Doing Gardens


The simple mobile assistant for gardeners 

A list of features:
  • Automatically updates your weekly to-do-list
  • Indicates jobs overdue
  • Indicates payments overdue
  • Indicates advance payments
  • Shows activities for upcoming weeks
  • Allows sharing week job list to others via email or text
  • Automatically updates your payments to receive list
  • Shows weekly/monthly received payments
  • Keeps customer and job details
  • Shows customer payment history
This is not an app for a web based system with a monthly fee. Just one single purchase for unlimited use. Available via the Apple App Store (for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch).

Welcome

Read on to finding more information about the Doing Gardens app here on this page. Doing Gardens is a simple to use on-the-go app for gardeners to make life easier on the day-to-day admin side of the business.

The following information will help you to get started using the app on your iOS device.

You will notice, as you open the app when no data is available yet, you have four buttons at the bottom:
  • To Do: shows your list of jobs for current week and upcoming weeks, 
  • Payments: keeps record of the payments to receive, shows and allows adjustment of the payments you have received, as well as business related expenses,
  • Customers: keeps record of all your customers and their payment history, and 
  • More: maintain jobs, services, expense types, streets and places.
Read on to learn how these main sections work together.

Getting Started

You can immediately add customers and add jobs you plan to do in the present week or upcoming weeks by adding in your customer information and start date and job frequency as you are building your schedule from scratch.

Adding Customers

Go to Customers (bottom) and tap the + (top right) to add a new customer.

When adding a new customer you need to specify the address. Tap Select for the street. If there are no streets listed yet, then tap the + (top right) to add one.

When you add a new street you need to select the place where the street is located. Tap Select Place to choose from the list. If no places are listed yet, then tap the + (top right) to add one. A place can be a village or city neighbourhood, whatever how you want to define your work areas. When you add a new place fill in the name and tap Done (top right).
Tap the newly added place, which makes a check mark appear, and then tap Done (top right). You can then fill in the street name for the selected place, and then tap Done (top right). Tap the newly added street, which makes a check mark appear, and then tap Done (top right).

When you have the street selected you can add the other details, beginning with building number and/or building name. Continue with the remaining fields for the customer contact details. You can add additional information about the customer under comments.

When all details are added tap Done (top right) to have the new customer added to your customer base.

Adding Jobs

When viewing a customer you can see the number of jobs and payments displayed at the bottom of the view. Select Jobs to bring into view the jobs list, then tap the + (top right) to add one.

Jobs are based on services you can define, having standard prices. Tap Select for the service. If there are no services defined yet you will see an empty list. Tap the + (top right) to add a new service.

You can give your service a name and standard price (which you can later adjust per job) and add a note for yourself to it. Examples of services are: 'Grass cutting', Hedge trimming', 'Weeding', and so on. Setting a standard price for the services you provide help keeping your prices consistent. You can adjust the job price as needed.

Initially the current date is the selected date for the job to begin. Tap the date if you need to change the date and tap Done to apply the change.

Next you need to select the repeat cycle for the new job. You can choose to have it as a one-off job or have the job repeat every so many weeks or months. Tap Done to apply the repeat frequency.

After the frequency is selected the next job date is pre-filled (it is left empty if it is a one-off job). The next job date is the same as the begin date if the begin date is a future date, or the job date is the date from the begin date with the frequency applied. You can change the next date by tapping it if needed.

You can add a note to the job to give more additional information that you can quickly view from your To Do list.

When all details are added tap Done (top right) to have the new job added to your job list.

Doing Gardens

This is what it's all about - the gardens you need to work on. You can find the jobs listed as they are scheduled for the week on the To Do list (first icon at the bottom).

Jobs are grouped by week day and listed in alphabetical order by street name and house number. In the list heading you can see the week you are viewing, the number of jobs, and the total job list value. The > button next to the week allows you to view upcoming weeks.

To view additional information for a job tap the row to display an Job Info screen. You can use the Route Here button to trigger the iOS map app to show directions from your current location to the customer address. Or use the other button to bring the customer details in view.

You can share the list using email, text message, or otherwise using the share button (icon next to the Edit button). You will be asked wether you want to include price information in the shared list or not.
You can choose how you want to share the job list from the listed options that will appear. The list of options to choose from will depend on the applications you have installed on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch and if they support the share feature or not.

