I have spent my entire time in the landscape industry controlling costs or rather the person plugging the information into what ever system is used by the company to track and then control costs. Interestingly Townsend and Turner term this project controls and some multinationals have Project Management Office (PMO) and most landscaping businesses have “the office’s” job.
There was a lot of paper shuffling and as with all manual systems mistakes can happen, which can lead to cost over runs. With one team you can work with a set of few suppliers and pay monthly knowing those costs related to that month’s project, simple.
It is when you move from one to more teams that tracking costs becomes a requirement. The main tool for this is the raising of Purchase Orders (PO’s) which is the cost raised against a set project. Such as KNGGP/5614 – Project followed by a unique number. It can also be called a customer relationship management (CRM) system.
I have worked on a spreadsheet system CRM. Which is what is called a two-match system – You match the invoice when received to the PO raised. I did this for a residential landscaping company and it also involved a chat with the operations manager to confirm what was invoiced was received.
I have also worked for many years on a triple-match system – you match the PO with the delivery notes know as Goods Receipt Notification (GRN) which confirms what is received so when the accounts department get the invoice and load it up on to the systems it is matched and the invoice is paid. This involved trips to site to collect delivery notes which was fine pre covid and then suppliers stopped issuing delivery notes and often relied on you going to their portal to download the delivery notes. Then it became the sit down with the project manager confirming on a weekly delivery schedule what had been delivered and what was expected to track costs, yet another spreadsheet. This system worked but you had to do it daily to keep on top of it as projects can move really quickly and things are forgotten.
What if you had an app on your phone where you could raise the PO and then mark the deliveries as they came in? You could take photos of the delivery and delivery notes and mark them as delivered. This would just leave “the office” to upload the invoices when they arrive to match and pay.
This is what “live costs “offers. There are many other apps out there but I think for residential landscapers just starting out this is an amazing affordable option and reduces the need for a project administrator. A project administrator able to work unsupervised with the ability to problem solve should be £28k a year or £2333pm. Depending on the number of features “live Costs” starts at £150 - £500 per month. You will still need “the office” but maybe not so many if you used “live costs” with the project manager raising the PO and the site team recording the deliveries.
For those who are thinking about moving from one team to two please have a look at “live costs”. There are many other CRM on the market some are brilliant for really large teams, and some are better for commercial teams. This comes across as a promotional piece but it isn’t it is just that I think it does a really good job, in fact it is really doing me out of a job as project administrating is what I did before becoming a virtual assistant.
If you would like to know more then please contact:
www.livecosts.com ¦ david.taaffe@livecosts.com ¦ +353 1 912 5220 ¦ +44 20 8157 9910
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