The SiteRecon Estimator: Build faster, more accurate, and reliable landscaping estimates

As a landscaping business owner, you know how critical accurate estimates are to your success. A poorly calculated landscaping estimate can erode your profit margins, damage client trust, and cost you future business. 

But the good news? SiteRecon Estimator is here to change the game.

Combining industry expertise with cutting-edge mapping technology, SiteRecon Estimator builds precise, reliable estimates that help you win more business. Whether you're looking to boost profitability, streamline operations, or simply stay competitive, this tool is designed to support your goals. 

Let’s dive into how SiteRecon can transform your estimating process and, in turn, grow your landscaping business.

Growing Your Landscaping Business with Accurate Estimates

Why Accurate Estimates Matter for Growth

Accurate estimates are more than just numbers on paper—they’re the foundation of your business. Without accurate estimates, sales teams may underbid for a contract, which would pressure your margins and hamper profitability.

Did you know? Mainscape, a top LM150 company ended up $150,000 in losses because they underbid on a large HoA. How did that end up happening? They estimated one property in the HoA and extrapolated the results for the entire HoA. That, apparently, wasn’t accurate. And Mainscape isn’t the only victim of this. It happens quite often with landscaping companies of all sizes. 

When it comes to landscaping, accurate estimates are essential. They ensure you charge reasonably, allocate the right resources, and meet client expectations. But how can you guarantee that your estimates are spot-on? SiteRecon Estimator has you covered with several powerful features.

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Protecting Your Gross Margins

Your gross margin is the foundation of your business's profitability. SiteRecon Estimator gives you the data and insights you need to protect it. The tool ensures that your estimated labor, equipment, and material costs align with your pricing structure by providing accurate takeoffs and detailed cost breakdowns. This means fewer surprises and better control over your margins, ensuring that your business remains profitable job after job.

Service map detailed at the Level of Your Production Equipment

One of SiteRecon Estimator's key features is tailoring takeoffs based on your production equipment and material inventory provided - it is referred to as the service map. During onboarding, you’ll build a detailed service catalog that includes your company's equipment and materials inventory. 

When you order an estimate, the takeoffs are not just generic—they align with your specific company processes and estimation best practices. The service assignment happens transparently, using your production equipment in a standardized way across all estimates. 

This leads to more accurate estimates that reflect your company’s unique operational capabilities, helping you deliver more precise and consistent results.

Faster Production Reviews

Speed is crucial when reviewing production plans. The longer it takes to finalize a bid, the more difficult it is to convert it. SiteRecon Estimator is designed to reduce these delays. 

With the ability to generate your first bid in as little as 24-48 hours, the tool allows your sales and production teams to go through the iteration cycles necessary to get an efficient first bid. Speeds up internal decision-making and allows for more thorough discussions, ensuring that any potential issues are ironed out before the client even sees the bid. Faster production reviews translate to quicker approvals, meaning you can get started on projects sooner and more confidently.

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Faster Estimates

Generating estimates quickly and accurately can give you a significant edge in a competitive market. The faster you can get an estimate into a client’s hands, the more likely you will secure the job. SiteRecon Estimator is built with this speed in mind, ensuring that you can produce detailed, reliable estimates in a fraction of the time it typically takes.

SiteRecon Pricing Benchmark

One way SiteRecon ensures rapid estimate generation is by providing a built-in pricing benchmark model. Our model includes production rates tailored to your local conditions and your services.

These rates have been built by TrueWinds Consulting over five decades, ensuring they are reliable and relevant. Having this pricing model at your disposal means you don’t have to start from scratch when building an estimate. Instead, you can rely on fine-tuned proven data for your market. This speeds up the process significantly while ensuring that your estimates are competitive and accurate.

Done-for-You Estimates and Expert Consultation

Not every landscaping company has a dedicated pricing team, and that’s where SiteRecon’s in-house experts come in. Managed in partnership with industry veteran Fred Haskett, this team analyzes your project data and generates suitable estimates tailored to your needs. 

Whether you’re dealing with a simple lawn care job or a more complex project involving multiple services, the team provides expert-backed estimates that ensure you’re pricing your services effectively. This service is like having an on-demand estimation team, allowing you to scale your estimating efforts without hiring additional staff. Plus, because experts produce the estimates, you can be confident in their accuracy and reliability.

Webinar: Order landscaping estimates on-demand

Enhancement Estimates

Enhancement services significantly increase the value of your landscaping projects and offer more to your clients. However, identifying these opportunities, pricing them accurately, and generating specific proposals almost instantly can be a challenge. That’s where SiteRecon Estimator’s Site Quality Audits (SQAs) come in.

Using SiteRecon's SQAs, you can instantly document enhancement opportunities as you observe them onsite. These might be additional planting areas, irrigation improvements, or ongoing maintenance tasks that the client hasn’t initially considered. Once documented, the tool makes it easy to align these enhancements with your existing service offerings so you can seamlessly integrate them into the broader scope of the project.

The Estimator lets you quickly generate accurate, shareable estimates for these enhancement opportunities. These estimates are tailored to the specific enhancements you’ve documented and aligned with your pre-set production rates and pricing benchmarks. This ensures that your client receives a clear, detailed proposal and that you can maximize the revenue potential of every project.

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Increasing Profitability

Profitability is the ultimate goal for any landscaping business. But achieving it consistently can be difficult, especially when so many variables are at play—from labor costs to material expenses.

Read More: How to price landscaping jobs for profit?

Using Analytics to Track Margins

The analytics section of SiteRecon Estimator is a powerful tool for monitoring each job's profitability. By tracking key metrics such as actual onsite hours or overheads on the bids you’ve shared, the tool helps you compare estimated and actual performance. 

This lets you make informed decisions about where adjustments might be needed, helping you protect and increase your margins over time. Plus, the data is presented in a clear and user-friendly format, making it easy to stay on top of your business’s financial health.

No Need to Hire or Train Additional Estimators

One of the biggest hurdles to scaling a landscaping business is the scaling and upskilling of additional team members. Hiring, training, and managing these new team members takes time and resources, and there’s always the risk that they won’t produce estimates as accurately as your more experienced staff. 

SiteRecon Estimator helps companies create their production models and rule-based estimation processes, which are easy to scale and implement. Your new team members get guardrails as they ramp up to ensure you don’t lose any landscaping contracts due to this lag. 

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Wrapping up!

SiteRecon Estimator simplifies and improves the estimating process for landscaping business owners. By delivering accurate estimates, speeding up production reviews, and helping you monitor profitability, this tool provides everything you need to stay competitive and grow your business. Whether new to landscaping or a seasoned pro, SiteRecon Estimator is a valuable asset that can help you boost efficiency, protect your margins, and win more business.

Ready to take your landscaping business to the next level? Contact us today to learn more about how SiteRecon (Property Mapping Platform) can help you achieve your goals and unlock your full potential.