An effective landscaping crew and project management team are the secrets to a profitable lawn care business. But when the landscaping crew is out in the field, it can be challenging to maintain a bird's eye view of their activities. This is where GPS apps for landscaping businesses come in handy.
A GPS tracking app with a time clock and location tracking feature helps ensure your team members are where they need to be at the right time. It provides real-time information and insights you need to improve customer service and grow your company’s bottom line. With GPS tracking, you can see crew location, job completion status, and work hours.
However, the market is awash with GPS tracking solutions so finding one for your landscaping business can be a challenge. We tested numerous GPS solutions and narrowed down the list to five apps that work for landscaping professionals. Read on to find out the strengths and weaknesses of these apps.
* We recognize that this article was written in February 2024, and changes may have been made within the apps mentioned since this article was published.
Want to Improve Your Landscaping Business Operations?
The Best GPS App For Landscaping Businesses: At A Glance
Job scheduling, location tracking, and time clock features are a must-have for businesses in the landscaping industry. With these features, you can monitor crew activity in the field, track time accurately, dispatch team members based on their locations, and give customers an accurate estimated time of arrival (ETA). Some of the software solutions that tick these boxes include:
Timeero – Best Overall GPS App For Landscaping Businesses
Apploye – Best Time Tracker For Landscaping Companies
Badger Maps – Great For Location and Time Tracking
Lystloc – Good For Live Location Tracking
KickServ – Best For Job Dispatching
A route optimization feature is a vital tool used to build optimal route plans that the crew can follow to arrive early for appointments and save on fuel costs. If you require employees to use personal vehicles, you’ll need software with a mileage tracker for fair reimbursement and tax purposes.
TOP 5 GPS App For Lawn Care Businesses
While the GPS apps on our list get the job done, they differ widely in capabilities. We’ll highlight their strengths and weaknesses to help you find a GPS app that best meets your needs. Let’s dive in.
Timeero – Best Overall GPS App For Landscaping Businesses
Timeero is an easy-to-use GPS app for businesses specializing in residential and commercial landscaping services. It offers tools to keep track of crew members during their shifts further encouraging efficient route adherence and performance accountability.
Below we have highlighted Timeero’s best features:
Schedule and Dispatch Landscaping Crew With Ease
Timeero lets you create customizable landscaping job schedules to streamline field service management.
Timeero’s easy-to-use scheduler lets you build schedules that take into account various scenarios such as weather events and employee availability. It enables you to allocate enough time for each landscaping project — big or small — so that quality standards are met.
Two functionalities set Timeero’s scheduler apart from other related apps.
The ability to block double or overlapping schedules which prevent landscapers from meeting deadlines and expectations.
The ease in which you can quickly adjust schedules to accommodate for unforeseen events by moving daily tasks in your field teams work queue.
For urgent tasks, you can use Timeero's real-time location intelligence to schedule and dispatch employees based on their proximity to a customer location. This helps reduce employee downtime, especially time spent on the road.
When you publish a schedule, employees are notified instantly and can accept or reject the shift based on availability. This cuts out delays associated with employees' late arrivals, absenteeism, and last-minute cancellations, ensuring each project is completed within the agreed time.
Know Where Crews Are In Real-Time
To streamline workflows, landscaping employees must be in the right place at the right time. Timeero’s real-time GPS location tracking gives you an extra level of control over the distribution of your workforce.
Timeero's “Who’s Working” feature is great for employee and fleet tracking.
The “who’s working” tab is like being everywhere all at once without leaving your office. It lets you monitor employee locations and the jobs they are working on in real-time. You can zoom in to see how long an employee has been working on a task.
You can also figure out how far a task is from completion, if you’re familiar with how long it takes a worker to finish the task. Suppose an employee needs 30 minutes to trim a 100-meter long fence. If the employee has been on the task for 20 minutes, you can easily predict when they will finish.
This practice, coupled with location intelligence, helps enforce your company’s GPS tracking policy and places workforce and resources where they’re needed. For example, you can spot an idle landscape worker that is about to finish their assigned task and request them to tackle another urgent task nearby.
Tracking member location also improves employee security. It’s not uncommon for employees, especially new or contract workers unfamiliar with a region, to get lost.
If the above scenario were to happen, you can quickly spot the employees veering off the assigned routes and contact them through any messaging or calling channel and direct them accordingly. The employee can also use the “who’s working” tab to trace directions to a job site.
Improve Efficiency and Productivity With Segmented Tracking
Timeero’s segmented tracking feature lets you calculate drive time and the time spent on-site.
Segmented tracking is an excellent tool for landscaping crews working on tasks that require them to hop from one customer site to another. It tracks an employee trip through each stop to give helpful insights, such as:
Arrival and departure time from every customer location
Distance covered between customer locations
Time spent on a client’s project
Total mileage
Total driving time
This information can help you spot and eliminate bottlenecks slowing down your processes. Suppose data shows that employees spend too much time on the road. You can work to gradually reduce drive time so high priority tasks can receive attention. This improvement will help you complete more work orders, which translates to more revenue.
