I need your thoughts and ideas.

2GuysTrees

Treehouser
Joined
Jul 17, 2017
Messages
26
Location
Fort Wayne, IN
For about 8 years now I've been working on software to help me manage my tree business. Last October I sold 2 Guys Tree Service in Fort Wayne, IN but I couldn't stop working on the software. I had a bunch of things I'd always wanted to do, but never had the time, and that's what I've been doing for the past 9 months.

I want to make this software available to anyone who does quotes before they do jobs.

But I only know how I did things with my business, and how the few other tree guys I knew in town did things that they would share with me.

So what do you guys think about using software, like a mobile app that routes quotes so you're not wasting gas, or manages quotes, jobs, scheduling, customers, payments, quickbooks, etc.

do you guys use anything like that?

does it work well for you?

if you don't use anything like that, but you'd like to, what would you want it to do?

how much should it cost?

I really want to know everything you think about software for tree businesses.

I appreciate your feedback, and thank you in advance.
 
Hmmm... we've always been paper based (3-part NCR custom quote forms). I could see getting a laptop or tablet for estimating to cut down on paperwork... How does it compare to ArborQuote?
https://www.arborquote.com.au
Would it have accounting integration (QuickBooks or otherwise)?
 
Lately I dictate 95% of estimates on voice memo in my phone then later at home I write the estimate and email it to custy. I'd like something that would print right from the voice memo so I wouldn't have to write anything by hand. Be a lot faster and legible.
 
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  • #5
Hmmm... we've always been paper based (3-part NCR custom quote forms). I could see getting a laptop or tablet for estimating to cut down on paperwork... How does it compare to ArborQuote?
https://www.arborquote.com.au
Would it have accounting integration (QuickBooks or otherwise)?

We started out on paper, and still keep some in the truck for "emergencies". How do you route your quotes since you use paper? Do you find yourself backtracking a lot?

I don't know how it compares with Arborquote, and I don't have an I phone, all my stuff is android, but their site didn't say anything about a lot of the features I built into mine.
They do have the "transgrid compliant" quoting that we don't.

What we use exports to customers to Quickbooks via an excel file, so you don't have to put all the info into QB.

Our quote request form on our website saves the quote on our site and emails it to us, and also drops it into our quote software, so we only put quotes in that come from calls. Once they're in, we can email them the quote, the invoice, and the paid receipt. No scanning and everything they get is in PDF.

Do you fill out the quote form sheet and then scan it and email it to the customer?
 
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  • #6
Lately I dictate 95% of estimates on voice memo in my phone then later at home I write the estimate and email it to custy. I'd like something that would print right from the voice memo so I wouldn't have to write anything by hand. Be a lot faster and legible.

So you write it out on the quote form, then scan it and email it?
 
Our current system; customer calls for a bid or fills out an online form. Secretary contacts customer to get full info. She then emails a bid sheet to me which I print out on my end. I schedule the bids and she confirms bid date and time slot with the customer. After I do the bid, I email the details to my secretary who then writes up a bid and emails it to the the customer and also cc's me. I print it out, file it and save it to my HD. When we get the go ahead for a job, it is scheduled on an Excel Spreadsheet calendar and the customer is entered into our QuickBooks database.

Ideally, it would be better if we could just enter the info once at the start and then generate bids, routing, scheduling, invoices, etc. from the original data input.
 
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  • #10
Our current system; customer calls for a bid or fills out an online form. Secretary contacts customer to get full info. She then emails a bid sheet to me which I print out on my end. I schedule the bids and she confirms bid date and time slot with the customer. After I do the bid, I email the details to my secretary who then writes up a bid and emails it to the the customer and also cc's me. I print it out, file it and save it to my HD. When we get the go ahead for a job, it is scheduled on an Excel Spreadsheet calendar and the customer is entered into our QuickBooks database.

Ideally, it would be better if we could just enter the info once at the start and then generate bids, routing, scheduling, invoices, etc. from the original data input.

Sounds like a lot of work. I like the single entry method too, saves a lot of problems. Who knows how to spell the customer's last name better than the customer? And phone numbers get put in wrong often. When we started using our system, we started getting the customer's email on the website and on the phone. Now it's a habit and 2 clicks and the quote is in their inbox. Saves us a ton of time.

