Do you oversee multiple landscaping projects simultaneously? 

Then you know how challenging it is to manage them all, especially on spreadsheets and paper records. 

One minute, you’re struggling to track costs, and the next, you’ve misplaced the paper on which you scheduled crews. The whole operation is being run in silos, and it’s hard to monitor progress or track who’s doing what. 

To simplify your workflow and manage jobs effectively, you need a landscaping project management template like the one below. 

It will allow you to map out the entire project plan from design to completion, ensuring smooth collaboration and showing what needs to be done at each stage of the job.

The template makes it easier to manage your landscaping projects, whether they involve big or small jobs.

Introducing your landscaping project management template

This management template will help you start your project quickly, providing a layout to fill out. Instead of designing a plan from scratch, you make a few modifications to improve monitoring and optimize your workflow. 

Here’s how to use the template:

1. Download and open the template. 

2. Input your project details into the template and assign responsibilities.

3. Share with stakeholders and team members for collaboration. 

4. Set a timeline and regularly update progress.

5. Monitor team performance, track costs, and adjust budgets.

Why is project management important in landscaping?

It’s essential for landscaping businesses because it helps anticipate and address issues before they escalate. Landscaping projects often come with complex demands: unrealistic client expectations, unpredictable weather conditions, unexpected costs, and tight deadlines.

Effective project management ensures jobs run smoothly, stay within budget, and are completed on schedule. 

Here’s why it’s crucial in the landscaping industry. 

• Planning and organization: Strong project management enables detailed planning, from timelines and scheduling to resource and equipment allocation. This ensures crews are properly equipped and everyone understands their responsibility at each project stage. 

• Effective communication: With a structured plan and schedule, crew leaders and team members can provide accurate updates to clients and office staff. There’s no guesswork, just clear visibility into project progress. 

Tools like Aspire enhance this communication by facilitating real-time collaboration between clients, the front office, and the field crew. All parties can share updates, raise issue tickets, and track resolutions within the system. 

• Budget and cost control: Project management helps monitor job costs and prevent budget overruns. Platforms like Aspire offer a job-costing feature that compares estimated labor and material expenses with actual spend. 

This visibility allows your landscaping business to track profit or loss for each project. Plus, you can identify and implement cost-saving opportunities to keep the project on budget. 

• Equipment management: Landscaping projects rely on specialized equipment like a mower, chainsaw, sprayer, lawn aerator, and more. Proper management systems like Aspire let you assign equipment to specific teams, monitor usage, and reduce downtime. Knowing where each piece of equipment is improves accountability and asset use.

What are the key elements of a landscaping project management template?

Your project management template should be a working document that provides insight into ongoing operations. Here’s what it should include:

• Project overview: Include details like client name, project type, estimated start and end date, project manager, crew leader, and budget. You can add objectives and a project summary, e.g., will the crew be hardscaping, planting, or installing decorative lighting?

• Task list and scheduling: Break down the project into tasks and subtasks with clear milestones and assign them to the field crew.

Establish realistic timelines with deadlines for each phase of the project. This will ensure that everyone understands their responsibility and can stay on track. 

• Budget and cost tracking: Define all project costs such as labor, materials, and equipment. Detail the estimated cost and actual cost when the project begins. This helps track spending and identify losses or profits.

• Permits and regulations: Outline all the local licenses and permits that will be needed for the project. Indicate what’s available and what’s not, including who’s tasked with getting said permits.

• Crew and resource allocation: Establish crews responsible for each project, e.g., Crew 1 handles grading and installation of paver patio, with Crew 2 responsible for planting shrubs and flowers. Then, allocate the resources—the equipment and materials each crew needs to ensure the job is done properly and the project stays organized. 

• Progress tracking: You’ll need a logbook to note the project’s progress. What is pending or has been completed? Is there bad weather or faulty equipment? Has anyone been injured, or is the client increasing the project scope? What do these changes mean for the project?

Landscaping management tools like Aspire automate most of these processes, allowing users to stay organized, efficient, and up-to-date with project progress. You’ll learn more about how Aspire helps with all these shortly.

What are the main challenges of using spreadsheets and manual tracking?

Without a project management template or software to monitor landscaping jobs, you face several problems:

Data inconsistencies and errors: Spreadsheets are prone to errors, whether it’s from incorrect data entry or a wrong formula. A single mistake can affect the project budget, schedule, job cost, and outcome. 

Lack of automation and real-time updates: You have to manually enter data across multiple sheets when using spreadsheets. This can be tiring and time-consuming, especially when managing different landscaping projects. 

You also have to work with outdated information, considering you can only input the data that has been provided into the sheet. This means limited access to real-time project information, making it hard to catch issues early or make informed decisions quickly. 

