What Programs do you use ?

[JVS]

I do not know if this topic has been brought up. But I would be interested in knowing what Lawn/Landscaping/Chemical/Designing ect.. programs are being used and get a discussion on each program to see what we as user rate best then "listening to what the makers of these programs tell us".
We have been using Clip Pro since 1996 and I find the scheduling for all types of jobs excellent. It links with Quickbooks well, but we do not use Quickbooks. I have seen many many programs so I would really like to read your thoughts.

Joe

[tpirobert]

I use Quickbooks and ye olde fashioned Franklin day planner. If I expand chemical apps I'll have to get software for that soon. Wordperfect or MS Word generates letters, flyers, brochures etc..It would take a really good lawn/landscape program to convience me to invest the $$ and time in it.

[TLS]

I only have 40 or so accounts for mowing and 12 more for snowplowing, so CLIP and other mowing only programs cost too much for me to use. I have no problem scheduling out of my At-a-Glance Monthly Planners. Each month, take info out of Planner and into "My Advanced Invoices" program ($29.95)and print the invoices, fold, stuff and stamp and wait for checks. End of each quarter, print state sales tax report. End of year print year to date. I probably do more typing in of dates and dollar amount, but it sure beats the $300-600+ programs that are engineered for Chemlawns and 300+ accounts with 4 crews etc. etc.. Im happy keeping it simple.

[Greenkeepers]

Quickbooks Pro, work and excel here for accounting and billing. They work very well for us and we plan on continuing to use them.

[mowerman90]

I've tried almost all of the big lawn service programs (clip, lawn monkey) and most of the accounting programs including Clip and Quicken and Quickbooks Pro. If you're a small business (less than 100) accounts) you don't need all that clip has to offer. I use Medlin Sharware Accounts Recievable for $35. Its fast, simple, can be customized for any type of business, you can use plain paper for statements, invoices or pre-printed from Nebs, or you can e-mail statements from witin the program to your clients. Plus you can download it from http://www.medlin.com and try it for free first. I've been using it for the last 5 - 6 years and haven't found anything I'd like more. For contracts, proposals, flyers, leaflets, Xmas Cards etc. I use Office 2000

[JVS]

mowerman90 what did you like or dislike about Clip or Lawn monkey ? I appreciate your input. Office 2000 is that expensive?

[lawn and stump]

I have been using clip classic and love it
I think they have a clip lite thats only a few hundred bucks
I used to hate writing out bills and when the state had use start charging sales tax that became impossible to do by hand.I have been a clip user since 1992 and have 135 active
accts and 55 snowplow accts.What I learned was to job cost it is the neatist thing to print out all your mowing jobs for the year with your acutal dollars per hr you made.
This list is then sorted showing you winners and losing jobs
now take your losers and raise there prices and make them winners.

[greenlawncare]

Lawn Monkey for me. Did my transfer from LM 2000 to LM 2001 last night - major improvments in detail. I'm very happy with mine. But like everyone said, look at what's best for you. I think LM, Clip and QuickBooks are all good programs, just pick the one more appropriate to you. Good luck.

[bob]

I use Quick Books and Perfect Works. If you do a search, you'll find more on this subject.

[landscaper3]

Well we got our demo of Clip and Groundskeeper. I am very disapointed in both, They look like the forms that came on our Navigator section programs. They didnt seem to do anything that our computer already does? We are going to try Quick books to help maintain up to 120 accounts. I see no advantages in these other programs they just look cheasy to me! Mabey you that have these programs have better software but the demos we got are just to cheasy looking. Sorry for this but like I said may be our demo copy. If I could see some of the forms they provide I may change my mind.

[bridges]

Well,

I also tried other programs, first was quickbooks. Did not like the end of the month billing. That took for ever. Then looked into clip, but did not go over well. You are limited with what you can do. Tech support was not free. Now i use lm2001. Just finished my transfer from lm2000. Lawnmonkey 2001 is a great program. Tech support is free. Last night at 10:00 i wasn't sure how the prepayment plan worked and they replyed back by 10:30. I don't think they leave work.

Tony

[landscaper3]

I wasnt saying bad things about the programs and we made up our own from the home computer that works and didnt see any advanteges the others offered. They were demos but didnt let me do much and for those prices I want to see them work in our business and the demos didnt allow any acces to try it.

[mowerman90]

JVS,

Clip and Lawn Monkey are great programs, but for me they're just to big and overly complicated. I'm a 1 man operation with 80 accounts so I don't need scheduling cause I've got my schedule memorized. MS Office is expensive but it's extreamly powerful and you can do almost anything with it. It's also universially accepted.