As you are doing your jobs you can edit the list as you have jobs finished or need to cancel jobs from the to do list. Slide the row you want to edit to the left and the options appear. Alternatively, tap Edit to make changes. While in edit mode you can change the order of the jobs within each day or move jobs to another day. (Except for jobs that are overdue from the week before. These always are scheduled for the first day of the week.) Tap Done when you have applied the changes you wanted to make at that time.

When a job is done you can slide the job row to the left and tap Finished. At this point a payment record will be generated. Also the price of the finished job will be deducted automatically from the customer's balance.

You can repeat this during the day as you are doing the jobs until all jobs are gone from the list.

Managing Payments

Go to Payments (second icon at the bottom). The payments are grouped by status To Receive and Received. You can also register business related expenses here.

Records for payment of finished jobs will automatically appear here, showing the due date (when the job was ticked off as finished) and next job date (depending of the job cycle you have set).

In the list of payments to receive the value of payments that customers owe you is presented above the list. When you go back to collect payment or when you are checking your incoming payments on your bank account you can update the list in the same way as you tick off finished jobs as described above. Tap Edit to make changes. Tap Done when you have applied the changes you wanted to make at that time.

You can repeat this any time as you are collecting payment or process incoming payments on your bank account until all payments are gone from the list of payments to receive.

Payments that you have ticked off as paid will appear in the list of received payments. Tap the Received tab to change the view.

In the payments received list all payments are ordered by date and grouped and totalled per month, per week, or per day. You can toggle the grouping by tapping the options button on the top right.

You can view an individual payment by selecting it. When you view an individual payment you can delete it by tapping the trash can button, or make changes using the Edit button. You can adjust the paid amount, pay date, and note. When you adjust the paid amount this change will also affect the customer's balance. The customer's balance is not affected for the amount you fill in as tip. Tap Done to apply the changes or Cancel to ignore.

When a customer pays in advance for future jobs, you can add payments to the list of payments received. Tap the + (top right) to add advance payments.

Select the customer, and if there is more than one job defined for that customer, select a job. (If there is just one job for the customer recorded in Doing Gardens it will be pre-selected automatically.)

When the job is selected the next job date, amount, pay date, and a note is filled in automatically. Simply tap the Paid button to add the advance payment. Each advance payment will also increase the amount of the customer's balance. The added payment will immediately be displayed and the next following job date will appear in the details above. Tap the Paid button again will add that future job as paid in advance as well. Repeat this until the number of future jobs paid for is covered. Tap Done (top right) to finish adding advance payments for this job.

The added advance payments will be listed on the payments received list. As you later tick off finished jobs that have been prepaid you will be notified of this. Prepaid jobs will not have a payment record created in the To Receive list as it has already been covered with a record in the Received list.

Protecting Your Data

As you are using Doing Gardens in your day-to-day business the data you are accumulating becomes more valuable and you want to make sure you don't lose all the information you are keeping.

Please, be aware Doing Gardens is not a web-based app and all your data is stored on your device. This means that you do not depend on a wifi or mobile data connection which can hinder you on-the-go, but it also means that your information is not stored on an internet connected server somewhere.

It is a good habit to make a backup from time to time. Please use iTunes to save your data to a safe place on your PC or external storage.

In order to do this, start iTunes on your PC.

From iTunes locate the Doing Gardens app on your device under File Sharing and click the app. You will see the data file listed on the right.
You can then save it to a safe place on your PC or connected storage medium.

If needed for some reason, you can restore the saved file back to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.

IMPORTANT:

Suggestions and Support

When you have suggestions or you need help with the application, please feel free to use the box on the top right, which includes a field to give your email address. That way I can get back to you as the blogger website has issues replying to comments at present.

To Rusty,

Sorry that my comments I sent don't show on the web site. I have now deleted the comments section to avoid confusion going forward.

In answer to your first comment: I am happy to add that function in with a next update I will release as soon as I can.
As regards the second comment: I very much appreciate you reporting an issue. I am happy to resolve any problem that might occur. Can you please use the box 'Suggestions & Support' on the top right and describe what you did as I can investigate and give you personal feedback and help you out.

Thanks