Labor is the single biggest cost in landscaping operations—and even small scheduling mistakes in Aspire can snowball into major losses in productivity, job costing, and crew efficiency.
In this guest post for Two Twelve Advisors, we break down four common scheduling issues we frequently see across Aspire users—like zero-hour visits, overscheduled tickets, and unassigned crews—and how to fix them with better workflows and tools.
If you’re looking to tighten up your labor controls and improve field performance, this is a must-read.
👉 Read the full article on Two Twelve’s blog or read below
Common Scheduling Errors in Aspire—And How to Fix Them
Scheduling in Aspire isn’t just about getting crews on the calendar—it’s about controlling labor, setting clear expectations, and ensuring accurate job costing. Labor is often the single largest cost in a landscaping company, accounting for 30–45% of revenue according to NALP. Even small scheduling mistakes—like zero-hour visits or unassigned crews—can lead to inflated labor costs and inaccurate forecasting models.
In this article, we’ll break down four common scheduling mistakes we see—and how to avoid them.
1. Overscheduled Tickets
What it is:
When a work ticket is scheduled on the board (drag-and-drop), Aspire automatically defaults the visit hours based on estimated hours—but it doesn’t automatically divide those hours appropriately across multiple visits, or based on actual crew size.
Why it matters:
Crews don’t know how many hours they’re supposed to work, since the entire estimate was allocated to their schedule. This can lead to a mismatch in expectations. Crews might think their visit was efficient, when in reality they may have used more hours than they should have to hit the overall work ticket estimate.
How to fix it:
Review and adjust Visit Hours every time you drop a ticket onto the schedule board, rather than dragging it across multiple days. Factor in the crew size and expected duration of the visit to give the team an accurate estimate. Those extra few minutes ensure better field communication and more accurate scheduling capacity.
BomData users who avoid ticket dragging see a 10–15% increase in visit efficiency compared to those who drag tickets across multiple days.
2. Zero-Hour Visits
What it is:
A visit is added to a crew’s schedule, but no labor hours are assigned—either by accident or due to incomplete ticket setup. This will show up on the crew’s schedule as 0.0 scheduled hours.
Why it matters:
As with overscheduled tickets, crews don’t know how long they should spend onsite. Labor reporting will be inaccurate, since crews will still record time for the visit—but Aspire won’t know how long it should have taken.
Green industry sources estimate that companies lose 10–15% of total field labor to inefficiencies like unclear schedules, missed time logging, and poor crew assignments (Green Industry Pros, Aspire, LMN). Fixing zero-hour visits is one of the simplest ways to recapture that lost time and boost crew productivity without adding more headcount.
How to fix it:
Always review and assign Visit Hours in Aspire, even if it’s a last-minute addition to the schedule. A clear expectation—even if it’s just 30 or 45 minutes—helps ensure consistent job costing and productivity tracking.
3. Unscheduled Visits
What it is:
An unscheduled visit happens when a crew completes work on a job they weren’t officially scheduled for. This can occur when a crew responds to a client issue or gets redirected in the field.
Why it matters:
These visits throw off routing efficiency and make reporting harder. If the visit wasn’t on the schedule and no labor estimate was given, crews are left guessing how long to spend. This leads to unpredictable labor usage, less accurate job costing, and sometimes even missed work elsewhere on the schedule.
Unscheduled visits are often caused by rework, unclear expectations, or miscommunication—all of which eat into profitability. Industry experts estimate that rework can cost landscaping companies 5–10% of gross revenue—especially when visits are misassigned, incomplete, or missing key schedule details. A few missed or unlogged visits per week can quietly drain tens of thousands from annual margins.
How to fix it:
Your long term goal should be to reduce future scheduling changes as much as possible, so while it may be tempting to retroactively add the visit to the schedule to lower your scheduling error rate, your time is better spent understanding why the unscheduled visit occurred and fixing the systematic error in your process to make it less likely in the future.
4. Unassigned Crews on Visits
What it is:
A visit is scheduled for one crew, but another crew performs the work. This often happens when teams shift around due to weather, job delays, or early completions.
Why it matters:
Occasional exceptions are fine and expected, but frequent mismatches between scheduled and actual crews indicate deeper issues—such as poor labor planning or inaccurate estimates. Over time, this affects productivity tracking, job costing, and even team accountability.
How to fix it:
Encourage field supervisors or Route Managers to update the assigned crew in Aspire if the schedule change happens before the day starts. This ensures the correct team is credited and the labor data reflects reality. However, similar to unscheduled visits, work towards reducing how frequently this type of issue arises as a long term goal by addressing systematic issues.
You can use BomData’s automated weekly error reports to spot patterns in unassigned crews—it’s a signal that estimates or other internal processes need to be reviewed.
Final Thoughts
Scheduling mistakes can ripple across field performance, job costing, and customer satisfaction. But with the right workflows, these errors are avoidable—and correcting them can lead to tighter margins and a more predictable operation.
BomData is an Aspire add-on that highlights common scheduling errors and links you directly to the Work Ticket or Route to make corrections. It also flags issues before they go live—giving Route Managers a chance to review and fix them before crews receive their schedules.
To make maintenance crews more efficient, it’s critical to give Route and Operations Managers the tools and processes to schedule accurately and consistently. Without this, reports become unreliable—and leadership won’t know whether the business is truly hitting its targets.