The best CRM for landscapers offers capabilities for workflow automation, billing, invoicing, scheduling, and much more. While you’re busy offering excellent service to your clients and managing your team members, HoneyBook helps keep everything in one place and take more off your plate.
Landscaping requires proficiency with both digital and analog technologies. You may find yourself drafting in AutoCAD at 9 AM and by noon be covered in dirt while digging a trench with a backhoe. That technical versatility also means you wear too many hats, especially when you own a small business. Shifting from project to project leaves very little time to chase down invoices, respond to inquiries for work, or to manage your calendar and tasks. Short of hiring a fleet of personal assistants, you may want to automate some of your client management with HoneyBook, the best landscape business management software and CRM.
What is landscape CRM software?
Communicating with clients is essential for every business. But not all communication looks the same. Phone calls and emails are only a small part of the myriad communication needs your business will have with each client. You also regularly establish a list of highly-detailed tasks for each project, share your progress with clients, and distribute tasks across your team to ensure every team member is aware of the project status.
Now multiply that by the number of projects you have. As you scale your lawn care and landscaping business, client management tends to get messier than running irrigation lines in the mud. It doesn’t have to be, though.
A client management software for small businesses, or CRM, is designed to corral many of the management issues that can go spiraling out of control. All-in-one tools like HoneyBook will help you automate various types of communication (like new work inquiries), keep track of invoices, and establish and track project tasks.
When you adopt a CRM tool, you effectively streamline what are often the more mundane and troublesome parts of the client relationship. You could hodge-podge together half a dozen tools that do the same thing, but you’ll save time and money by implementing a turnkey platform.
Landscape CRM solves common industry headaches
According to a Green Industry Pros magazine survey, landscapers identified the following areas as the biggest issues impacting the industry:
- Difficulty finding good personnel and good managers
- Government and regulatory difficulties
- Low-end competition and unrealistic expectations from clients
- Price pressures and effective bidding
- Picking the right clients
- Growing a customer base
- Managing growth (scaling), including keeping up with an influx of client communication
Many of your competitors have likely already adopted a landscape business management software to help with many of the pain points that the Green Industry Pros magazine uncovered in its survey. So, what makes HoneyBook the best CRM for landscapers? The biggest advantage is that its small business management platform combines over a dozen tools and features designed to reduce organizational stress for small businesses across most industries, including lawn care and landscaping.
HoneyBook offers:
- Task management
- Interactive calendar
- Scheduling
- Bookkeeping
- Invoicing
- Lead capture
- Communication tracking
Together, these tools can help you reduce how much time you need to spend with hands-on business management. It also gives you the resources you need to market your landscaping business with a professional edge.
Best landscape CRM features
As the best landscape business management software, you might think HoneyBook has more tools than you need, and that’s OK. You need a large toolkit, and the extremely user-friendly interface simplifies finding exactly the features you need. If you find yourself getting lost, the service provides an extremely detailed knowledge base and an active blog populated with articles from experienced small business owners to help you get started.
Among the many features available, landscapers may want to start with:
- Automations
- Professional brochures template
- Online Invoices
- Online Contracts
- Multi-functional calendar
- Task Management
- And optional team-based functionality
Workflow automation with instant response to inquiries
Landscaping clients are notorious price shoppers. You may get an email or phone call about lawn care and landscaping work, but those potential clients likely also contacted several of your competitors at the same time. You’ll need to respond quickly and professionally to outmatch your competitors and win more projects. But giving an immediate and succinct response isn’t always possible if you don’t have the budget for an office assistant.
HoneyBook’s client workflow automation software simplifies and automates inquiry responses. When a potential client contacts you through your customized contact form (which you can create on HoneyBook and embed on your website), the automation will send a response you’ve created in advance. You can also attach files to the automated response, including brochures and questionnaires.
From there, your client can specify more details about the project. You can then review the request, respond with a proposal, and finalize everything with a contract. HoneyBook’s Automations will automatically track the back-and-forth communication, giving you more control and more insight into the process.
