CLIP's Tips

After you determine your dollar per hour goal for 2010, create a job costing report, and adjust prices as necessary; it is time to create and send out renewal contracts.

There are various ways to create renewal contracts.  Some people do it manually, typing up each contract.  Another option is to create a mail-merge in Microsoft Word using data from a CLIP report.

The easiest way is to create the contracts directly from CLIP using “Estimates in Jobs”.  This feature will enable you to create customized proposals and automatically add pricing and contract information from CLIP.

The following will serve as an introduction to the steps involved in creating a proposal using Estimates in Jobs.  At the bottom of the post, I will provide some other resources for further instruction.

Application Action: To best learn this process, I suggest that you create a test copy of CLIP and follow these directions step by step in your test copy of CLIP.

1.  In File Maintenance, choose a customer and a job.  From the Job Detail Screen, click on the small button next to the Estimate Code.

2.  Click Add/Edit Templates.

3.  Click Add.

4.  Type in a contract code, description, and file name.  If you want to use an existing file, click the small button next to the description field to choose the file.  Click Save.

Note:  If the file name does not exist, CLIP will ask you if you want to create it.  Go ahead and do so.

5.  Wait while CLIP creates the database necessary for the proposal.  Click OK to close any dialog boxes that open up.

6.  With the blank Microsoft Word document open, type or paste in your contract details.

7.  Next you will need to add the “Merge” fields.  This is the data that is transferred automatically from CLIP (i.e. price or number of visits).  To add a merge field, click on the place in the document where you want to add the field.  Next, click, insert merge field and select the data that you want to insert.  Repeat for each field you want to add.

8.  Preview the contract to make sure everything is correct by clicking the “Preview Results” button.

9.  Save and Close the document.

10.  In CLIP, click return twice to get you back to the Job Detail screen.  Click Create Estimate.

11.  Choose the proposal you just created from the list, then type in a description and click the button to the right of the description.

12.  On the next screen, select the job(s) you want to include in the contract by checking off the “Include?” and/or “Part of Contract” buttons.  Add any notes you want.  Add contract information such as number of months, discounts, etc.

13.  After you have ensured that all of the information is correct, click Continue.

14.  CLIP will ask you if you want to see the spreadsheet created.  Click NO.

15.  You will now have the contract created and saved in CLIP for printing or later viewing.

This contract can now be used for other customers as well.

While the process outlined above only creates a proposal for one customer, you can use Estimates in Jobs to mass produce proposals as well. See the webinar below for details on mass producing proposals with this feature.

Additional features of Estimates in Jobs include:

• Create Estimates for New Customers
• Mass Produce Estimates (File Maintenance > Estimates/Proposals > Estimates in Jobs > Create Mass Estimates/Proposals)
• Create estimates including multiple jobs.
• Include some jobs in contract and leave some as pay per visit.
• Track the status of estimates.

For more information, check out these references:

Manuals:

Estimates in Jobs
Mail Merge Guide for CLIP

Webinars:

Step 1 – Prepare Data
Step 2 – Create a Simple Proposal for 1 Job
Step 3 – Create a Proposal for Multiple Jobs
Step 4 – Mass Mailing Estimates

More questions?  Email me or post a comment.

Stay tuned for parts 5 and 6.

End of Year Projects Overview:

1.  Revise our dollar-per-hour goal to account for any changes in the upcoming year.

Part 1 & Part 2

2.  Use CLIP to create a job costing report for this year.

3.  Analyze profitability of customers.  Adjust prices as necessary.

4.  Create and send renewal contracts.

5.  Survey customers for feedback from this year.

6.  Follow up in order to maximize contract renewals.

In addition to the End of Year projects we are working on, there are a few settings in CLIP which should be reset at the start of a new year.

Built into CLIP is the ability to reset these automatically.  To learn more about these features, please check out our newly updated manual for End of Year Functions.

Manual – End of Year Functions – Revised 12/21/2009

There is also a video tutorial available here.

Application Action: Check out the manual and/or the tutorial to make sure you are setting up CLIP optimally for 2010.

Stay tuned for the rest of the End of Year Projects.

If you followed the steps in year end project #2, you have a spreadsheet containing all of the job costing data from 2009.  We are now going to analyze that data and adjust prices as necessary.

First, a couple of words about adjusting prices.  Raising prices is certainly an art and a science to.  Raise prices too quickly or too often, and you will end up losing too many customers—Don’t raise prices enough, and you will end up forfeiting profits.  When you raise prices, it should be carefully done—like surgery with a scalpel rather than hacking with an axe.  Consider these ways you can be a surgeon rather than a lumberjack when raising prices:

A.  Only raise the prices of customers who are under your target $ per hour rate (we now have this information by using our spreadsheet and our job costing report).  If you only raise prices for those who are unprofitable, you minimize your risk.  If the customer decides to go elsewhere for a lower price, the only thing you have lost is an unprofitable customer.  By not raising the prices of those who are profitable, you won’t rock the boat or risk them going somewhere else for service.

