Whether you are on iOS or Android most, if not all Lawn Care Business and Landscape professionals these days will have a smartphone in their pocket or even a tablet that they never leave home without. These devices are becoming essential tools for business and lawn care and landscaping is no exception. Indeed, there is an app for practically everything you can think of these days. We reached out to some lawn care and landscaping business owners to ask what Lawn Care Business App they couldn't be without when going about their daily rounds. Below you will find our favourite 14 apps that we uncovered, assuming you already have the basics covered with apps such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote etc.
1. LAWN CARE PRO - INVOICING & MORE
PUBLISHER: JZ MOBILE LLC
Price: $7.99 USD with In App purchases.
One time price, no monthly or annual fees
Specifically designed for landscaping and lawn care professionals, this lawn care business app provides complete invoicing, financial and contact management. It maintains a client focused schedule of your appointments. Integrated with your client contact info you can quickly create invoices and track your important accounts.
Powerful invoicing function is included to create, email and print all types of sales and service invoices. Invoice entry you can visualize the completed invoice as you go. The invoice entry view all of your transactions can be tailored to the unique needs of your business. There is extensive profit & loss analysis.
This comprehensive lawn care business app provides complete financial information including inventory control and Profit & Loss Info. All information is maintained on your device and there is no need for connectivity or outside servers as is common with many of the more sophisticated business apps. Additional features to those listed below cost extra.
Features
- Contact Management - Store notes, images and track other communications with your clients and have the in app ability to call, text, email or map without leaving your app.
- Labor, Parts & Supplies are maintained in the app with detailed multi-line descriptions, costs, price and units of measure & on hand quantities.
- Invoices are automatically created from your Estimates and support multiple payment methods. Track the status of your invoices.
- Estimates - In App Purchase required. Create detailed and professional looking estimates at the client site that may be immediately emailed or printed. Track the status of each Estimate.
- Signature Capture of approved Estimates with an update of Status. Invoices and Estimates may be copied for editing and reuse with other clients.
- Financial Information - Is instantly available for any client, job or timeframe with just a few taps.
- Help and Support - Context sensitive help shows by topic as well as how to movies. Email, text and phone support provides to help with any questions or issues.
- International Currency Dates & Dynamic Type (the ability of the app to change font sizes) are all included.
2. Planimeter - Measure Land Area & Distance
PUBLISHER: COre Signals
Price: $7.99 USD
Planimeter measures distances and land areas on maps.
This app allows you to measure all your lawn care business projects - lawns, garden beds, bushes, paving, or anything else visible on the satellite map. This is an essential app for your lawn business because it allows you to quickly measure lot sizes and buildings. With this lawn care business app you can easily measure landscaping, paving, asphalt, flat roofs or anything else that you might need to in preparing a lawn care quote. Although this is a paid app, the cost is extremely low compared to the value that this can add to your business.
Having proper measurements of your customers gardens will also add a professional touch to your lawn care estimates whilst also enabling you to make a more accurate assessment when preparing it.
Some of the functions include the ability to measure fields, circular regions, paths and perimeters. You can also add markers to pinpoint locations.
“Planimeter is the essential distance mapping app.” — AppAdvice.com, Distance Mapping AppGuide
3. The Weather Channel
PUBLISHER: The Weather Channel Interactive
Price: Free
If you are an owner of a Lawn Care Business you will fully appreciate the value of accurate weather forecasts. The Weather Channel App is your best option for accurate forecasts and timely local weather alerts. Having this app on your smartphone or tablet will allow you to make confident lawn care business decisions this fall, whether you are planning for the day, the entire week or the next 15 days! Best of all, this app is completely free!
KNOW THE WEATHER ANYWHERE, RIGHT NOW
4. Gasbuddy
PUBLISHER:GasBuddy Organization Inc
Price: FREE
GasBuddy Organization Inc Web Site GasBuddy Support
This app will add some value to your lawn care business as it allows you to find the best fuel prices so that you can minimise your fuel expenses. Fuel costs is a major expense for lawn care companies and its amazing how much you can save in a year by informed choices about where to refuel.
GasBuddy is the world’s largest community-based fuel app, with over 60 million downloads worldwide. The community provides information on fuel prices so that you can find the cheapest fuel, no matter the type near you.
FEATURES
- Find the cheapest fuel—no matter the type—near you
- Find petrol stations by distance or price
- Report fuel prices to help others find cheap fuel
- Earn points and achievements for reporting fuel prices
- Enter to win $100 in free fuel—every day!
- Apple Watch support
- Smart sorting: Combine lowest and closest fuel prices into the same search
- Filter stations by amenities and brands
The app allows you to earn achievements by completing daily, weekly and monthly challenges. With these achievements you build up points so that you can enter the daily $100 prize draw. 1,000 points equals 1 entry. You can build up points by rating stations and reporting and confirming fuel prices.
5. Leafsnap
PUBLISHER: Columbia University, University of Maryland, and Smithsonian Institution
Price: Free
Leafsnap is a series of electronic field guides being developed by researchers from Columbia University, the University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institution. The free mobile apps uses visual recognition software to help identify tree species from photographs of their leaves. It displays beautiful high-resolution images of leaves, flowers, fruits, petioles, seeds and bark.
