Mike Andes breaks down how to handle landscape jobs that run over schedule. When customers add work, use change orders and reschedule the next job. When your crew is slow or weather delays you, be honest about it, collect deposits upfront, and build in scheduling flexibility.
What do you do when you have time overages on a job and you already have that crew scheduled for a new job to start, say the following week, but there are still hours or days left to complete a job? There's a few things you can do. Number one, if there's overages on a job and it's your fault, that's when it becomes difficult. If it's overages on time because the customers ask new things you should have been doing work, change orders throughout. Now, if you're booked out solid for six weeks and someone midway job starts adding all of these things, you got to eventually say, look, we're booked out. I got to be off this job next week. So, like, you can add all this stuff, but we're going to have to come do it in six weeks. Like, we got to put you on the schedule. It's going to be a separate estimate and a separate job. We've got to get completed. What's been put on the schedule now that's what needs to happen if the customer's adding things. Now, if you and your crew are just slow or the weather's bad and even rained out, or equipment breaks down, whatever might happen, that's when you sometimes have to be just honest with the job that you're supposed to be at the next week, because you can't really, like tell the person, hey, we'll be back in six weeks if it's your fault. And so you really got to be able to just tell the customer that you're supposed to be there next week. Be like, hey, I'm really, really sorry, we're gonna have to start three days later because we're just running behind on this job due to rain, equipment, et cetera. And if they cancel, you know, hopefully you've got 50% down on that large job. If they cancel, hey, you got you, you, you filled their time anyways with this job that's gone over. And then two, they usually don't cancel because they've given a deposit. And they're usually pretty understandable, like, hey, if it's been raining like a deluge for the past week, they understand and stuff. They can usually understand if they're a reasonable person, that trucks and equipment can break down or people don't show up because they're sick or whatever it might be. And can you use some random excuses sometimes to get that person to be more understanding? Yeah, you can say like, hey, it rained, when really, you know it's because four of your guys didn't show up to work. On Friday and you need to get the job done. So you can use some of those excuses sometimes because people are usually pretty accepting of the fact that there's things in this industry that cause delays.