I think one of the best features of what we use is our quote routing. Used to be you could put 15 addresses in google maps and get a optimized route. Then they wouldn't let you put in that many. When we have 50 quotes to do, you can spend a fortune in gas and time driving all over creation. That's why I'm asking everybody, how do you do your quote routing now? Do you use google maps or something else? what do you do when you've got 25 quotes or more and you can't map them all?
 
I think one of the best features of what we use is our quote routing. Used to be you could put 15 addresses in google maps and get a optimized route. Then they wouldn't let you put in that many. When we have 50 quotes to do, you can spend a fortune in gas and time driving all over creation. That's why I'm asking everybody, how do you do your quote routing now? Do you use google maps or something else? what do you do when you've got 25 quotes or more and you can't map them all?

Garmin GPS -- add to active route. Our 50 mi radius makes things interesting, but with Home Advisor leads, a lot of times it's first contact that wins the job, so we do have to zig zag sometimes, rather than take the most efficient route. And it depends on our coordinates -- are we at home? On a job in town? In another town nearby? That dictates the order of quoting, plus the customer's urgency level and schedule (determined over the phone).
 
His quote would be on the back of his card. I imagine he went through more with the bigger jobs, but his thing was a bunch of small jobs.

So to speak.
 
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  • #14
Garmin GPS -- add to active route. Our 50 mi radius makes things interesting, but with Home Advisor leads, a lot of times it's first contact that wins the job, so we do have to zig zag sometimes, rather than take the most efficient route. And it depends on our coordinates -- are we at home? On a job in town? In another town nearby? That dictates the order of quoting, plus the customer's urgency level and schedule (determined over the phone).

So you at least have to enter the customer info 3 times. Once on the quote, once in your gps, and once in quickbooks.

How do you get the home advisor leads? Do you have a quote request form on your website? Is there a limit on the number of addresses you can add to your Garmin active route? Would it "freak out" if you added 25 or 50? Does it tell you the best route to take or does it take you to them in the order you put them into it?
 
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  • #15
Does anyone keep track of their "pipeline" numbers? Like how many quote requests / quotes done / jobs received / gross receipts.

We keep track of those numbers so we can catch it fast if our numbers drop that way we never run out of work. Like when winter starts and other guys start dropping their pricing to winter rates, we notice because we get a lower percentage of the quotes we do until we either lower our prices a bit or up our marketing spend so we get more quote requests to keep the work coming.

Anybody else do that?
 
Having lived here for almost 50 years, it's not necessary for me to use Google Maps to determine my route. I use it to look up the address but then I just determine my route on my own. As others have said, customer urgency or even my own preferences on which job I want more will determine who gets bid first. Repeat customers usually get priority over new clients, bigger jobs will get priority over small trim jobs, close to home always wins out over driving across town. Much of that isn't easily entered into a database.

And if you have 50 jobs to bid at once then you damn well better have a full time salesman or two. And if his only job is to sell then he can figure out his own route.
 
I do it pretty much like Brian does. I'll sort them into general regions then use Google Maps to figure out the most efficient route.
 
Okay, here's our rundown: our input (lead) sources are: 1). Home Advisor (by e-mail or direct dial) 2). Quote request from our web site 3). Direct call (likely from an online search or our web site). 4). Neighbor sees us doing work, also wants work done. Most everything is then fielded by phone -- find out customer availability for a meet-up. We do not like to do "blind" quotes without directly meeting & talking to the person. Simply leaving a quote in the door or mailbox doesn't give you that actual contact where you mesh and create a trust level and the ability to communicate your knowledge & expertise (not in a egotistical way or putting down the competitors -- we let the customer make that comparison).

Phone leads go into a lead notebook, basically like a telephone message pad. After contact, we arrange which leads to pursue when. Like others, we try to group them as much as possible on Fridays or Sunday afternoon and use Google Maps to pre-plan an approximate route or quote order. But if there is an immediacy needed, we will do them throughout the week after completing jobs (afternoon/early evening). Leads that become actual meetings with estimates go on the Estimate/Job Order 3-part NCR sheet (one copy for the customer, one for office file, one for the bookkeeper. Our estimates are pretty ironclad, so we don't usually have to re-write anything. The bookkeeper is the one who has to do the manual computer entry in QB, but that's what we pay her for (and she's fast)! Ongoing repeat customers are actually less common for us (esp. after removing all of someone's trees!), but we do have some and are gaining more, so that saves some of the office time, but not a whole lot.
 