You can also track the time it takes to get specific tasks done. For example, you’ll better understand how long an employee needs to mow an acre of land. With this information, you’ll allocate enough time to each project when scheduling future mowing tasks.
The insights give you a better idea of how much workload your team can handle. This will help you accurately decide when to add employees or hire contractors to prevent a task backlog.
Track Landscaping Crew Time Accurately
Timeero’s time clock lets you track time and accurately determine labor costs.
Sometimes, managing crew hours more effectively is all it takes to grow your company’s bottom line. As employees consistently clock in at their job site and you have been able to cut down on instances of time theft, company profitability increases significantly.
This is where Timeero’s geofencing and facial recognition tools come in handy.
Geofencing lets you set virtual boundaries around customer locations to prevent off-site punching. An employee who is running late for work can’t clock in a few blocks from the job site to avoid the consequences of late arrival. Timeero only allows them to clock in when they enter the designated zone.
You can also opt to use Timeero’s Terminal kiosk app on an iPad to curb buddy punching. The app takes photos of workers as they clock in and compares them to the profile pictures located on their accounts. If the photos do not match up, the Terminal app flags the time entry and notifies the manager, prompting them to investigate the issue.
By curbing off-site and buddy punching, you prevent employees from fudging their time cards to claim pay for work they didn’t do. This enables you to compensate them fairly without depleting your coffers.
Accurately Track Overtime
Timeero lets you accurately track employee overtime and double time with ease. All you have to do is set overtime and double time thresholds. When employees hit the threshold, Timeero logs the extra hours as overtime or double time.
Easily Adhere to Break Compliance Rules
Timeero notifications prompt employees to take rest and meal breaks.
Timeero break tracker helps enforce your break tracking policy. You can add custom rules to match your rest, meal, nursing, restroom, smoking, or religious break requirements. If you are located in California, use the “California Break Tracker” to track breaks per the California break rule.
Break reminders make employees aware of an upcoming break. This way, no employee will forfeit their rest or meal break to complete a pending task. This helps your business sidestep lawsuits and hefty penalties that may result from non-compliance.
Employees in California that adhere to stringent break laws must sign the daily sign-off form to attest to using their rest and meal break according to the law. If an employee didn’t take a break, they must give a reason and append a digital signature using the Timeero signature tool.
The daily sign-off form requires employees to verify they have taken breaks that are mandated by law.
The form lets you determine employees who violate breaks, compensate them where necessary, and warn them of punishment should they persist with the behavior. You can also use the forms to exonerate your company from blame should employees take you to court for violation.
Track Mileage Efficiently for Accurate Reimbursement
If you require sales representatives, project managers, or other employees to use their private vehicles for business purposes, you have to reimburse them for mileage.
Traditional pen and paper tracking gets the job done, but is time consuming and often prone to errors and mistakes.
Timeero's automatic mileage tracker eliminates errors and tedious manual entry. It uses motion detection technology and a minimum speed threshold to track employee mileage. All the employee has to do is clock in and drive. They don’t have to lift a finger – Timeero logs their mileage when the vehicle exceeds the predefined speed threshold.
The app expedites reimbursement with automatic calculations. It computes each employee’s reimbursement total based on the number of miles tracked and current IRS mileage rates. At the end of the month, simply generate the mileage report and upload it to your payroll software for faster reimbursement. You can also use the mileage logs for tax purposes.
The mileage tracker works on employee smartphones, so you don’t have to invest in additional devices.
Timeero pricing: 14-day free trial; paid pricing starts at $4 per user per month.
Apploye — Best Time Tracker For Landscaping Companies
Apploye is one of the best landscaping business management tools for time and location tracking.
Apploye is an easy-to-use cloud-based GPS app for landscape service businesses. The app offers scheduling, time tracking, invoicing, and mileage tracking tools, but some of these are only available with higher paid plans. The job management module is Apploye’s scheduling hub that lets you assign tasks to landscapers with ease.
Accurate Time Tracking
Apploye has two time tracking modes: a Timer and a geofenced time clock. While the Timer is available on all plans, it doesn’t prevent off-site clock ins or buddy punching. Employees can start the Timer even when they are miles away from the job site, and that doesn’t help calculate the precise time spent on each project.
The geofenced time clock is more accurate than the Timer but is only available with a premium plan. It prevents employees from punching outside of their designated job sites. This thwarts off-site punching to improve timesheet accuracy. The only issue is that Apploye's geofenced time clock doesn’t prevent buddy punching.
Real-Time Location Tracking
Apploye’s time tracking features are available on the “Field Services” suite, an add-on available to the highest plan’s subscribers. The main feature is the “Route Map,” which helps monitor the location of each team member in real-time. It also shows the route they took and stops made during the shift.
Apploye Pricing: 10-day free trial; paid pricing starts at $2.50 per user per month
Apploye integrations: ClickUp, Trello, and Asana
Jibble – Great For Location and Time Tracking
Jibble is one of the best landscaping crew management software solutions with flexible schedules.
Jibble is ideal for small businesses that want to monitor time and attendance. It combines a user-friendly live location tracking tool with attendance and time management features to keep you updated on crew location and field activities in real time.
