[Nature Scapes]

I am starting a landscaping company up. Just doing soft landscaping, mowing, pruning, trimming and such. Small one man company for now. Does anyone know of a good program I could use maybe from microsoft access or maybe a free program one of you have found useful? Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks!

Charlie

[AZTLANLC]

What would be your need for this program, billing only or also scheduling, routing.
Most people here started with Quickbooks which is a real nice tool, I don't think I would recommend any other free or different program than this to start with, there are also program like gopher (which I own and don't recommend to anyone anymore)
QBexpress

grounds keeper

Most of this programs have a free trial period.

[Bill Schwab]

We use Quick Books Premier Contractor edition, linked online through Sisco in our accountants office in a secure space. With the touch of a button, we have our bank account, ledger balance, work schedule, estimates and everything associated with work in our lap. And we don't pay ongoing support fees as with other tech companies.

I am a very hard sell on any types of technological "wonders" on a start up business for many reasons.

1) A white board for scheduling costs you $20.00 and requires an eraser and a set of markers about once a year at a cost of $9.00, tops. In contrast, QX, Clip, Gohper or whatever technolgical marvel you settle on will cost you $1,000.00 minimum, and require $300.00 worth of support membership a year for when it messes up and holds your business hostage until you fix the problem. Further, unless you are willing to stay in the office and hang on the line with supportloosing precious time every time you need them, you get double whammied by using after hours support, assuming it is even available.

2) 3x5 index cards in a spiral bound book can be made for the route at a cost of $15.00. Services rendered on that site can be listed on the card, and additional services can be added by writing a ticket for that work so you bill it accordingly. Index cards do not require $300.00 worth of support a year to function.

3) At the size of a start of business, there is no software made that will save you the time or money the software manufacturers claim it will. In contrast, software and technological wonder will cost you time/money and make you loose focus from the target, growing managing and operating your business in an optimum manor.

In my estimations, you should be able to easliy run and operate a route related business up to 10 routes and a 1mm gross without getting to stoopid with tech junk. UPS, FedEx, and every disposal company I know of operated extremely well over (many grossing hundreds of millions of dollars a year) that using the system I mentioned without too many glitches or they would not have grown to where they are.

Now, once you get to the point where you feel technological stuff would benefit you, you need to weigh out the time and money it takes you before anything, then weigh the benefits having a program such as that would do for your company.

Looking back if I had every dime I wasted on technological wonder in my hand I could pay closing costs on another investment property.

Having had all the ineffective "stuff" at one point, and now reentering the tech stuff again, I look at it with a whole different perspective. Now, it is in fact saving me the time the software sales people claim it does, and, I use a minikmal amount of it as fore mentioned.

You don't need to complicate the show by spreading glitter on a turd so to speak. Operate using K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stoopid) methods until you need to take the next step. So, in my opinon, the only software you need is the one used to watch yor money. From that you can use the ledger balance to manage your business and funnel growth where you need to. Quick Books Premier Contractor 2005 is a $550.00 program if you have never had QB before. If you upgrade, they will kick you $120.00 back upon purchase. It is a PIA to input you stuff, but once you do, there is none better. WE can run a report on any item(s) we need to see where we are at.

[Nebraska]

Qxpress has saved me countless office hours either scheduling or billing.....however starting out I began with simple spread sheets.

Looking back if I had the $1000 at the time I started I would opt for it. Yet like most I did not have the $1000 or even the accounts to justify it. The transition a few years down the road from simple spread sheets to Qxpress was not completely painless.

With our purchase we received a chunk of service minutes. I know I have technically used them all up but they seem to only count a fraction of what was actually used. The issues that we had were issues of Windows ME and Qxpress. The bridge between Qxpress and Quickbooks is virtually seamless.

With our good number of maintenance and lawn care accounts it's as simple as printing out route sheets in the morning and two to three clicks at the end of the day for completion. At the end of the month billing is two simple clicks. One click to invoice and another to send to Quickbooks. I do keep track of job times by entering these on a weekly basis after the fact.

[Nature Scapes]

TY for the info. A nice array of opinions on that one. I have played with free trials and I have come to find they are more trouble then there worth. Especially with the size of my company at start up. Thank you again for the fast posts!