B.  Consider special cases.  For example, at CLIP Lawn Care, we have one customer whose lawn we mow for much lower than our hourly rate.  Why?  He has enabled us to gain the profitable HOA contract for his community.  Another example would be a long time customer whose property was recently damaged by accident.  In this case, he is already perturbed, and if I think he has a chance of sticking with us long-term, raising his price would not be a wise decision.

Steps for Adjusting Prices

1. Open the job costing spreadsheet we created.

2. If it has not already been done, sort the spreadsheet by $ per hour including travel time.  Do this by clicking at the top of column H to select the entire column.  Then choose “Sort & Filter” > Sort Smallest to Largest.  If Excel asks you to “expand the selection”, go ahead and do it.

3.  Scroll down the list to find the point at which the customers are meeting your $ per hour goal.  For the customers below this point, we do not want to raise their prices, so we will leave them alone.

4.  Next, we will create a formula to determine what percentage we need to raise the prices for these customers.  We need to incorporate the following factors into the formula:

• • The maximum percentage that we will raise prices.  In our example, we are not going to raise anyone’s prices more than 20%.  You pick your number.
  • The $ per hour goal we have set.  In our example, $45.

Enter the following formula into cell K1, replacing the red numbers with your $ per hour goal and the green with the max percentage you will raise a price (in decimal format i.e. .2 =20%):

=IF(45/H2>(1+.2), (1+.2), 45/H2)

The result will be the percentage that you should raise this customer’s price.

Now, copy the formula to the cells below, stopping where the $ per hour goal is being met.  Check out the following short video on how to do that.

Finally, change the whole column to display in percentage format by clicking the % button on the top of the screen.

5.  Now, have those who are most familiar with these clients go through the list to look for any special exceptions as in point B above.  Make any changes necessary.

6.  Open CLIP and change prices as necessary.  In order to calculate the new price, simply take their current prices and multiply by the percentage.  i.e.  $30 x 1.2 = $36 as the new price.

If you got lost along the way, feel free to ask a question in the comments so that I can clarify.

We are now halfway done with our end of year projects.  See below for the next steps.

Application Action: Post a comment or send me an email describing the way you go about raising prices.

End of Year Projects Overview:

1.  Revise our dollar-per-hour goal to account for any changes in the upcoming year.

Part 1 & Part 2

2.  Use CLIP to create a job costing report for this year.

3.  Analyze profitability of customers.  Adjust prices as necessary.

4.  Create and send renewal contracts.

5.  Survey customers for feedback from this year.

6.  Follow up in order to maximize contract renewals.

One of the great things about CLIP is its ability to be easily copied and moved in order to create a test copy.

As we move into the slow season for most of the green industry, many of you will be learning new things in CLIP—things like how to make global replacements, raise prices, set up programs and rounds, etc.  One way to test these things before making the changes final in your real copy of CLIP is to make a quick test copy of CLIP.

To do this, follow these steps:

1.  Find the folder containing CLIP on your computer.  If you are using a shortcut on your desktop to open CLIP, follow these steps to find where your CLIP folder is:

• • • Right click on the icon
    • Click Properties
    • • In the Properties window you will see the “target.”  This will show where the folder is located.  i.e. C:\CLIPv\vclip.EXE
      • Open the drive (or folder) where the CLIPv folder is located. (C:\ in our example):

  

2.  Right click on the CLIPv folder and select “copy”.

3.  Right click anywhere on the blank part of the screen you are in and select Paste.  Wait for the folder to finish copying.

4.  You will now have a folder titled “CLIPv – Copy” or “Copy of CLIPv”.  Rename it to something like “Test_CLIP”.  You cannot have any spaces in the name.

5.  Now, to us the test copy we simply need to open the new copy of CLIP.  To do that, double click on the new folder to open it, then find vclip.exe.  Double click on vclip.exe to open it; then enjoy experimenting with your test copy of CLIP!

Disclaimer:  This process should not replace your regular online backup or other regular backup.  CLIP Software takes no responsibility for mistakes using this process.  If you are not 100% sure that you know how to do this, please contact support before attempting.

Questions.  Let me know in the comments or shoot me an email.

photo credit: E. E. Piphanies

Whether you were connecting with relatives or just enjoying some downtime, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday.

Now that you have had time to digest that Thanksgiving meal, we are on to Project #2 in my recommended End or Year Projects.  This project will give you a customer by customer, job by job analysis of your revenues per hour—one of you most important metrics for profitability.

This project will set the stage for knowing how to price our contracts for next year.  This can be used for any type of job for any period of time.  The example below, however, will be for our mowing contracts in 2009.