The original Leafsnap currently includes trees found in the Northeastern United States and Canada, and will soon grow to include the trees of the entire continental United States.
The Leafsnap UK app includes trees from the United Kingdom with species information and imagery provided by the Natural History Museum in London. More information can be found on the Natural History Museum website.
This can be an invaluable app for landscapers and lawn care pros as it means that you can identify any plant or tree that you come across. Advice is provided on how to care for and the species, such as the ideal habitat conditions for growth. You then know the best type of soil and how it needs to be treated so that the plants and trees will flourish. It can also help you to detect the cause of any problems with your customers plants.
6. Expensify
PUBLISHER: Expensify Inc.
Price: Free
This tool will make expense report management and receipt tracking for your lawn care business a breeze. All you need to do is snap a photo of your receipt using the app's SmartScan and Expensify takes care of the rest! The app also features mileage and time tracking amd cam automatically import credit card transactions. It also integrates with other accounting software such as QuickBooks, Xero, Netsuite, Intacct, Oracle, Sage, etc.
“Expensify is like a virtual accountant” — Wall Street Journal
7. Slack
PUBLISHER: Slack Technologies Inc.
Price: Basic version Free
Slack is an app available on any device that will help your employees communicate and collaborate. You can communicate with your employees individually or divided into groups, such as Finance, Crew 1, Crew 2, etc. In addition, you can share and edit files and photos through this app, which reduces the clutter in your email inbox and text messages. Slack will make your Lawn Care Business more productive by making communication and collaboration simpler and more pleasant.
8. Square
PUBLISHER: Slack Technologies Inc.
Price: Basic version Free
Square Point of Sale is a free point-of-sale app that gives you everything you need to run and grow your lawn care business. Accept debit and credit cards with a Square Reader for magstripe, and accept EMV chip cards and Apple Pay with the Square Reader for contactless and chip. Funds are deposited fast—see money in your bank account in one to two business days.
With Square you can also keep track of sales and inventory in real time, manage items and employees, and view analytics about your business. There are no long-term contracts or surprise fees. Square does however take a 2.75% fee per transaction. The app can also send invoices and allows you to setup weekly or monthly recurring invoices and let your customers pay online. The invoices are free but attract a slightly higher cost of 2.9% +30c per invoice paid online.
9. ScanBizCards
PUBLISHER: ScanBiz Mobile SOlutions L.P.
https://www.circleback.com/scanbizcards
Price: Lite version Free with In App Purchases
This is a versatile business card reader, which allows you to scan business cards from your lawn care clients on your phone or other mobile device and export your cards into multiple CRM platforms. Additional features allow you to add notes to each contact and send contacts to colleagues. WebSync also backs up every card in the cloud and allows you to access these from any browser.
10. Harvest Landscape Calculator
PUBLISHER: Harvest Power
http://www.harvestpower.com/products/landscape-calculator/
Price: Free
The number one question we hear is, "How much do I need?" The Harvest Landscape Calculator app answers this question with ease. Simply enter the depth on the handy slider rule and add in the area and poof! It gives you guidelines on how much bagged or bulk soil, mulch, or landscaping products that you will need.
In addition this app shows handy fill conversions of soil into pots and hanging baskets. It also shares tips on how to apply compost to flower beds, gardens, lawns, turf surfaces, trees and shrubs, and overall topsoil maintenance. Finally, more than 150 garden-inspired quotes stir the budding soul in any season.
11. Landscapers Companion
PUBLISHER: Stevenson Software, LLC
https://www.landscaperscompanion.com/
Price: $9.99
Similar to Leafsnap, this app is specifically for lawn care and landscape professionals. It is a reference guide to all plants including trees, shrubs, annuals, and perennials. Landscapers Companion contains information on over 26,000 plants and 21,000 pictures so you and your lawn care employees can quickly determine what type of plant species they are dealing with.
12. ID Weeds
PUBLISHER: University of Missouri Extension
Price: Free
ID Weeds allows you to search for weeds by their common or latin name, view a list of weeds, or identify weeds based upon a number of different characteristics. Details about each weed are presented, along with photograph(s) of the weed specified.
13. Bugs and insects
PUBLISHER: Darren Gates
Price: $0.99
ID Weeds allows you to search for weeds by their common or latin name, view a list of weeds, or identify weeds based upon a number of different characteristics. Details about each weed are presented, along with photograph(s) of the weed specified.
14. iScape
PUBLISHER: Home Revivals LLC
Price: $9.99
Iscape is a valuable landscaping design tool. This user-friendly app allows you to simulate a garden using virtual tools. Its drag and drop feature allows you to easily come up with a garden layout for your customers and is a great way to plan and agree the design with them.
The app has a camera function that allows you to take photos and set them as the background of the layout. It also features a texture tool that lets you manipulate the ground cover design with options ranging from grass, mulch, pavers, stones, etc.
Conclusion
So what are you waiting for? None of these apps are going to break the bank, a lot of them are free but if not most have a lite or trial version that you can use first. Get them installed on all of your lawn care business devices and improve your efficiency and productivity today! Which of these landscaping and lawn care business apps is your favourite? If I had to choose one it would be Lawn Care Pro. I'd love to hear your thoughts or suggestions!