Reports tell you what happened. Analytics tells you what it means, and the forecast takes a run at what happens next. Both are worth a monthly look rather than a daily one.
1 The four analytics views
The analytics dashboard is built from four sections:
Service Performance. Which services actually make you money. Most operators find one service quietly subsidising another, and the answer is usually to reprice rather than to drop it.
Customer Analytics. Who your customers are and how they behave. This is where you notice that a handful of accounts represent most of your revenue, which is worth knowing before one of them leaves.
Crew Performance. How crews compare. Read this alongside worker earnings, and be careful: a crew given harder routes will look worse on raw numbers.
Seasonal Trends. The shape of your year. For lawn care this is the most useful of the four, because your business is seasonal whether or not you plan around it.
2 The revenue forecast
The forecast projects revenue forward. You choose the horizon: 3, 6 or 12 months.
3 It needs history first
Revenue forecasting needs at least 12 months of completed jobs. Below that, the page tells you so rather than showing you a number.
That is the right call. A forecast built on one season would confidently project a February that looks like July. If you are in your first year, this page is something to come back to.
4 Read all three scenarios
The forecast gives you three lines, not one:
- Most likely
- Best case
- Worst case
Plan against the worst case, not the most likely one. The gap between worst and best is telling you how uncertain the projection is, and a wide gap means the forecast is guessing. If you can survive the worst case, you can take the risk you were considering.
Using only the most likely line is how people commit to a truck payment on the strength of a good spring.
5 Questions worth asking it
- Which service has the worst margin, and can I reprice it rather than drop it?
- What does my off-season actually look like in revenue, not in feeling?
- How much of my revenue rides on my largest few customers?
- If the worst case happens, do I still make payroll in February?
That last one is the reason the seasonal view and the forecast belong together. Lawn care revenue is not flat, and the winter is survived with decisions made in the summer.
A caution
These numbers describe the work you recorded. If jobs are completed but not invoiced, or invoices are raised outside the system, the analytics inherit those gaps and will quietly mislead you.
Reconcile first, then read the analytics. See how to reconcile your transactions.