Landscaping and garden invoicing software

A landscaper’s activities are varied. You can position yourself as a generalist or specialize in a promising niche. Either way, the landscaping invoicing software you choose should take as much of the administrative burden off your shoulders as possible, freeing up time for your job sites and your business development.

Setting up your landscaping business

When you set up your landscaping business, your first task is to define its scope so you can choose the best solutions. You need to think through the following points.

ü The activity or activities you will carry out: garden maintenance, green space design, construction work for garden landscaping, supply and planting of orchards, ornamental plants, flower beds, etc. Find out about the qualifications required for some of these activities.

• The type of clientele you are targeting: individuals, businesses or local authorities, working directly with the client or as a subcontractor.
• The legal structure of your business.
• The composition of your team: do you want to work alone, with partners, or with employees?

You then need to draw up a business plan that lets you estimate your needs and chart a roadmap for the first years of your business. This document includes a market study proving the viability of your project and defines your sales strategy for finding your first clients, retaining them, getting referrals, and simultaneously seeking new clients to grow your revenue.

Selection criteria for your landscaping invoicing software

The success of your company depends on your talent as a landscaper, but also on your organization. As a business owner, you have to manage both the sales side and the administrative side. That’s why it’s important to choose landscaping invoicing software that lets you centralize all your data, invoice easily, and manage your business without wasting time. Your tool should be suited to your business.

Invoicing your job sites

Whatever your activity or activities, you must systematically invoice your job sites. Only services provided to individuals under €25 can escape invoicing — which means it will practically never happen to you.

Invoicing is the foundation of your bookkeeping. It should be easily customizable so you can issue documents bearing your logo and your colors, making you more recognizable to your clients. If you operate several activities under different legal entities, it becomes even more important to customize your sales documents, with different logos and colors.

Your landscaping invoicing software should give you an overview that lets you check at a glance that payments are being made on time. If the due date has passed, you can set up alerts to send a reminder letter to the client.

The structure of a landscaping business

Choosing the legal structure of your landscaping business is crucial. It determines your liability and the exposure of your personal assets, your taxation, your social security coverage, your ability to take on partners or hire employees, and more.

Depending on your activity, your business will be:

• a trade business (artisanale) if you carry out earthworks and masonry work;
• a commercial business if you supply plants (orchards, shrub beds, etc.) and handle planting and subsequent maintenance;
• an agricultural business if you specialize in plant production;
• a regulated professional business if you set up as a landscape designer.

The APE code assigned to you depends on the nature of your main activity.

• APE code 71.11Z Architectural activities.
• APE code 81.30Z Landscape service activities.
• APE codes from divisions 41, 42 and 43 if you carry out construction work.

The legal status of a landscaping business

You can choose from various legal statuses for your landscaping business. The most popular are:

1. the SARL and the SAS if you have partners and your activity is commercial and trade-based;

2. the sole proprietorship, the SASU or the EURL and the SASU if you prefer to work alone and your activity is trade-based or commercial;

3. the agricultural civil partnership, the sole proprietorship, or the GAEC (Groupement Agricole d’Exploitation en Commun) for an agricultural activity.

For a trade activity, you need to contact the CMA (Chambre des Métiers et de l’Artisanat); for a commercial activity, your point of contact is the CCI (Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie); for an agricultural activity, turn to the Chambre d’Agriculture. For a regulated professional business, you must file a declaration of activity with URSSAF within 8 days of starting your activity or registering with a professional chamber or body.

All the criteria defining your business need to be compatible with your landscaping invoicing software. Depending on your choices, your accounting obligations will differ. You therefore need features to invoice your landscaping job sites with the correct VAT rate applied, and to run custom exports for your tax filings.

Tax filings and taxation for a landscaping business

The way you file with the tax authorities, as well as how you are taxed, depends on the nature of your activity and the legal status you have chosen. Your landscaping invoicing software should therefore offer the right options to make the exports needed for your tax filings easier.

If you have any doubt about its capabilities, the best approach is to test the software and explore all its features. Bizyness’s landscaping invoicing software, for example, offers a free two-week trial. You don’t need to provide your bank details, and you get access to the entire software so you can check that it perfectly matches your needs.

This way you can check the ability to handle your filings whether you are under the micro-BA scheme affiliated with the MSA, the actual taxation regime for agricultural profits, the micro-entrepreneur (sole trader) regime, the actual taxation regime for BIC income and corporate tax, and so on.

The features of landscaping invoicing software

Use your trial period to evaluate all the features of the landscaping invoicing software. The goal is to make your life easier and to have you spend as little time as possible on administrative tasks. Your job is out in the field, and you shouldn’t have to spend your evenings entering accounting data — which is why simplicity and intuitiveness are essential in landscaping accounting software.

This tool should let you centralize all your accounting data, as well as your client and supplier records. Issuing sales documents (quotes, purchase orders, invoices, etc.) should be quick. You should automate as many actions as possible to free up your time. For example, if you have a recurring maintenance contract for a green space, invoicing can be handled automatically by the software.

If you use landscaping invoicing software like Bizyness, you can pair it with an automation tool like Zapier. The time you spend setting up your workflows is negligible compared to the time you’ll save afterward.