Landscaping software for quotes, installs and maintenance rounds

Built for how landscapers and gardeners actually work#

• Quote the materials by the metre. A landscaping quote is mostly materials, and the client wants to see them. Put the turf in square metres, the underlay and mulch in cubic metres and the gravel in tonnes, each with its own quantity and price, then labour, machine hire and green waste on their own lines. GST is worked out and the quote goes out from the driveway.
• Maintenance rounds that book themselves. Set a client up as a recurring job: every week, every fortnight or every month, on their preferred day. Chippie keeps the coming visits on the schedule as the old ones are done. Pause a round over winter with a date it picks back up, and bill each visit or a fixed amount each month.
• Installs that run over several days. A new lawn and garden is not one visit. Book a day for the dig-out, a day for soil and turf, and a day for planting and mulch, all against the same job. When the weather turns, drag the visit on the calendar or the dispatch board and the crew sees the new day.
• The SWMS before the excavator starts. Tick the hazards that apply, such as excavation, machinery, cutting pavers and the dust that comes with it, underground services and the public walking past. The crew signs on their phones and the SWMS is kept as a signed PDF. The controls are still your call.
• Strata, body corporate and property managers. One client can have several sites, each with its own address, access notes and job history, so a property manager with ten gardens is one client and ten sites rather than ten clients.

How a landscaping job runs in Chippie#

A landscaping week is two businesses. One is installs: measured, materials-heavy, run over several days and at the mercy of the weather. The other is maintenance: the same gardens on the same days, every week or fortnight, where the work is easy and the admin of keeping track is not. The software has to handle both without you running two systems.

1. 1

   Measure and work out the materials

   Length, width and depth go into the soil, mulch, turf, gravel or paver calculator, which gives the quantity to order with an allowance for cuts and settling.

2. 2

   Itemise and send the quote

   Each material with its quantity and price, then labour, machine hire and waste removal. The client gets the quote while you are still on site, and when they accept it becomes a job without re-typing.

3. 3

   Book the install day by day

   Put a visit on the calendar for each day the job needs and assign the crew. When Tuesday is rained out, drag its visit to Thursday and the rest of the week stays put.

4. 4

   Sign the SWMS on site

   Tick the hazards for this job, have the crew sign on their phones, and finalise the signed PDF before digging starts.

5. 5

   Invoice, then roll into maintenance

   Raise the invoice from the job. If the client wants the garden kept up, set up a recurring job and the visits appear on the schedule from then on.

Job costing, which tells you what an install earned, is still being built; an early version can be switched on in Settings under Features. Otherwise Chippie shows what you quoted and what you invoiced, and the itemised quote is where you see whether the materials were priced right before you send it.

Work out the materials first#

Each calculator takes the measurements and gives the quantity to order, allowance included. The figures are free to use with or without an account.

• Turf calculator: Square metres of turf to order for a lawn, with cutting allowance.
• Soil calculator: Cubic metres of garden soil or turf underlay for a bed or lawn.
• Mulch calculator: Cubic metres of mulch for garden beds from the area and depth.
• Gravel calculator: Cubic metres and tonnes of gravel for a path, driveway or base.
• Paver calculator: How many pavers for an area, with cuts, and the bedding sand.

A new lawn and garden bed, line by line#

A 12 by 9 metre backyard returfed on 100 mm of underlay, with a 12 by 1.5 metre front bed mulched 75 mm deep, from a landscaper registered for GST. Quantities are from the calculators above. The prices are an example, not a price guide; your supplier and your day rate decide yours.