Efficiency Tip: Keeping track

April 10, 2017 - By LM Staff

A year and a half ago, Cody Stickle’s desk was piled high with paperwork, his crews’ trucks were cluttered with receipts and the accuracy of his books was questionable.

“We really didn’t have a good way to track things,” says the owner of Stickle Landscape Management in Hampton, Va. “It was primarily just me taking all the receipts and field costs and entering them into QuickBooks.”

Since implementing Autosist, Stickle says his accounting is “100 percent more accurate.” The mobile app, which costs $99 a year for 10 vehicles and unlimited users and $49 for five vehicles, lets crew leaders upload pictures of their receipts, for things like fuel, tying each expense to that crew’s vehicle. Additionally, it serves as a platform to track maintenance intervals and service history for each vehicle. It even lets users set reminders when it’s time for things like an oil change—either at three months or at certain mile markers.

Stickle says he suggests the app to any organization suffering from disorganization. Using it showed him which vehicles were inefficient to run. For instance, Stickle’s dump truck was giving the company less than 7 gallons per mile.

“Spend a little bit of money and take control of your business,” he says. “Over the course of time, you’ll get a better understanding of the true cost of running each piece of equipment.”