By Thong Yeei Lork
Landscaping businesses need to handle many crew members being sent to different sites at a time. This can get quite chaotic when it comes to a busy landscaping business, technology plays and important role in managing every aspect of your company. From inspiration hunting, designing, to time and productivity tracking. We wrapped up our handpicked apps to steer your business effectively.
1. Houzz
Rating: 4.5/5 on Capterra
Overview:
Running out of creative ideas? Houzz has got you covered! Known for its largest collection of interior designs and decorating ideas, Houzz has plenty of outdoors remodelling ideas to spice up your blueprint!
Rather than shifting through endless magazines, Houzz’s visual search technology identifies the objects in the photo and returns a list of relevant pictures that you love. Simply click on the images you like and add them to your ideabook.
Pros:
- Get an upgrade to HouzzPro and receive all in one business solution for your small business
- Large database of images
- Shop products
Cons:
- Visually driven – does not benefit landscapers with less appealing end projects
- Free plan only has basic tools
Pricing:
- Basic: Basic Tools – Free
- Starter: Better Business Management – $55/month
- Essential: Added Marketing Tool – $75/month
- Ultimate: Add Leads Programme – $199-$999+/month
2. Jibble
Rating: 4.8/5 on Capterra
Overview:
Onsite supervision isn’t always possible when you have several ongoing projects. With Jibble, employers can remotely track and monitor field activity, and real time attendance allows you to understand when exactly staff are working.
Key features include facial recognition and live GPS attendance to verify the attendance data. Automated timesheets and powerful reports streamlines the entire business with ease.
Pros:
- Responsive support team
- Mobile app does not require internet connection
- Free plan includes GPS and Facial Recognition
Cons:
- Exporting timesheets requires a paid plan
- No leave tracking
Pricing:
- Free
- Premium: Attendance with user policies, time approvals, and multiple user levels – $2 per user/month
- Ultimate: For teams that need to track projects and clients, or desktop teams that track productivity -$4 per user/month
3. IScape
Rating: 4.6/5 on Apple
Overview:
iScape uses the built-in camera of your iPhone or iPad to capture a garden environment, and uses augmented reality to overlay your landscape design plans or plants on top in real-time. This way, clients are able to envision how their designs will look like in real life before work is commenced.
Pros:
- Provides extensive information on plants including plant names, height width, climate information, whether to locate plantation under shade or sun to ensure full blooming
- The ability to save and share finished blueprint
- Easy to use
Cons:
- Not compatible with Android
- Free version has fewer plant overlays.
- Upgrades are required to add your own image to the database
Pricing:
- Free
- iScape Pro: $29.99/month
- Enterprise edition of iScape is available to cater for the whole team
4. Planimeter
Rating: 4.7/5 Apple, 4.2/5 Android
Overview:
Planimeter measures all kinds of plains that are called for. It measures distance, perimeter, bearing, angle and GPS coordinates on Google Maps. Not only can you quickly measure lawns, lot sizes, buildings, and pavings from a satellite map, you can also measure a specific area by walking or driving around it.
Pros:
- Suggest automatic land measurements in metric and imperial units
- Comes with easy-to-use pins for plotting land areas and distances
- Ability to measure all types of land mass, bodies of water, large gardens, and many more
- Improves zooming with their magnifying feature
Cons:
- Does not have built in printer export.
- No free trial
Pricing
- IOS: $7.99
- Android: $3.99
5. Trello
Rating: 4.5/5 Capterra
Overview:
Trello is an excellent collaboration tool that organizes projects into boards. From scheduling jobs and managing crews to invoicing customers and collecting payments, Trello can do it all! The software shows an overview of the projects you’re working on, and what’s in progress. Beyond the simple productivity tool, Trello is also a cloud based application – you can access the whiteboard anywhere from any device.
Pros:
- Photos, attachments from other data sources, documents, and commentary sections are once and for all pulled into the interface.
- Easy to tag another team member to a project board
- Updates are embedded seamlessly without disrupting work flow
- Strong notification system – every changes made are notified
Cons:
- Trello relies on the availability of data for it to function — No internet means no Trello.
- The comments feature are not editable
- There is only 10MB storage for the free version. However, this can be upgraded to 250 MB per upload if the user also upgrades his subscription to Gold.
Pricing:
- Free
- Trello Gold: $5 per user/month or get 12 months of free Trello Gold when you share with your friends.
- Business Class: For teams that need to track multiple projects and visualize work in a variety of ways. Best for teams up to 100 – $10 per user/month
- Enterprise: For companies that need to connect work across teams and enhance org-wide controls, security, and support. Ideal for teams 100+ – Click here to Learn more !
Cover image sourced from Levi Morsy on Unsplash
Jibble is a free time and attendance tracking software with 10,000s of users around the globe. Check it out here!
