Job management software for arborists & tree services

A tree business runs two businesses at once. One is booked work: the hedge round, the palm clean, the stump grind before the landscaper turfs. The other lands at six in the morning after a blow, when a limb is across a driveway and the customer wants a time, not a callback. The same crew and chipper carry both.

So the job record holds more than an address. It holds how the truck gets in, where the chipper can sit, which side the powerline runs, and how much green waste goes to the tip. Collect that at the quote and the crew does not ring you from the kerb.

That is the real test for tree service software: whether the detail you wrote down at the quote is in the climber's hand on the day.

1. Take the job when the phone rings
   Address, contact, what the tree is doing, and who is paying: the owner, a strata manager, a builder or an insurer.
2. Quote it from the driveway
   Photograph the tree and the access. The AI itemises what it sees and prices it from your own rates. The customer signs online.
3. Take a deposit at acceptance
   A removal is four figures and it books out a day. The deposit is paid when they accept, then credited to the final invoice.
4. Book the people and the plant
   Climber, groundie, chipper, an EWP if the drop zone is tight, traffic control if you are in the corridor. All against one job.
5. Run the job from a phone
   SWMS signed on site, before photos, hours clocked on and off, notes for whatever the tree turned out to be doing.
6. Invoice before you leave
   After photos attach to the invoice, GST and your ABN are already on it, and the customer taps a card at the gate.

Two removals of the same height are not the same price. One drops on an open lawn. The other comes down over a pool and a colorbond fence, in bites, with a groundie feeding a chipper parked forty metres up the street. Estimating tree work is estimating access.

So build the quote from a price list you own: climbing hours, ground crew hours, chipper time, EWP or crane hire, stump grinding by diameter, green waste by the tonne, traffic control, and the after-hours storm rate. Change a rate once and every later quote is right.

Then let the customer choose. Put a removal beside a heavy reduction, and the stump grind on as an option they tick themselves. A quote with three prices wins more work than one with a single number, and it usually wins the bigger job.

A tree crew is not one person in a van. Dispatch means getting three people, a chipper, a tipper and sometimes a hired lift onto the same site in the same hour.

Drag jobs onto the calendar and assign the whole crew, not one name. Keep vehicles and depots against the run so the truck with the big chipper goes to the job that needs it. Everyone sees their own day on their phone.

Storm week is where dispatch earns its keep. When six emergency jobs land before eight you move the booked work, and the customer whose Thursday prune just shifted gets a text about it.

Be clear about one thing: ServicePilot does not write arborist reports. It does not assess tree health, run a visual tree assessment or work out a tree protection zone. That is your qualification and your judgement.

What it does is stop the report getting lost. It attaches to the job and goes to the customer as a permanent link. When the council asks a question two months later, the file sits against the address.

Site paperwork works the same way: build a job form for the checks you do, fill it in on the phone with photos, and send it out as a certificate.

Tree work also pulls in a Safe Work Method Statement more often than most trades: a fall over two metres, powered mobile plant, work near live electrical services, a traffic corridor. Tick your high-risk categories once and every job arrives flagged, then the crew signs on a phone before the saw starts.

Tree work repeats on a slower clock than mowing, which is why it gets forgotten. Every quote, job, photo and invoice sits against the address, so when they ring about the hedge you shaped last autumn you already know what you charged.

Put the predictable work on a maintenance plan: the annual hedge, the six-monthly palm clean, the strata round. Jobs create themselves ahead of each visit.

Then check the money. Each job shows revenue against cost and margin, with labour off the crew clock-on times. The removal that ran three hours over on chipping reads as thin, not as a good day.