanent.

Put Down The Bucket. Pick Up More Profit.

Yeah, I want to throw up too… so much work to get it right… and people say landscaping is an easy business... But managing transactions is essential to good numbers… and yes it costs money. But if you don’t do it, the cost of “bad numbers” is reduced gross profit. So get everyone involved in managing the paperwork flow as outlined here.