Time-consuming and inefficient work: You will spend a lot of time manually inputting information into the spreadsheet. This slows you down, making tasks such as scheduling crews, calculating payroll, or generating reports more challenging.

Poor tracking capabilities: Manual systems can’t show where your crew or equipment is, let alone how many resources have been used in real time. It makes it hard to manage project costs, prevent delays, or avoid overbooking equipment.

Difficulty scaling as your business grows: Spreadsheets can keep up with multiple projects, crews, and clients. But they don’t integrate with other tools you’ll need, like customer relationship management, invoicing, time and equipment tracking, and more.

This means you’ll have to run the business in silos, switching between apps and devices. It’s pretty chaotic, increasing the chances of mistakes and reducing efficiency. 

But what happens when you have a template by your side and Aspire in hand?

Beyond templates: streamline landscaping project management with Aspire

Aspire is a management tool that helps landscaping businesses achieve operational efficiency. Instead of you jumping between spreadsheets and multiple tools, all the features you need to run and manage landscaping projects are centralized in a single platform. 

HeartLand, a commercial landscaping business operating from Denver to D.C., benefited from implementing Aspire. In the past, it used spreadsheets to track information and had to wait until the end of the month to generate reports on an overview of business operations.

But with Aspire in the mix, HeartLand’s landscaping processes—from the front office to the onsite crew leads—became centralized. Its staff could monitor different projects throughout the month in real time instead of waiting until the month-end. This has allowed them to involve more employees in monitoring daily operations, improving their decision-making ability.  

Here’s a peek at how Aspire helps you manage landscaping projects:

Streamlined scheduling and resource allocation 

Aspire gives you control over projects from the instant the job is won. It allows you to move secured projects into the drag-and-drop calendar so you can set recurring jobs and update your schedule.

Once the contract is moved to Aspire’s scheduling feature, you can assign the task to crew leaders, set the start date, indicate status, and insert the project location. Essentially, map out the entire project timeline regardless of whether it’ll take weeks or months. This makes it easy to track who’s assigned to what and get visual insights into the project’s performance. 

If you need to change the schedule, simply drag and drop a work ticket to a different day.

Here’s what makes this feature more interesting:

• New or updated schedules are instantly visible to the field crew via Aspire’s mobile app. 

• Because you can view the crew’s availability and workload in real time, you know who’s using what tool and who is free for another project. This helps you manage the team, preventing burnout or equipment damage.  

Real-time job-cost tracking 

Keep track of project costs in real time with Aspire’s job-costing software. Instead of manually entering data to monitor spending, the system integrates data from various departments as operations happen. 

In other words, as field techs clock in and log hours spent on a project or crew leaders input material expenditure, the system consolidates this data to track actual expenses. 

With this information, you can match estimated versus actual costs against the project budget. It helps you know when you’re operating at a loss or profit and shows what’s working to maintain profitability. 

Aspire offers a much simpler and faster way to calculate job costs. In fact, reports show that companies using Aspire to estimate project costs are 33% faster at estimating than those who rely on manual systems or disconnected workflows.

Integrated communication tools

A key feature of any standout project management system is streamlined communication between stakeholders, and Aspire delivers on that.  

Thanks to the software and field mobile app, the office and field teams can easily share project updates. 

For instance, field workers get updated via the Aspire Mobile app when the office team creates or updates a schedule. In turn, the front office or project manager is notified when the field crew clocks in/out, takes a break, raises an issue ticket, or sends progress videos.

The field techs don’t have to be online when sharing updates. They can create issue tickets with relevant information, and it’ll automatically sync once the internet is restored.

Scalability and customization 

As your business grows, it becomes more challenging to stay on track using spreadsheets. Considering you’ll probably be using different tools alongside sheets, it’s easy for data to go missing, making it difficult to make informed decisions and scale the business.  

Aspire enables growing landscaping businesses to scale by providing real-time data on their performance, customer service, and profitability. This information helps you make strategic decisions. 

The job-costing feature, for instance, lets you track projects or clients generating the most revenue. This data shows you where to focus your energy. 

It’s what Precision Landscape did. Before Aspire, it used spreadsheets, and it became clear how chaotic it would be to manage 100+ customers there. 

After making the switch, Aspire became the single source of truth for this lawn-care service and helped the firm create a strategy to meet its financial goals. Staff now have access to real-time data and reports, which helped increase net profits by six to seven percent in 2024.

“These reports automatically tell you a story,” maintenance division director Brian Gray explains. “It tells you, ‘OK, I need to put a little bit more pressure on the production side of things, and I need to have some conversations with our account managers.’” 

Like HeartLand and Precision Landscape, you don’t have to struggle to manage your landscaping operations or scale the business. By partnering with Aspire, you can streamline and optimize your workflows.  

Want to see the tool in action before making a decision?

Book a free demo today and see the automation magic Aspire brings to your landscaping business.