A Landscaping Crew Time Tracking App for Maintenance Routes and Installs

Most landscaping companies run two businesses out of one yard: mowing crews that visit a dozen properties a day, and construction crews that spend a week on one patio. JobSnap is a landscaping crew time tracking app that handles both. Hours land on each property or install, machine hours land on the job, and seasonal staff are paused in November instead of deleted.

How a landscaping season actually runs

A maintenance crew is two or three people in a truck with an open trailer of mowers, trimmers and blowers. They cover ten to fifteen lawns a day, twenty to forty minutes each, billed per visit or on a seasonal contract. Spring cleanup and fall leaves double the work for a few weeks.

An install crew is three to five people on one site: interlock patios, retaining walls, sod, planting. They bring a compact track loader or a mini excavator and a plate compactor, and the job is usually a fixed price with extras. The season runs roughly April to November. You hire in spring, students join in June, and most of the crew is laid off by the first snow.

Where the hours and the proof go missing:

• Per-property time. You charge a flat price per cut. Without real times, you never learn which lawns take twice as long as you priced them.
• "You didn't come last week." A property manager with forty units calls about a missed visit, and the crew's paper sheet just says "route 2, 7 to 4".
• Rain days. A wet Tuesday pushes the whole route to Wednesday, and the install crew sits in the shop for half a day.
• Installs that run over. A patio bid at three days takes five. Was it labour, the base, or the loader sitting idle waiting for stone?

How a landscaping crew uses JobSnap

• Every property is a job with a boundary. Set a geofence on each address. When the crew moves from one lawn to the next, their hours are attributed to each job, so the timesheet shows how long each property took that day. That same record answers the property manager: the crew was inside that boundary, on that date, at that time.
• The crew leader clocks in the crew. A summer student who forgets to punch is the usual problem. The foreman can clock in the whole crew from the truck, and fixes made later are visible on the timesheet. For install crews that start at the yard, a tablet in kiosk mode by the shop door lets everyone punch in on one device before the trucks leave.
• Install jobs in blocks. In crew scheduling, a job can have more than one block of dates, each with its own crew: excavation and base this week, pavers and polymeric sand next week. When it rains, drag the block to another day on the calendar.
• Machine hours on the install. Assign the track loader and the mini excavator to the patio job. Their hours show next to labour, so the next patio is priced from your own history. See equipment tracking.
• Before and after photos. The jobsite camera picks the nearest job, so the photos of the finished wall file themselves. Send a batch to the homeowner or the property manager from your phone.
• Estimates from your price list. Save interlock per square foot, mulch per yard and sod per roll in the cost library, write the estimate on site, and convert it to an invoice when the job is done.

What it costs for a landscaping company

$5 CAD per active employee per month, $20 minimum, every feature included. Picture three maintenance crews of three, one install crew of four and the owner: 14 active employees from May to October, $70 a month. In November, pause everyone who is laid off. If you keep three people on for snow removal plus the owner, that is 4 active employees, $20 a month, in the same app. The 30-day trial is free and does not ask for a credit card.

Questions landscapers ask

Do I have to set up every lawn as a separate job?

If you want hours and proof per property, yes: each one needs an address and a boundary. It is a one-time setup, best done in spring before the first cut.

How do overtime rules work for landscaping crews?

They vary by province, and landscaping is not always treated like construction. JobSnap separates regular and overtime hours on the timesheet; check your province's rules for what counts.

Is it worth it for a two-person mowing outfit?

If the owner is on every lawn and bills a flat seasonal price, a notebook in the truck can do the job. It starts to pay when you run crews you are not riding with, or when customers dispute visits.