Increase your landscape company’s profitability by making better purchasing decisions

By Bryan Mours, Vice President of Customer Experience, Aspire Software

Purchasing has never been easy for landscape companies. Low supply, tight margins and timelines—and factors like weather, labor and supply chain concerns—play into your ability to obtain materials. What can you do to make smart buying decisions and finish your projects profitably and on time? Here are a few tips for tackling your purchasing challenges.

Start with an accurate estimate

Estimating accurately can help guard against any unplanned purchases—any items not on your “grocery list” of materials on the estimate. A solid and accurate estimate based on careful and detailed analysis of the job site will include an accurate amount of materials and labor hours at the correct costs and meet your target net profit margins. When your estimates aren’t accurate, any additional material purchases made after you’ve won the work will chip away at your bottom line.

Set guardrails around your purchasing process

Purchasing can get out of hand when your crew leaders have the ability to purchase whatever they need on the fly. Business management systems like Aspire allow companies to better control spending by limiting purchasing to approved vendors and requiring receipts to match the materials in the estimate. If you’re not using a business software, limiting who can create purchase orders in your organization and asking your vendors to require POs for any transactions can help curb spending.

Make creative and strategic changes

To get creative and make changes that will improve your purchasing process, you’ll have to understand your entire financial picture and budget. Perhaps you can make some strategic changes like operating with smaller vehicles that don’t require commercial driver’s licenses, discussing financing with your longtime vendors, direct shipping materials to job sites or shifting your book of work based on the materials that you’re able to acquire.

Communicate with your clients about pricing changes

When you estimate accurately and have a clear understanding of your job and material costs, you have all the data you need to justify price increases when they’re necessary. Chances are your clients know price adjustments are coming, since they watch the news too. Don't be afraid to communicate the fact that your prices are increasing—but be fair. A little creativity and cost efficiencies can go a long way to help you increase prices only where it’s needed, so that you don’t have to pass along every increased cost to your clients.

Good luck streamlining your purchasing process this year!

About Bryan Mours, Vice President of Customer Experience

With over 35 years experience spanning all aspects of the landscape industry—from spreading fertilizers to building budgets for multimillion dollar firms—Bryan has a passion for helping both people and companies succeed. Driven by his desire to help people, Bryan started his own landscape consulting business in 2010 before joining Aspire in its early stages in 2014. Aspire is a business management system for contractors. Now the vice president of customer service, Bryan oversees Aspire's implementation and client success managers as well as the AspireCare support team.