Hello everyone, I’m Marc from Custom Quoter and have been talking to Henry, Gary and the team at LJN, He mentioned that there are often threads discussing landscapers/landscaping software.
We wanted to create this discussion to have some direct contact and discussions on what landscape gardeners actually want and need for your businesses within a software.
We have not been around as long as some of the others, but we have a large team of developers working and feel we have created and are creating something very special. So far, the feedback from landscapers has been really great, mainly in the amount of time they have saved by using the software, but also in converting more jobs via our estimation calculator.
Some of the features
- Bespoke project calculator - calculate the cost of any job you do, so a run of fencing or a new patio, There is no other system available that can do this. you can see it in action below
- Invoice management - one client managing 65 gardens a month and taking 12 hours to invoice at the end of every month where I showed them how they can do in our system in 30 minutes.
- Client management – all details and timeline of everything for that client
- Job Management – Add notes, files, images, drawings and more neatly in one place
- Document creation – manage all your H&S docs, job sheets, contracts
- Task Mangement – assign tasks to colleagues with progress and additional notes and images
- Calendar management - ability to set recurring times, and colour code jobs
- Take payments - if wanted via paypal and stripe more coming soon
- Live builders merchant pricing – at present just screwfix but more coming soon
- Price list – Store your most used products and services for quick access
- Team management – set tasks, get updates and images and videos
- Team on map location – see where your jobs and team are located
- Access control – Set different levels of access for colleagues
- Email connection – connect to your work email so no more quotes landing in clients spam
- Accounting integration - connect to Quickbooks or Xero
- Support – Raise a ticket or use toolbot the custom quoter helper
We have created an easy onboarding system so that you can be up and running sending invoices and calendar dates within 10-15 minutes. Setting up the estimation tool takes a little longer.
There are many more features in the process of being built that are coming soon
- Full chat system for team communication, no more whatsapp or sms
- Business analytic being, see how many of your quotes lead to jobs, monthly revenue, types of job, which team members have done more etc etc that allows you to see everything you need to help your business grow.
The key element we want people to understand is that we are here to work together with you to really make the best software for you and your business.
There are many other features too many to list, we are ready to build more features if that is what we feel people want. We are happy to answer any questions or set up a demo or group demo, we have a 30 day free trial no cards needed.
You can view the website and lots more information here https://bit.ly/2Vozk2v
Views: 1690
Replies
Encouraging to see U.K. centric field service & landscape gardening business management apps appearing here.
For a busy business there are many benefits to be had, especially with ability to capture information, photos and generate structured quotes etc. Integration into small business accounts systems makes invoicing & life so much easier.
It's worth taking a look to see how these apps can help take some of the stress away.
For us, capturing all the one-off works, call outs along with recurring works is key as when you're busy it's easy to miss or forget items down the line and leave 'money' on the table.
It was one of the first business aspects I addressed when we started, especially when dealing with commercial clients ... and glad we did.
Will review further and watch with interest 👍
Hi Gary thank you for your response.
The difference a software can make to a business is huge, with the time spent on paperwork to the efficiency of managing their jobs, teams and everything else.
We want to work with the community in order to build every feature they could want to really manage their business is an effective, professional and automated way that frees them up to work on different elements of their business growth or family life.
We really welcome people to ask questions and discuss with us what they need and work together.
We welcome feedback here, people can sign up free for 28 days, no strings attached, no card needed, start using the software immediately and come back with their experience on this discussion.
I've had a look and for us it can't compete on price. We are long term users of Jobber and are on a "legacy plan" which costs arond £30 per month (billed in USD)
For your service and the number of jobs we need to schedule it would cost us £250 permonth and the product would have to save us that and more to warrant the switch, owing to the training required for staff to use it in the field and the sheer amount of initial data entry required.
Having said that I do welcome more products which are UK based and tailored to the UK market.
It's an interesting aspect - some apps are priced totally by user count per month with unlimited jobs. Others by jobs per month with unlimited users.
To understand further - Marc Mazure how does CQ cater for a recurring service to one client, performed weekly - Is that 1 job or 4 jobs ?
This came up with another app often evaluated.
Nick, that is very good legacy pricing from Jobber as I know they went thru several pricing methodologies in the early days.
We didn't proceed with Jobber when at the tiime, they had to drop QB Desktop Integration in lieu of QBO only ( a vastly inferior system at the time ) thanks to Intuit.
However, If you're integrated with one of the main online accounts systems - you can often flip-flop the data and change the field service 'app' 'underneath' and then resync it ( works for core customer & premises data etc ).
Gary - Jobber now would be very expensive for us in their current offering (and probably comparable to the offering in this thread) but they offered [lifetime] legacy pricing as a thank you from them for supporting them when they were in their infancy.
I didn't realise however that data could be flipped in between products that used Intuit!
