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Philosophy

Groundskeeper is optimized for operational efficiency. This means that, once you're set up, Groundskeeper can seamlessly take care of your Estimates, Scheduling and Invoicing.

The way Groundskeeper gains the operational efficiency, is by leveraging business details that need to be captured up front.

Broadly speaking, the setup work comes in 2 categories:

  • Setting up your business workflow
  • Setting up the products and services your business offers (Blueprints)

This is where Groundskeeper shines compared to other systems. With some upfront energy, you can create a system that runs with minimal input, so you can focus on your operations and avoid human administrative errors.

Business Setup​

The business set up is straight forward, and the onboarding wizard will guide you through the process when you sign up.

Besides the static banking and contact details, you'll also capture settings for your workflow, and some finance targets. The gross profit and net profit targets are important to get right, since they are used for every estimate and invoice to give you insight into your profitability.

Blueprints​

Blueprints are the engine that makes Groundskeeper efficient. It's worth taking your time to set up blueprints correctly. Don't worry, you will make that time back in spades.

If you're just getting started in your business, expect to tweak your blueprints over time. Since blueprints set the totals for your estimates and invoices, you'll get regular feedback on how well they match your expectations. If you constantly find that your jobs are outside your target profit margins, consider adjusting your blueprint.

Once a blueprint is set, you'll rarely need to revisit it. This is because blueprints are bound to physical properties, like time and materials. Blueprints are impervious to the dimensions of your customer properties, and to the cost of your labor.

The only factor that could require a blueprint change is changes in the time it takes for you to deliver that blueprint. If your team becomes more or less efficient over time, your Blueprint may need to be adjusted.

Tuning Properties​

Property metrics, like lawn area, property area etc, rarely change. Metrics can be captured during new property onboarding, and don't ever need to be touched again.

As you know, not all properties with the same physical dimensions are the same. For example, a property on a hill might be more time consuming to mow than a level property. To account for this, you can tweak the property difficulty levels for each blueprint. This allows you the flexibility to align the service cost of a property to the actual service cost, without having to change your blueprint.

Summary​

Here are the key points to remember:

  • Set up your blueprints so they are accurate
  • Ensure property metrics are correctly set during property onboarding.
  • If needed, tweak property difficulty for a Blueprint. Don't change a blueprint to fit one specific property

When done right, you will have a system that can do all the work to accurately create estimates, calculate job durations, and generate invoices without your input. All you'll need to do is review the work, which you'd want to do anyway to keep your finger on the pulse of your business.