The Benefits of Automation: Computer Software

Bob Smart and Bruce Stone, partners at Yard Smart, Olmsted Falls, Ohio, used to spread out their work order tickets in a conference room, with paper often spilling onto the floor. They would enlist their wives to help and the next three days would be spent processing invoices instead of performing income-generating landscape work.

Today, office manager Hollie Slusarczyk processes seven times the invoices in four hours each month. The secret? Automating the billing process using computer software.

Every morning each crew leader picks up the day’s route sheet. During the day, the crew leader notes what jobs the crew went to and the results. At the end of the day, the sheet is turned into the operations manager, who enters the information into the computer. “When the information is entered, it is automatically billed to the customer’s account,” Smart said.

The data entry process takes only five to 10 minutes per route. “We used to have route tickets, which we left at the customers’ homes, but we did away with them,” he explained. “Now we just have the single route sheet, which is less that can get lost during the day.”

At the end of the month, when it is time for invoicing, Slusarczyk can process 2,000 invoices in four hours.

An additional benefit to automation, Smart added, is being able to bill regularly for service charges. “Because payments are recorded on the computer and the computer doesn’t forget, service charges for late payments are automatically added,” Smart said. “In the past, I would invariably remember a customer was late after the next invoice went out.”

And, since every job performed for a customer is input into the system, the company can also track which clients are due for clean-ups or have added or cancelled services and market to those clients effectively.

ESTIMATION ACCURACY. Increasing sales 63 percent the first year with one investment? “Sure,” said John Collins, general manager, English Gardens, Walled Lake, Mich. “And we have grown 500 percent in the six years since we started using an estimating system.”

Collins wanted to streamline the estimating function and get a more accurate feel for areas where the company could manage its business better. “If you had 10 people doing estimates for the same project, you would get 10 different estimates,” he said. “By standardizing, we could each estimate the same amount of time, material and labor, and our pricing would be more accurate.”

The process allows Collins to spend more time creating appealing designs and selling them. “We get 150 price inquiries per week,” Collins said. “By getting good, accurate prices fast, the design staff can spend its time doing design and sales.”

With the system, Collins can take a designer’s plans and quickly assess how much each portion of that design will cost with his margins that are already programmed. In addition, the company has programmed the accoutrements – such as tree stakes and tree wrap – that need to be added to the project’s cost. “If we sell a stone path, the computer will also add the amount of sand that will be needed for the project,” he explained.

“With this system I can track any changes that need to be made and make adjustments accordingly, such as adjusting estimates depending on our actual installation times vs. the estimated times,” he said. In 1999, about 20 of more than 1,300 English Garden jobs were 5 percent off the estimated cost. “If I get a job that comes in more than 5 percent off the estimated cost, I need to talk to the estimator,” Collins noted.

Another benefit of the program, Collins added, is its ability to track crews and their job performance. “We are able to give our better crews more money because of their productivity,” he said. “And I can put them to work on the most demanding projects.”

COST CONTROL. Bob Donovan, controller, STM Landscape Services, Oakton, Va., an Environmental Care Co., relies on a computer software program to show him the specific costs associated with each job the company performs. “We don’t want to know that we spent $1,000 this month on direct labor,” he explained. “We want to see the hours involved. To us, the critical point is how many times we visited the site, when we visited, what we did there and how many hours were spent there. “We use computer software to manage our business from the estimate to the billing,” he added.

When a new customer asks for an estimate, a staff member develops that quote, plugging in probable labor hours per visit and calculating how many visits would be necessary. “We put that estimate into our boilerplate contract with all the project specifications,” Donovan explained. “If the contract gets signed, we roll that into a job number, and hours will accumulate.”

Most of STM’s clients have their contracts budgeted to a monthly rate rather than paying actual costs per month. Billing this way does put a burden on the company because labor accounts for a big portion of its costs and employees have to be paid based on their hours worked. And STM needs to track those expenses when the revenue is not coming in.

When a crew member’s time is allocated to a job, not only does the software allocate that crew member’s wages, but also the company’s share of FICA, unemployment and worker’s compensation taxes. “If you have a five-man crew on a job for just 10 minutes, the software might only allocate a few pennies, but it will allocate the appropriate percentages,” Donovan said.

All the information the company tracks comes in handy at the end of the season, when STM begins preparing for the following year. “We can make adjustments to our renewal contracts based on the information we have collected,” explained Donovan.

Donovan has also looked at a hand-held program for the crew leaders to carry. In the morning, each crew leader would be handed a unit with his or her day’s route on it. “By clicking on start and stop when they begin and end a job, the unit will track hours on the job,” he said. ”The unit would be given to the night operator at the end of the day and he or she would prepare the unit for the next day.”

“We haven’t made the move to hand-held machines because of our Hispanic employees, and we are not sure how the translations would evolve,” he added.

Since the company installed the software, STM has doubled its revenue without adding to overhead costs. “We need the labor and managers, but we shouldn’t have to add to the overhead structure to get these employees,” he said.

ROUTING THE RIGHT WAY. Diana Southall, vice president, Botanicus Interior Landscapes, Buffalo, N.Y., uses computer software to schedule routes. “We try to schedule by geography, using zip codes, then manually fine tune the schedule to make crews more efficient,” she explained.

“Our system takes into consideration the estimated time of job completion and the job requirements when suggesting a route pattern,” Southall said. “We then adapt that suggestion based on the city being served.”

But Southall noted that routes occasionally need to be altered. “For instance, the software may suggest a route with a restaurant as the fifth stop. If that restaurant is scheduled to be serviced at noon, we have to look at rescheduling when it is less crowded.”

In addition, crews adjust the route based on personal preferences – as long as doing so does not adversely affect their ability to serve clients. “Many times it is easier to go down one side of the street and then double back, instead of crossing the street over and over again,” she said.

The human function also allows crews to adjust based on actual travel time, not simply mileage. “Sometimes there is a longer drive that has fewer stop lights or is less congested. Our crews have the ability to take those routes, as well, as long as they stay on schedule,” Southall said.

The software allows her to add jobs to the route in a logical location. “When we add a customer, their service time is added to that specific route. The crew’s work time is also calculated, and we must determine if that addition will put that specific crew into overtime,” she noted. “If so, we must make adjustments and reschedule that account.”

For Botanicus, the major growth has been in net profits, rather than revenues. “While we have expanded our business, we have not had to expand our administrative costs. As a result, our net income has increased over the past five years.

“You don’t make any money on administration,” she said. “This allows us to minimize those costs.”

The author is a freelance writer based in Columbus, Ohio.

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