CONTROLQORE FOR LANDSCAPING CONTRACTORS.
Generic accounting software can't price a crew day, separate travel and yard time from production hours, or tell you what the planting phase cost against what you bid it at. ControlQore can.
ControlQore for landscaping contractors uses cost codes by install phase, meaning mobilization, fine grading and topsoil, hardscape, planting, sod and seeding, mulch and bed finish, punch list, and warranty replacement, to track cost per crew day against the rate the bid carried for that phase. Travel between the yard and the site, loading, and refueling post to their own codes, so total crew time gets priced instead of absorbed. Extras a superintendent asks for are logged and priced before the crew does the work. The WIP schedule is produced monthly from cost-to-cost percentage complete.
Install work in this trade carries 30 to 45 percent gross margins, and landscaping contractors at $1M to $5M still net 5 percent before taxes, tied for the thinnest floor of the 48 trades SPM benchmarks, against a CFOS target of 10 percent. Gross margin that strong finishing at a net that thin is a measurement problem before it's a pricing problem. The crew day is where it hides. Drive time, loading, and refueling are paid hours with no billable revenue behind them, and most pricing in this trade is built around time at the property rather than total crew time in the field. Josh calls it the windshield tax, and a crew-day P&L is what turns it into a number you can bid.
THE NUMBERS GENERIC SOFTWARE MISSES.
WHAT IT IS.
ControlQore is a job costing and WIP platform for contractors that tracks cost by job and cost code, so a landscape construction subcontractor can read cost per crew day by install phase while the crew is still on the site.
WHERE IT GOES WRONG.
Total Labor by Job, No Cost Per Crew Day
QuickBooks job tracking reports total labor cost for the job. It can't report what a crew day cost on the hardscape phase against what the bid carried for that phase, which is the number a landscape construction sub prices the next job from. A crew is either producing, driving, loading, or refueling, and all four post to the same labor total. When the total is the only number available, the crew day rate in the next bid is last year's rate plus a feeling about how the season went.
The Windshield Tax Coded as Production
Drive time, loading, and refueling are paid crew hours with no billable revenue attached to them, and the pricing in this trade is usually built around service time at the property instead of total crew time in the field. The trade's own operations math puts a spread-out day at six or more person-hours of paid time with nothing billable behind it. Coded into production labor, that time makes the productive rate read worse than it's and makes the travel exposure read as nothing at all, so neither number can be priced into the next bid.
Extras Absorbed Because the Crew Was Already There
Informal additions gradually become the expectation. A superintendent asks for a bed extended, a few trees moved, or a section regraded while the crew is on the site, and the foreman does it because the relationship is worth more to him than the argument. None of it reaches a change order. By the next job it's in the base scope, unpriced, and the estimator has no record that it was ever an extra.
Plant Material Warranty With Nowhere to Post
Plant material carries warranty exposure that outlives the job. Replacements during the establishment period get bought weeks or months after the crew left, and with no open cost code on a closed job they post to a general expense line and sit inside overhead. The job reads profitable, the overhead rate creeps, and the material and the supplier that keep failing never get identified, because nothing is counting replacement cost by job.
WHAT WE BUILD.
SPM builds ControlQore cost codes for landscape construction clients by install phase: mobilization, fine grading and topsoil, hardscape, planting, sod and seeding, mulch and bed finish, punch list, and warranty replacement. Labor, material, and equipment post to the phase that consumed them. Cost per crew day is calculated from those codes weekly and compared to the rate the bid carried for that phase. Variance over 10 percent triggers a review while the crew is still on the job.
The windshield tax gets a cost code. Drive time between the yard and the site, loading and unloading, and fuel stops post separately from production hours, so a crew day reads as two numbers instead of one: what the work cost, and what getting to the work cost. Over a season the second number is what total crew time pricing gets built from. That's the difference between a bid that covers the crew day and a bid that covers the hours at the property.
ControlQore carries a change order code on every job, and SPM coaches the field process that feeds it. The request gets logged the day the superintendent makes it, priced from the phase rate the job already proved, and either approved or declined in writing. Nothing gets built on a verbal. Extras documented and priced or declined is the same discipline sitework contractors run with their directive logs, and it's what keeps a season of small favors from becoming next year's base scope.
Replacement cost stays coded to the original job rather than dropping into a general expense line after closeout. That keeps the job's margin honest for a full establishment period, and it produces the record that settles a supplier conversation: which material, from which supplier, on which job, at what replacement cost. Once that number exists, it belongs in the next bid as a priced allowance and not in overhead as a surprise.
The WIP schedule for landscape construction clients is produced monthly from cost-to-cost percentage complete by job. Underbilled positions, meaning work performed but not yet billed, are visible immediately and trigger a corrected pay app, which is worth attention in a trade whose commercial customers pay on net 30 to net 60 terms. Overbilled positions flag jobs where billing has outrun production, which is easy to do on work that gets weather-delayed in the middle. You see both before either one becomes a problem.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SOFTWARE INVOICE.
Three tiers, priced by your trailing twelve month revenue. ControlQore comes with Strategic, and it never appears as its own line item on an SPM invoice. Which tier you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk.
Pricing
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee |
|---|---|
| Up to $1M | $1,900 to $2,900 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $3,900 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $5,700 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $7,100 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $8,500 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $11,000 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $13,500 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually |
Range reflects the three tiers below. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No payroll. No hidden line items.
You stop guessing.
You get the CFO work. Job costing built against the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, monthly WIP, and a meeting every month that ends in decisions rather than a report.
Your bookkeeper keeps doing the books.
You stop touching the books.
Everything in Core, and we run the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Nobody in your office is answering coding questions or chasing a reconciliation at month end.
We do the books. No payroll.
Every job shows its margin while it's still running.
Everything in Executive, plus the job costing and WIP platform set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed for you every month. You never have to learn it.
We do the job costing.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