For $39/ mo, Jobber does it all, and allows me to invoice, collect payments online, if I choose, send receipts, reminds me to follow up after X days, etc. Have you used it?

I am micro, and average about 6 miles, home to job. No dedicated salesman.

Lots of factors besides bids into driving. I might need to stop by Home Depot for something, etc. A computer routing for me wouldn't help.



There are a lot of big players already doing this. What is going to be better about your service?
 
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  • #21
Having lived here for almost 50 years, it's not necessary for me to use Google Maps to determine my route. I use it to look up the address but then I just determine my route on my own. As others have said, customer urgency or even my own preferences on which job I want more will determine who gets bid first. Repeat customers usually get priority over new clients, bigger jobs will get priority over small trim jobs, close to home always wins out over driving across town. Much of that isn't easily entered into a database.

And if you have 50 jobs to bid at once then you damn well better have a full time salesman or two. And if his only job is to sell then he can figure out his own route.


Makes sense, that's a lot of how we did things in the beginning. 50 quotes a week was pretty standard, more in the spring and fall. Storms we might get 150 calls in a weekend. Getting to all the ones we could, or just prioritizing them was kind of a nightmare, so we needed the routing to keep up, plus seeing the quote info right there let us prioritize a 3 large trees quote request over a 3 small stumps quote. We had as many as 4 guys running quotes evenings and weekends, but everyone wants to spend some time at home after a hard days work, so asking anyone to stay out til dark doing quotes wasn't gonna happen.

I grew up near Fort Wayne, but didn't know any of the streets in the additions, so we really needed Google maps.

Thanks you, I really appreciate your help understanding how ya'll do things.
 
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  • #22
Okay, here's our rundown: our input (lead) sources are: 1). Home Advisor (by e-mail or direct dial) 2). Quote request from our web site 3). Direct call (likely from an online search or our web site). 4). Neighbor sees us doing work, also wants work done. Most everything is then fielded by phone -- find out customer availability for a meet-up. We do not like to do "blind" quotes without directly meeting & talking to the person. Simply leaving a quote in the door or mailbox doesn't give you that actual contact where you mesh and create a trust level and the ability to communicate your knowledge & expertise (not in a egotistical way or putting down the competitors -- we let the customer make that comparison).

Phone leads go into a lead notebook, basically like a telephone message pad. After contact, we arrange which leads to pursue when. Like others, we try to group them as much as possible on Fridays or Sunday afternoon and use Google Maps to pre-plan an approximate route or quote order. But if there is an immediacy needed, we will do them throughout the week after completing jobs (afternoon/early evening). Leads that become actual meetings with estimates go on the Estimate/Job Order 3-part NCR sheet (one copy for the customer, one for office file, one for the bookkeeper. Our estimates are pretty ironclad, so we don't usually have to re-write anything. The bookkeeper is the one who has to do the manual computer entry in QB, but that's what we pay her for (and she's fast)! Ongoing repeat customers are actually less common for us (esp. after removing all of someone's trees!), but we do have some and are gaining more, so that saves some of the office time, but not a whole lot.

Makes sense. I really like that you guys meet the customer. I found that gives the highest closing rate, and makes your customers love you. Doing quotes most evenings we would just call them when we were headed to their house. If they weren't there AND we really wanted the job, we might stop back or call and schedule something. We found you couldn't really rely on anything the customer said most of the time. One lady said she had a huge dead tree leaning over her house. We got there an it was a 20' dead ash tree 8 inches at chest height growing towards her house.

With the software, we could easily knock out 8-10 quotes in two hours if most weren't home. When we were on paper we'd have a stack of quotes to do, sort them by zip code (not that that really helped), and put as many as we could into Google maps at a time.

So you save up your quotes for Fridays and Sundays? I always thought Friday evening was the worst time to find people home. Love Sunday evenings though. Everyone's got time to talk. :)
 
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  • #23
For $39/ mo, Jobber does it all, and allows me to invoice, collect payments online, if I choose, send receipts, reminds me to follow up after X days, etc. Have you used it?

