Written by Jacki Hart, President, Consulting By Hart

Every now and then, something comes across your desk or into your inbox that is worth paying attention to. If you’re a contractor who sells services to your customers, which include labour and materials, equipment and overhead costs, then this article is worth your time to read. Unless you are either entirely recession proof in your market, or aren’t trying to improve profit in your business. But if you are working hard to figure out a way to be more profitable, read on.

Sometimes the most successful businesses have all of the cutting-edge technologies, software, apps, equipment and training. And some businesses have all of that, and still aren’t profitable enough to pay the owner well, build equity and an engaged, career-minded team.

Enter J. Paul Lamarche (JPL), and his industry-altering pricing system. JPL’s estimating and pricing system was officially adopted by...

Why Hire a Professional Bookkeeper?

As a small business owner, you need accurate and up-to-date financial information so you can make the best decisions for your business.

As your business grows and you hire employees, or take on more customers, keeping track of your business expenses and ensuring your books are accurate becomes more complex and time-consuming.

It’s a lot to keep track of while also running your business – sales, expenses, salary payments, and any other money that goes in and out of your business.

You know how important it is to keep good records, not only for CRA compliance and protecting yourself in case of an audit, but also if you want to sell your business down the line.

And frankly, you’re sick of staring at spreadsheets or teaching yourself how to use accounting software. You find yourself falling behind and losing track of receipts, and you’re afraid of missing out on important deductions or overdue invoices that cost you money. You...

I love the change of seasons. I have family living in west Africa and one of the hardest adjustments for them is that there’s no change of seasons (unless you count the change from “hot” season to “hotter” season).

But here at home in Canada, we get to experience the changing of the seasons. And fall is my favourite. It’s my favourite for all sorts of reasons – for cooler weather, for a return to routine after the summer, for campfires on cool nights, for Thanksgiving, and even for pumpkin spice lattes!

I also love the change of seasons when it comes to our business. The fall brings with it a change in the type of work we’re doing, the start of planning for the snow season, the excitement of new equipment, and the return of everyone back at work after summer holidays.

But the fall brings with it some unique financial stressors for business owners. These include material and equipment expenses, contracts that don’t pay out until...

HOW TO DRIVE SALES by Kevin Kehoe

What drives successful commercial landscape sales? First, it’s a sense of the effort required by the reality of the numbers involved to achieve a goal. Specifically, benchmark figures tell us a close rate has an upper limit given the competitive nature of the commercial business. The limit of that close rate is driven by a number of positive touches with a customer. Second, it depends on a plan that accounts for these benchmarks when it comes to building a strategy that revolves around organizing and managing weekly sales activities.

In essence, a 20-percent close rate is driven by 12 touches per prospect. It’s a handy rule of thumb that helps a salesman set personal goals.

Now, pay attention to two important definitions related to the sales goal chart below:

• Close rate—dollars sold divided by dollars bid. For example, if I close $200,000 in sales and I bid $1 million, I have a 20-percent close rate. In contract sales,...

In our last blog, we talked about improving your snow business (or any contracting business, for that matter), and focused on 3 areas: leadership, customers and staff. Today, we'll cover the final three areas: finances, operations and safety. 

4. FINANCES

• Create and review your budget: Your budget keeps you on track and lets you know how you’re doing. Create a budget and then review it monthly against actuals to measure how well you’re doing and address any issues before they become problems.
• Check your margins: Is each job profitable? Are you charging enough to cover your costs and make a profit? Job costing will provide great insight into where you may need to make changes.
• Everyone gets a number: How do you measure a win? Give everyone a clear and measurable goal that helps you determine how well the business and the employee are doing.  

FINANCE KPI’s/REPORTS

• Profit - gross/net by division
• Cash flow
• Expenses (labour, materials,...

The original article can be found here.

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Covid restrictions are lifting in some parts of the world and the economy is booming in some sectors. Some labor and material costs are rising due to shortages, as is customer demand. Many brands have high pricing power at the moment, making price hiles almost inevitable. Brand managers may be clued in on the size of their price increase, but it's no easy matter to communicate this unwelcome news to customers. 

Many companies, and even entire industries, routinely raise prices without ever telling customers. In the consumer packaged goods space, for instance, it is common practice to reduce quantity (the grammage of a package, item count, etc.) and maintain the price. This increases the per-unit amount paid by shoppers but keeps the more visible package price unchanged. Alternatively, brands may cut down on trade promotions, couponing, and other forms of discounting, raising prices indirectly. For instance, when...

NOTE: The original article can be found here.

As a small business owner, you need accurate and up-to-date financial information so you can make the best decisions for your business.

As your business grows and you hire employees, or take on more customers, keeping track of your business expenses and ensuring your books are accurate becomes more complex and time-consuming.

It’s a lot to keep track of while also running your business – sales, expenses, salary payments, and any other money that goes in and out of your business.

You know how important it is to keep good records, not only for CRA compliance and protecting yourself in case of an audit, but also if you want to sell your business down the line.

And frankly, you’re sick of staring at spreadsheets or teaching yourself how to use accounting software. You find yourself falling behind and losing track of receipts, and you’re afraid of missing out on important deductions or overdue invoices that cost you...

Blog - part 2

Welcome back to the conversation with Ryan from Mountview Landscaping. We received such great feedback last week about this interview style blog post so if there is an area of your business that you’ve worked on we would love to hear from you. We can all learn from each other. 

Last week we covered the different things that Mountview tracks and how they track them. You can read that blog post here. 

Here’s part two from our interview with Ryan of Mountview Landscaping:

Why did you choose to measure these particular things?

So I can sleep!  Honestly it relieved so much stress. I like to be able to plan, know whats going to happen, have an idea what we need to do or change. If we wait till the end of the year it's too late. 

Measuring is a predictive tool that allows you to predict if you will make money but tracking also helps us when we are quoting on jobs. Let’s say a potential client told us they needed us to drop this...

Do you have a budget that you work from and review on a monthly basis? More often than not when I talk to business owners the answer to this is no, and though I have gotten used to this response it is not something we should be okay with. We simply cannot build successful business on hard work and hope - we need a budget.

When we started working with Mountview Landscaping I asked Ryan about their budget, like I always do, and was pleasantly surprised to hear that they have a budget and methods of tracking to ensure they are meeting that budget.

We interviewed him recently and Ryan agreed to share his insight with all of you. Here is part 1 of 2 posts from that interview:

What do you currently measure on a weekly, monthly and annual basis and why?

During the winter we track maintenance hours for snow, additional job hours from snow events, salt and icemelt product use on a weekly basis. This translates to lawn maintenance contracts during the summer season.  

We have people...