Keep your project organized within HoneyBook.
Prepare all of the necessary parts of your projects using the HoneyBook website or mobile app. For example, use available templates to create beautiful brochures that showcase your best work or write up detailed contracts for common work requests.
The available iOS and Android mobile apps will keep you updated on automation progression with push notifications. Anytime something changes, get an immediate update. Where manual responses are required, you can do so within HoneyBook. You can reduce how much time you spend on manual responses with the ready-to-go files and documents you’ve made in advance.
Landscape invoice software and billing reminders
Most landscapers require up to 50% of the contract paid upfront for large projects, with the remaining balance paid after the project is completed. Landscape billing software is a dime a dozen, but many lack the ability to track payments once the invoice is sent. Your landscaping projects that operate on super thin margins can’t afford to have missed payments.
HoneyBook is the best landscape business management software for many reasons, but its invoicing tool is hard to beat. With HoneyBook invoicing, you can:
- Create branded invoices
- Drag and drop tracked time onto your invoices for easy billing
- Send invoices right away, at a scheduled date, or on a recurring basis
- Automatically send payment reminders for missed invoices
- Accept payments seamlessly and get paid faster
Your clients can pay their invoices completely online with Honeybook using every major US credit card or through direct bank transfer.
Want clients to pay upfront with less hassle? Create an online contract with HoneyBook that includes the proposal, online contract, and invoice, all in one. Reducing the number of emails a client receives can ensure you get paid faster ahead of a project. Once the project starts, schedule to have the final invoice sent on a specific date, or manually send the updated final invoice once the project is completed.
Multi-functional calendar and task management tools
Stay ahead of your contracted work and tasks with the Calendar tool. HoneyBook’s Calendar is a multi-featured app in its own right. You can use the Calendar to:
- Create tasks lists
- See workflow statuses for tentative projects
- Track progress on booked projects
- Schedule jobs, meetings and projects
- Track invoices and payments
Google Calendar is probably a key part of your business. You don’t have to ditch it when you switch to HoneyBook. You can integrate your Google Calendar into HoneyBook with our online meeting scheduler, so anything you add to Google Calendar will automatically be updated to your HoneyBook Calendar.
HoneyBook’s task management tools also integrate smoothly into the Calendar tool. Create tasks lists and have them added to your Calendar. Then, click on any day on the Calendar to pull up that day’s tasks list. You can also use Honeybook’s Time Tracker to log time, which you can then view on the Calendar for later referencing and clear billing.
Easier team management and communication
Good help is hard to find in lawn care and landscaping, but it’s not always for lack of skill. Many personnel issues are due to gaps in communication about project details. You can reduce some of your managing burdens by adding team members to your HoneyBook Workspaces. From there, each team member or even clients can see exactly what tasks and files you’ve shared, and can stay up-to-date on exactly what needs to be completed, and when.
HoneyBook allows you to silo different team members or clients into different areas of the Project with separate Workspaces. You can then assign your team members to individual tasks and keep tabs on their progress. HoneyBook also allows you to share files with clients (such as images and drafts) that they can easily receive, review, and provide feedback on, directly from the interface.
Professional landscapers need an effective CRM
A busy schedule comes with the territory for landscapers, but busywork shouldn’t take up a disproportionate amount of your day. Consider investing in software to help you free up your schedule. The best kind of landscape business management software is any app that is easy to use, multi-functional, and ultimately saves you money.
Few tools will fit the bill, but as the best CRM for landscapers, HoneyBook can. It’ll help you whittle down how much time you spend responding to emails, setting up new contracts, managing your team, and sending strongly-worded emails about unpaid invoices to get paid faster. Make HoneyBook your go-to tool for client relationship management, then use those newly-freed hours to earn more income for your business with more projects.
Grow your business with landscaping business management software by attracting more customers, converting leads, and enhancing your customer experience. HoneyBook makes it easy.
Interested in learning more? You can try HoneyBook risk-free for 7 days.