I am micro, and average about 6 miles, home to job. No dedicated salesman.

Lots of factors besides bids into driving. I might need to stop by Home Depot for something, etc. A computer routing for me wouldn't help.

There are a lot of big players already doing this. What is going to be better about your service?
Well, I looked at jobber before we really got into building this thing. From what I remember they didn't do quote routing their invoices couldn't match our quote forms. We took deposits on larger jobs and I don't think they did that. Their scheduling sucked back then, I heard they integrated it with Google Calendar so it might be way better now.

The big thing I really didn't like about them was the price. We were already paying $600 a year for quickbooks plus payroll, and I'm a cheap bastard. They didn't really have anything that wasn't already in QB.
And I've never really like the QB online thing. I'm old school. I want to own it and not have to pay monthly for something.
If it's gonna be a monthly thing it better pay for itself this week.

I could tell you 50 things I LOVE about my software, but that's the thing. I don't know my software is better. I only know how it worked for me. I don't know how anyone else does things. I remember when I thought $5k - $7k was a good week. Then I found out with some tweaking of how we did things that $7k a week could be the low end and a good week was $13,000. Then I tried to keep it between $10k and $13k a week consistently, and started running a second crew.

I know I sold my business with no equipment, no gear, no saws, no employees, no contracts, no property. Just the website, the name, and the ability to use the software I used to run it. You'd spit your coffee out if you knew what I sold it for. :)

I don't know if you guys are doing $350k a year in trees, but I know there are a lot better tree guys than me out there. I know Rodney climbs circles around me all day long.

I know we work way too damn hard for what a lot of tree guys get paid. I don't care if you're in a bucket all day, it's WORK work. Then having to go do quotes after all that...sucks.

Or getting the call at 8:30 pm on Friday night while you're enjoying pizza with the kids and some guy calls cause a tree just fell on his house. So you go make it safe for him and come back the next morning to clean up. Saturday morning.... no sleeping in. :(

I just want to make ya'lls life easier. Help you get your stuff done faster and get home to your family. If I can help a bunch of tree guys do that, I'll be happy. I put my heart into building this software for my business and I hope it helps a lot of others.

I don't know what I sound like to ya'll but I'm not here to sell my software, I'm just passionate about helping guys get their shit done and get home to their families.

I can make it do whatever ya'll think would help you. If you could make your own, what would you want it to do?
 
With the software, we could easily knock out 8-10 quotes in two hours if most weren't home. When we were on paper we'd have a stack of quotes to do, sort them by zip code (not that that really helped), and put as many as we could into Google maps at a time.

So you save up your quotes for Fridays and Sundays? I always thought Friday evening was the worst time to find people home. Love Sunday evenings though. Everyone's got time to talk. :)
I don't know that we've ever done more than 10 quotes in a day. 8-10 would be a busy quote day, for sure. With taking the time to walk the job and interact with the customer, that's a minimum of 20-30 min on each location. If they are personable and are inclined to be educated about what is best for their trees, we are not afraid to spend an hour with them. That usually wins the job for sure -- developing their trust and increasing their knowledge, they will often choose us even if our quote is slightly higher than the other guy. We've found it's best not to be the cheapest, but to play it in the middle but let them determine that you are the best but still a good value (not the highest bid, either). We probably have a 50% conversion rate.

We work 4 days, typically -- M-T. Fridays are for estimates, maintenance, and stump grinding. Sometimes a small catch-up job or emergency work, but we try to make it a shorter day so we can be home with our families for the evening. We don't estimate into the evening, for sure.
 
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  • #25
I 100% agree with you. We always try to talk to the customer, and if you're there an hour, you probably got the job. We also try to be in the middle which if you've got any experience doing trees at all, should be about where you end up.

4 days would be a nice week. If you have a 50% conversion rate and work four days a week, that's not a lot a quotes to do unless you're running multiple crews.

I got to talk to a tree guy in Chicago that's been doing trees for literally 50 years. He says he's got 40 crews running 5 days a week. He sells at least 2 semi-truck loads of firewood a day to the big box stores. He's got 2 secretaries that handle the office work and I think he's still on paper. I dunno how he does it, but I'd love to find out. :)
 
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