Here’s the step by step:

1.  On the top menu in the main screen of CLIP go to Reports > Job Reports > Job Costing

2.  Select which crews you want to run the report for (in our case, we want to see all of the crews so we select 0-999).

3.  Select customer range (we want to see everyone so we select 0-9999).

4.  Choose the job numbers that you want to analyze.  Keep in mind here that you may want to analyze the profitability of one type of job or multiple jobs grouped together.

For example, you may have a maintenance contract where you do not profit much from the mowing, but you make up for it in mulching and leaf removal.  In this example you would want to include all three jobs in the report and the report would show you an average $ per man hour for all of the jobs combined.  (In our example, we will use only job 1 – Mowing).  To type a combination of jobs, separate the numbers with commas.

5.  Choose the dates you want to report.  (I want all of 2009 year to date so I choose 01/01/09 – 11/30/09.)

6.  Choose which options you want on the right hand side of the screen (Show History, Contract Jobs Only, Only jobs under or over projected time, Include Jobs on Hold, Active Customers Only).  The only boxes I want checked off are Show History and Include Jobs on Hold.

7.  Click Prepare Files.  Wait for CLIP to prepare the files.

8.  Choose Sort Options.  I recommend sorting by Dollars/Hr Including Travel Time because this is the most important piece of information about these customers.

9.  Choose Detail as your print option.

10.  Print the report or preview it on your screen.

11.  Unless you are certain that your time entries in CLIP are 100% accurate, you should go through this report customer by customer to look for any data entry errors.   Two areas that I recommend you double check are “Actual Time” and “Travel Time.”  This is where most data entry errors will be seen.  Look for anything out of the ordinary.

In the example below, most of the travel times are under 1/2 hour.  In the circled time, it is over two hours.  I need to check to see if this was a mistake or not and then correct it if necessary.  (To correct the mistake, go into customer history, click the line item, then click edit.)

12.  After you have corrected any mistakes, repeat steps 1-8.

13.  This time choose “Summary” instead of “Detail” as your print option.

14.  Instead of choosing to print the report, click “To Excel” to export as a spreadsheet.  Save the file as “2009 Job Costing Report.”

You will now have an excel spreadsheet containing all of the job costing data, sorted by Dollars/Hr. including travel time.  The benefit of having this in spreadsheet form is the ability to sort, use and manipulate the data for any purpose.

Stay tuned for the next post on how to use the Job Costing Report to analyze the profitability of your customers in order to discern whose prices to raise and by how much.

Application Action: Follow the steps above to get your report ready, then try running the report with different options to get familiar with how it works.  I cannot emphasize enough how important this report is for running a profitable business.

End of Year Projects Overview:

1.  Revise our dollar-per-hour goal to account for any changes in the upcoming year.

Part 1 & Part 2

2.  Use CLIP to create a job costing report for this year.

3.  Analyze profitability of customers.  Adjust prices as necessary.

4.  Create and send renewal contracts.

5.  Survey customers for feedback from this year.

6.  Follow up in order to maximize contract renewals.

Photo credit: shutterberrry

Last week, while you were organizing leaf cleanups or snow removal jobs, some of our customers were enjoying the warm sands of Cozumel and Belize, cave tubing, snorkling, and ATVing through the jungle while—at the same time networking with other green industry professionals and learning how to run their businesses more efficiently.

Photo credit: jarnocan

Here is what some of our customers had to say about our 2009 CLIP on a Ship Conference:

How was your experience on the cruise?

We had a blast!

– Mark – Anderson Seed and Garden, Logan UT

Good!  Would like to do it again!

– David – CLIPPINGS, Inc, Marietta, GA

Training

Although it may have been hard to break people away from the exhilarating cruise activities, CLIP users found some time to hone their skills at the on board training sessions.

So what were people excited about learning?

• CLIPxe (for those still using CLIP Desktop)
• CMS (Contact Management System) and how to use it effectively.
• Programs and Rounds – this was a big hit.
• CLIP2GO
• Projects

Networking

As always with our conferences, networking was a key component of this year’s conference.  Attendees were able to get ideas from one another, share their company woes, and exchange contact information to keep in touch.

Liz from Ben Lomond Landscape in Pleasant View, UT and Amber from The Lawn Barber in Hampton, VA both said they really liked the networking. Now, they feel comfortable with cruise contacts to call them up to bounce ideas back and forth or simply to ask some questions.

Fun

Photo: captpiper

What kind of fun did they have?  You mean besides the warm weather, white sands, crystal water, cave tubing, snorkeling, ATVing, and all you can eat buffets?  C’mon!

David Mathias of CLIP Software said his highlight was the jungle excursion with VP Glenn Zior  to a remote beach in Cozumel. His only request is that next time the ATVs have more seat padding and the roads have fewer pot holes. Ouch!