Hi Nick & Gary thank you so much for your comments I will reply to all points.
The way we have set our pricing is for up to 15 users, we have many people that are using contractors for certain jobs and need them on the system but can't warrant paying additional plans for them, so we wanted to make a system that has a set price, and you can use as you need. Also, we have not made add-ons that have extra pricing, with any plan you have complete access to every feature on the system and every feature coming too. The higher plans we have, generally are for much larger teams and therefore charging per user would not workout cheaper for clients.
Let me explain how we differ from Jobber as I feel that is important.
Firstly, we have an estimation tool, which on its own is a standalone feature and something we have not found any other software doing to my knowledge. It does take some extra time to set up but once done, if I were to call you in for a new patio, like in the screenshot above, you can just put in the measurements and immediately cost the job on the spot, same goes if you were building a wall or doing fencing etc. So many people are spending weekends and evenings estimating jobs to get those out to clients. Whereas within our system you can do that instantly which is a huge time saver. More importantly there is a direct correlation between the speed in which you get your quotes out to a client and the conversion rates from them. What we see, is the businesses that are quoting much faster are converting many more jobs, so not only does it save time and efficiency within the business, but it also boosts conversion rates, which opens the question of what that would be worth to a business.
Another thing we have found that I don't believe you can do on Jobber and most other software, but correct me if I am wrong, is we have built a templating area where you can create a full professional tender style document, which I think is essential for businesses. By uploading your front cover pdf and creating full bespoke pages within the tender and then closing with your branded pdf document so you can create professional estimates. All these can also be saved and reused/hashed over and over.
For me the main difference with us to all other software is not that we are UK based, but that we want to create complete transparency with you and stand in amongst the community, which is why we created this thread. For us the software is never complete and we welcome feedback from people to say what would make it better, “can we had this element here” and we will evaluate that and if that's what people want, we will build it. We are not a take it or leave it software we are a company that will sit with you all, work together to make the best and most complete software available. We have many new functions coming. For me being part of the community is key and I am not just a member of the CQ team I am one of the founders and owners of the software and will be checking here regularly as will Richard another owner and maybe for transparency we will have him create a separate account and answer independently to me. For us the success of any software is working together with our clients which I guess is why Henry has invited us to communicate directly with everyone.
I fully understand that with your legacy plan it would not be cost effective to change, unless of course as time goes on you start to see many features on our system that you just don't have with your existing, like the estimations which are a key element. As to the software paying for itself, the idea is the more man hours saved the greater the worth. As an example, one landscape business with 65 maintenance contracts a month and spending 12 hours at the end of each month invoicing, he was able within our system to reduce that to 20 minutes which is a huge saving of time. So, if he is charging £20 an hour and saving 11 hours that would equate to £220 saving a month just on one feature and using the £125 plan.
I also totally get your point with training staff to use the system, which is a key point getting a team up to speed. when we first launched, we saw that as an issue for people, especially busy people, so we built an onboarding system that guides you through the whole set up so you can be up and running within 15 minutes excluding the estimation part which has its own on boarding element. We also built the robot within the screenshots above, so if someone has forgotten how to do something, they can click on him, and for instance, select help with quotes and he will take over the screen and tell you to click this button now, fill in this, and guide you through everything needed, so there is always direct support in the system.
Regarding data being flipped it really depends on what data you want but within both Quickbooks and Xero there is a function that allows you to copy over all your clients into our system.
Gary to answer your question of catering to weekly clients, what you can do is set up a monthly invoice that can either be billed in part each week or billed for the 4 jobs at the end of the month so that they would only count as 1 job.
Looking forward to answering more questions people may have.
Hi Marc.
It would be very nice to use a UK based software system, bt when your software can do everything the Service Autopilot can do, let me know and I will change over.
From SA we do all our estimating from the computer screen without going to a pry, which saves many thousand of pounds a year. It takes us about 5 minutes to do an estimate and send by email.
Also, we have a documents section as well as automations, which allows emails to be sent and other actions to happen automatically , plus much more.
Hi 1st Garden Maintenance thanks for your message and support that's greatly appreciated.
I have had a look at their website and don't see anything they have that we don't but do see things we have that they don't, if your ok with it I'd love to jump on a call with you and discuss it.
Let me know and we can set that up.
Best wishes
Marc
I think we'd all be interested when this progresses to learn from the outcomes 👍
Adrian, can you detail what features / functions you use in SAP for your teams so we can understand how it stacks up against CQ and other products? I'm sure it would be interesting for all.
I seem to remember you fell foul of 'automated' / no visits quotes recently - in what situations do you visit to quote and who does it ?
What sort of volumes of quotes do you generate monthly - if high is that because of churn rates or mostly one-off jobs ?
-
1
-
2
-
3
of 3 Next