TreeBossPro Blog — Plant Health Care

Using Tree Counts, DBH and Height on Property Records to Price PHC

Two houses on the same street can need very different PHC programs. One has a pair of young maples; the other has five mature oaks and a row of evergreens along the fence. If your pricing does not reflect that, you either lose money on the big properties or price yourself out of the small ones. The fix is recording what is on each property and pricing from it.

What to Record

Billing PHC Programs: Card on File, Auto-Billing and Prepayments covered how the money arrives. This article is about deciding how much. TreeBossPro property records hold the number of trees, trunk diameter (DBH, in inches) and tree height in feet, plus custom fields, tags and crew notes. For PHC, those fields are the raw material of a price.

Record them during the consult. Measuring DBH at the standard height takes a minute per tree with a diameter tape, and the number stays useful for years.

Count trees the way you will price them. If you only price trees above a certain size, note how many trees meet that threshold. If you price shrubs and ornamentals separately, count them separately. The goal is a count that maps directly onto your estimate.

DBH as a Pricing Driver

Many PHC treatments scale with tree size. Injection doses on many product labels are set by trunk diameter. Soil treatments cover a root zone that grows with the tree. Even foliar spraying takes longer on larger trees. That is why many companies price PHC by DBH or by tree size bands.

With DBH on the property record, pricing becomes consistent: the same size tree gets the same price, no matter who wrote the estimate.

Size bands are easier for office staff and customers than a price per inch. For example, small, medium, large and very large trees, each with a defined DBH range and a price. Whatever bands you choose, apply them consistently.

Height and Access

Tree height matters for foliar work. Spraying a tall tree takes different equipment and more time than spraying an ornamental. Note height in feet, and note access issues in crew notes: narrow gates, fences, steep slopes, sensitive plantings, water features. Those are the details that turn a profitable stop into a slow one.

Gate codes and drop zones go in crew notes too, so the applicator arrives knowing how to get in.

Note the equipment a property needs if it is anything other than standard: a longer hose run, a reel cart for backyard access, or work from a neighbor's side with permission. The applicator should know before arriving, not discover it at the gate.

Custom Fields and Tags for PHC

Custom fields let you record what matters to your program: enrolled trees, target pests, species where useful. Tags let you group properties: all properties enrolled in a specific program, all properties with a known pest problem, all commercial accounts. When a treatment window opens, filter by tag and you have the list.

Keep your tag list short and consistent, like your product list. A tag nobody uses is clutter.

Tags also help with marketing. If a new pest shows up in your area, you can find every property with a susceptible tree, assuming you recorded it, and offer a consult. That kind of targeted outreach is only possible when the data is there.

Checking Prices Against Reality

After a season, compare your prices to what actually happened. Amount used on application records shows how much material each property consumed. Time on site shows labor. Properties that consistently used more than expected need a price adjustment at renewal.

This is the kind of check that turns a PHC division from busy into profitable.

Time on site matters as much as material. If a property consistently takes much longer than others in the same price band, the price band may be wrong for that property, or there is an access problem worth noting.

Records That Outlive the Season

Property data does not expire at the end of the year. Trees grow, so update DBH every few years. When a customer sells their home, the property record stays, which makes a conversation with the new owner much easier.

Property records are the foundation of plant health care software for tree companies. Next: what the PHC applicator's day looks like in the crew mobile app.

Property data also supports better conversations with customers. Showing a homeowner that you know they have six enrolled trees, their sizes and what was done to each last year makes your company look exactly like the expert they are paying for.