Not able to make it to the conference this year?  There’s always next year.  In the meantime, winter is a great time to sign up for a CLIP class, Online training, or an on-site.

Hope to see you at CLIP Conference 2010!

Click here for pictures.

CLIP Lawn Care scenario last month:

Customer Email:

“I see that you charged me for Aeration and Overseeding this month.  I never authorized that.”

Our response:

“Dear Mr. X,

I am sorry for any confusion and I hope to clear this up for you.  According to our records you signed a contract for aeration and overseeding in April.  I have attached the scanned copy from our records.  Please let us know if you have any further questions.”

His response:  A check.

In my last post about EchoSign, I suggested that you attach signed estimates to the customer record in CLIP.  The above scenario is one of many examples in which having your customer documents stored in CLIP can be helpful.  In this post I will demonstrate how to attach this or any type of document to a customer record.

The benefit of storing documents in the customer record is that you will always have customer documents linked to their accounts for easy reference in the future—much easier than trying to find a contract from last year amidst your computer or paper folders.

This is a great way to store:

• Spreadsheets
• Quotes/Proposals
• Excel
• Letters from Customers
• Signed Estimates/Contracts
• Pictures (see below for tip on storing pictures)

The process:

1.  From the main customer screen click the “Correspondence” tab.

2.  Click the “Office” Tab.

3.  There are two options for adding a document:

• Add File/Scan – Create a new Excel or Word document to attach or use your scanner to add a scanned copy of any document.
• Add Existing File – Attach a document already on your computer or network.  

To attach a document with either option, simply click the button and follow the steps indicated on the screen.

After attaching documents, you can access them from the “Office” tab.

Tip on storing pictures: If you have a lot of pictures to store for a single customer, I recommend creating a Word document titled “John Doe Pictures.”  Paste all of your pictures for the customer into this Word document.  Attach it to the customer record in CLIP.  This will prevent you from having hundreds of files listed in the “Office” section and allow you to add pictures to this document as you collect them.

How do you use this feature?  Let me know in the comments.

Photo credit: schnaars

As promised in the webinar today, here are the instructions for how to set up everything to track your marketing using Google Maps:

How to Track Your Marketing Using Google Maps

 

Thanks again for everyone’s input today!

If you have any questions feel free to email me.

Watch the webinar.

Photo: William Hook

Here is a list of the newest phones compatible with CLIP2GO that have an internal GPS**.

There are some sweet new phones in the list that I would love to get my hands on and test (yes, I am a geek).

Click on the name of the phone for more details and for pricing information from your carrier.

There is also a list on our website which includes some of the older models as well as devices without internal GPS at http://www.clip.com/clip2go.asp.

T Mobile:

HTC Touch Pro2 – New!

Sprint:

Palm Treo Pro

HTC Touch Pro™

HTC Touch Diamond ™

Verizon:

Samsung Omnia™

HTC Touch Pro™

Samsung Saga™

AT&T:

LG Incite

HTC FUZE™

Samsung Epix™

Unlocked (can be used with any carrier):

Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X1a

Palm® Treo™ Pro

Traveler 137 GPS Smartphone – New!

Traveler 117 GPS Smartphone – New!

* NOTE: This is a just a partial list. CLIP does not recommend any particular brand, service or manufacturer. Devices available in the marketplace will change.

**Update:  I was just informed that Verizon has locked their GPS so it cannot be used with third party applications (i.e. Garmin).  I will be sure to post if there is a change to this.

Do you have any recommendations of devices that you have used? Click on “comment” to let us know.

In the last blog post we talked about the 80/20 principle and how a slim 20% of your customers are probably making about 80% of the profits in your company. In this post we’ll explore how to use CLIP and Microsoft Excel to find your most profitable customers.

CLIP is already built to show you who your most profitable customers are per hour using the job costing report.  What we want to find out here is how to show which customers produce the most (volume) profit overall.

To do this we will export the job costing report to Microsoft Excel, then add a couple of formulas into Excel. 

The following is a brief overview and the detailed instructions are linked to at the bottom.

 

Find The Customers That Make the Most Profit for You

1.  Prepare a job costing report in CLIP using whatever criteria you should choose (only mowing, all services, date range, etc.)

2.  Export this report to Excel.

3.  Create a formula to calculate the profit per hour (PPH) for each customer.  The formula for this will be:

4.  Create a formula to determine Percentage of PPH

5.  Create a formula to find Total Profit per Customer

 

Click here for the detailed instructions.

This may seem a little intense but knowing this information is truly worthwhile.  And, if you follow the detailed instructions in the link below, it will not be difficult to calculate this.

PLEASE, if you have any questions or comments email editor@clipblog.net. 

Application Action:  First, follow the steps in the guide to find your most profitable customers.  Then make it your #1 “to-do” priority to call the top 10 profit producers to thank them for their business and ask if there is any way you can help them.

Photo by: goat_girl_photos