TreeBossPro Blog — Scheduling

Tree Service Scheduling Reports: What to Review Every Week

Most tree service owners know how busy they are by feel. But feel is easy to fool. One long week makes the backlog seem bigger than it is; one quiet week sets off a panic. A short weekly review of a few reports gives you a clear picture of the schedule and catches problems while they are still small and cheap to fix.

Why a Weekly Review

In Getting Paid on Schedule: Linking Tree Jobs to Invoicing and Card on File, we connected jobs to invoices. Reports are where you see whether the whole system, schedule and billing together, is actually working.

Pick a set time each week, Friday afternoon or Monday morning, and look at the same handful of things every time. The value comes from consistency. A number that means little on its own becomes very useful when you can compare it with last week, last month and the same week last year.

Completed Jobs by Category

How many Removals, Trimming and Pruning, Stump Grinding, Plant Health Care, Storm and Emergency and Consults did you complete this week? Compare with prior weeks. Shifts in the mix show you where the business is going, sometimes before you notice it on the job site.

If removals are climbing while pruning drops, recurring work may be slipping. If consults are high but completed work is flat, estimates may not be converting or the schedule may be backing up. If stump grinding completions lag behind removals, follow-ups are being lost.

Break completions down by crew as well when you can. A crew that completes noticeably less than the others may be getting the hardest jobs, the longest drives or simply needs help. The report starts the conversation; the job board and crew notes usually explain it.

How Far Out You Are Booked

Look at the job board and the scheduled list. How many crew days of work are already scheduled, and how far out does it go? Is that number growing or shrinking week over week?

A growing backlog may mean you need another crew, a price increase or a narrower focus. A shrinking one means it is time to push sales, follow up on open estimates or offer recurring programs to past customers. Either way, you want to see the trend weeks before it becomes a crisis.

Rescheduled and Unfinished Work

How many jobs moved this week, and why? Weather is unavoidable, but repeated moves for access, sizing errors or overbooking point to problems you can fix. The notes on moved jobs tell you which.

Look at jobs that were started but not finished, too. If removals regularly run over, the estimates are probably light on time, and the next week's schedule is already at risk.

Weather moves deserve a look of their own. If one crew's jobs move far more often than others, check whether those jobs are tagged as weather-sensitive and whether the scheduler is placing them on days with poor forecasts.

Open Estimates and Recurring Work Coming Due

How many estimates are waiting for approval, and how much work do they represent? Automatic follow-up handles most of this, but scan the list for big jobs worth a personal call from the estimator.

Then look ahead at recurring pruning and PHC visits coming due in the next few weeks. Make sure they are scheduled and that the crews and licensed applicators have room for them. Recurring work that slips quietly is recurring work you eventually lose.

Billing and Unpaid Invoices

Compare completed jobs with invoices to make sure everything that was done was billed. Then review unpaid invoices and follow up on the older ones. Card on file and auto-billing shrink this list over time, but it is worth checking every week.

Ten minutes a week with these reports keeps you ahead of problems instead of reacting to them. One of the problems reports surface most often is jobs that fall through on the day, which is the subject of the next guide. See the reporting and scheduling tools on the tree service scheduling software page.