Getting on track

Photo courtesy of Groff Landscape Design

Robert Groff was proud of the high-end residential landscapes that his company was completing. Groff Landscape Design was doing some interesting work. “We were doing cool projects and building a profit,” he says. “But we were losing money some years or breaking even.”

The numbers just weren’t adding up like Groff expected. “I was a typical contractor that tried to do everything in the beginning,” he says. Job costing and labor hour projections were sometimes off base. But that changed when they bought new software.

“We can now estimate based off of a budget, which sounds elementary, but the software simplifies (the process) for you,” Groff says.

Groff creates the annual budget, and all costs (direct, indirect) are logged into the system. He also enters into a database the cost for various materials, and there is a “portfolio” part of the program that allows him to create projects.

For example, the company has a “patio package” set up. “Once you enter the square footage, man-hours, pavers, gravel and other materials, you click and create an estimate,” Groff says.

Because the company’s budget is in the system, the software automatically adds the appropriate percentage of overhead recovery for labor, materials, equipment, etc. “That way, you are recovering all of your costs in a very strategic way,” Groff says.

The key is to input accurate information. Groff refers to previous profit-and-loss statements to help identify average costs.

As for labor hours, Groff uses a complementary tool that allows his team to use their mobile phones to clock in and out of entire jobs, and components of every job. Because the team starts their days in the field versus office, this tool is especially helpful, Groff says.

“When they get to the jobsite, they can log in ... and note, ‘It’s 7 a.m. and we started installing the patio.’ And they can record, ‘It’s 11 a.m. and we are planting.’”

Not only does tracking hours motivate the crew – they can see their progress on jobs – but it also allows Groff to make real-time decisions and prevent leaching profit due to inaccurate labor hour estimates.

“If we see that we are over our hours, we’ll know right away and can find out how it happened and decide what to fix in the field so we hit our goals,” Groff says.