[JVS]

I have found Clip Pro schedules job great. What I like about it is for instance if you need a "copy of a bill for a client say from 5 months ago (go figure) you can print an exact copy. What I do not like about it is the Tech support is NOT FREE and the updates usually cause more problems =more tech support=more $$$$.

I would like to know some pros and cons any clip or LM user have experienced

Joe

[Strongmd]

Clip is fantastic. Been using it for three years. Been to their conference all 3 years as well. It can cost a bit, and can take a while to get real good on it. I think I used tech support once?? And you get an hour a year free or something like that. The job costing is great, but even if you don't use it for that, it's just a great way to schedule, route and bill all your customers. One to two thousand $$ may sound like a lot up front, but if you use it for the life of your business, it's peanuts. $50-$200/yr? The time it will save you the first year alone should be worth the cost of the software.

[JVS]

I haven't been to any Clip shows but, Matt if you have time you you email me and explain how the job costing work and how its helpful. Thanks in advance. I truely like the power of routing

Joe S.
JVS Landscaping, Inc.
Jvslandscape@aol.com

[Strongmd]

To be totally honest, I don't utilize the job costing that much yet. What you would do is record your times at every job/mow that you do. At the end of the year,(or any other time) you can tell with just a glance exactly how long you were at any given property. So, for example, when I'm sending out proposals for next year's maintenance, I can easily print a chart of all of my accounts like this

Name $/mow Avg time # of times

It makes it real easy to price accounts for profit. Let's say you have a residential customer that you charge $45 per mow, and your goal rate is $45/man hour, at a glance, you can tell if you're making money. If the avg time for the year was 1.2 manhours, then you may want to raise the price. OR, maybe it only took .75 hours on average, however you only mowed 18 times when some of your other customers were mowed 25, you may still want to raise their price because they're sort of wasting a slot in your route, you may want to replace them with a 25 visit customer. Sorry this is so long, it's only the tip of the iceberg w/clip. I know nothing about other landscape softwares, they may be very similar, I'm happy with what I have. Feel free to ask me other questions about Clip.

[cos]

I have demoed clip and found it very complicated. I am going to demo lawn monkey this spring. I feel that lawnmonkey might be the one for me.

When I was demoing clip, I have found that their support costs $. For every so many customers that you have you have to upgrade and that cost $. I e-mailed lawnmonkey with a question about their product and they got back to me very promptly. The Lawn Monkey program looks like it is very easy to use and the supprt don't cost $. They have a quickbooks link for your accounting aspect of business.

Mowerman,

Wouldn't you like to find out where your money is being spent and where you are making money and where you are not?

[lawn and stump]

I have been to 8 clip conferences and the software is only
part of the package. these conferences helped me turn my
business into a fine tuned money machine. the money I spent
for Clip was chump change. We have a clip forum and get lots of great ideas.I know Matt Strong is on it.
I use the job costing and it is great my crews get a nicely printed route sheet in the morning and they write the start time and the stop time on that sheet. at the end of the day i punch in the numbers it takes about 5 mins to record 30 lawn jobs and print the next days route sheets the neatist thing is seeing the man hr rate it calculates as you do this. you know instantly if you hit your target on each job each day
When I bought clip I thought it was just a billing program
I was so wrong its a great system.
If you just want to bill use quickbooks

[Strongmd]

Hi Phil, hope all is well.
One other thing about clip, email support is free. I've emailed a question to clip, and had the owner email me back w/in minutes. Also, if there is a special feature you think is necessary in the software, they are willing to program it into the software if it makes sense. And the Clip forum and Clip conference are just the icing on the cake. Both are invaluable learning tools.

[greenlawncare]

It's nice to see that we all like the software we use. Very key! QuickBooks users love QB, Clip users love Clip, and LM users love LM. I just popped in my old Clip demo again for fun to have a look through it (as much as I'm loyal I'm always open to whats best for me ;) ). Man, I wouldn't trade my LM in for the world! And I bet the Clip users grabbed a copy of LM and thought the same thing about their Clip. Such an imporantant part of our businesses, at least that's one less thing that we have to worry about!

Have a good weekend all.

[dhicks]

I use Microsoft Office 2000 and it works great.

[Strongmd]

Good point greenlawncare, I agree totally. To each his own. However, there's no way Lawn Gorilla is nearly as good as CLIP! hehe1

I'm totally kidding, I've never even demoed LM and I'm sure it's a great piece of software. I must say though, the clip conference and online forum are important pieces of the whole clip package.

Have a good weekend all.