Live Location Tracking
The live location tab gives the details you need to stay on top of employee whereabouts. Besides displaying the real-time location of each team member, it lets you monitor the project they are working on and how long they have been working on it. Jibble also lets you view the travel routes of work crews.
Geofenced Time Clock
Whether you’re using the free or paid plan, you can create geofences around customer locations. The free plan allows you to create two geofences only.
Geofencing helps ensure landscaping team members clock in only when they’re within the designated job sites. Jibble also offers facial recognition attendance to curb buddy punching. These two features aren’t activated by default. To enforce both tools, you must set the attendance policy on Jibble to “Strict” mode.
Jibble Pricing: Free plan; Paid pricing starts at $2.49 per user per month.
Jibble Integrations: Freshteam, QuickBooks Online, Xero, Deel, Asana, Freshdesk, Salesforce and more.
Lystloc – Good For Live Location Tracking
Lystloc has a live location tracker, which lets you monitor employee movement in real-time.
Lystloc is geared towards small business owners looking to track time accurately while maintaining a bird's eye view of their teams.
Lystloc Live Location Tracking
Lystloc’s live location tracker lets you see where each team member is in real-time. You can zoom in on an employee to see their current status (logged in or out), distance covered, total work hours, and when and where they clocked in.
With the live location tracker, you can quickly spot an employee who is most proximate to an emergency task. Dispatching employees based on how close they are to a customer location saves time and fuel costs. The Lystloc location tracker also helps landscaping businesses bolster crew security.
Track Time with Precision
Lystloc's stand-out feature is the geofenced time tracker, which restricts employees from checking in outside designated job sites. It also uses fingerprint authentication to prevent buddy punching. You can also configure check-out reminders and implement the auto-logout tool – which checks out employees automatically – to improve the accuracy of timesheets.
Lystloc pricing: 7-day free trial, paid pricing starts at $3 per user per month.
Lystloc integrations: Zoho CRM and location tracking API
KickServ — Best For Job Dispatching
Kickserv allows you to dispatch employees based on location.
Kickserv is a reliable GPS tracking app for businesses specializing in landscape maintenance tasks. It’s a powerful tool for dispatching team members for recurring mowing, spring and fall clean-up, leaf removal, fertilization, plant health care, and aeration.
The only issue is that the mobile app isn’t intuitive. It looks cluttered, and some features can be challenging to find. For example, the clock-in button isn’t available on the home screen. Employees have to open the assigned job to locate it, and that can be tricky for first-time users.
Dispatching Landscaping Employees with Ease
Kickserv’s Planner provides the much needed scheduling flexibility for your business. It offers different scheduling modes such as Schedule, Calendar, and Dispatch Matching, letting you pick a mode that best suits the needs of your operation.
The Dispatch Mapping tool combines a map and timeline view, allowing you to assign jobs and organize crew based on geography. It helps cut down on the hours spent on the road, improving arrival times while increasing the hours employees spend on client projects.
Update Customers on Crew Arrival Time
Speaking of arrival times, Kickserv has a unique way of informing clients of landscapers' time of arrival. The employee only needs to swipe left on the assigned task with their smartphone to let the customer know they are on the way.
Sharing crew arrival time with clients means they will be better prepared for the meeting. For example, if the customers need to buy equipment or landscaping materials, they make better plans to have it delivered before the landscapers arrive.
Kickserv pricing: 7-day free trial; paid pricing starts at $47 per month for five users.
Pick The Best GPS App For Your Landscaping Business
We’ve reviewed the best five GPS apps for landscaping businesses, but your most pressing needs should dictate your decision. If you’re struggling to stop time theft among field employees, pick a GPS tracking app with geofencing and facial recognition or fingerprint authentication.
If break and overtime compliance is ailing your business, choose a solution with specialty break trackers and overtime features. To stay on top of everyone’s location, find a tool with live or real-time location tracking features.
Timeero comes with all these features and is the only app that offers segmented tracking, which is incredibly beneficial for landscaping companies. Start a 14-day free trial today to learn how our time, location, and mileage tracking features work. No credit card is required: create an account and download the mobile app to start testing.
GPS Apps For Landscaping: FAQs
Do Landscape Crew Tracking Software Have Time Clocks?
Yes, most of the GPS apps for the landscaping industry come with time clocks.
What Are the Best GPS Apps for Managing a Landscaping Business Fleet?
Timeero is the best app for managing a landscaping fleet that doesn’t require you to invest in expensive equipment. It works with a driver’s Android or iOS mobile device.
What Are the Features of the Best GPS App for a Landscaping Business?
The must-have features of the best GPS app for landscaping business include time, location, and mileage tracking. Other helpful tools include scheduling, dispatching, and route optimization.
Looking for the Best GPS Tracking App To Manage Your Landscaping Fleet?
Samson is a mathematician turned content marketer specializing in SaaS and Tech content. He focuses on the practical aspects of software systems while keeping abreast of the industry’s cutting-edge principles to create informative and engaging content. When he’s not writing, Samson spends time playing or watching soccer.
%202.svg)
