Labor is your biggest cost—and your biggest lever. If crews consistently spend more time on a property than estimated, your margins start to erode. Multiply that across dozens of jobs, and those small overruns can quickly snowball into costly surprises by the end of the month or quarter.
That’s why it’s essential to track how each individual property is performing from a labor perspective—not just at the end of the season, but week in and week out.
With visibility into labor hours as they trend over or under estimate, you can catch problems early: maybe it’s routine maintenance dragging on, scope creep sneaking in, or routing issues that waste time. And when you’re managing dozens (or hundreds) of properties, gut feel isn’t enough–you need clear, reliable data to guide your decisions.
🛠 Best Practices for Managing Property-Level Labor Performance
If a property is consistently going over estimated hours, don’t wait for the season to end—invest time early to investigate and make adjustments. Here’s where to focus:
🔍 1. Walk the Property
Start with an on-site visit. Look for:
- Overgrown or neglected areas needing more frequent service
- Excess debris or trash adding to cleanup time
- Poor access, limited parking, or tight maneuvering space
- Unwritten scope creep—like additional beds, watering, or trash pickup
These field-level issues often go undetected in the estimate but significantly impact labor time.
📊 2. Analyze Task-Level Time Usage
Use time-tracking data to pinpoint which tasks are dragging:
- Mowing vs. trimming vs. edging
- Time on-site vs. travel time
- Seasonal services (e.g., pruning, mulching)
This helps determine whether the issue lies with the property layout, the task planning, or the original estimate.
👷 3. Evaluate Crew Performance
Ask your crew and yourself:
- Is this crew slower across the board or just on this property?
- Are they new, undertrained, or missing key tools?
- Is the crew size appropriate for the property scope?
It could be a training opportunity—or a mismatch between crew capability and site complexity.
🚛 4. Inspect Equipment & Routing
Sometimes small logistical tweaks make a big difference:
- Are there recurring equipment issues?
- Is the property too far from other jobs on the route?
- Is job sequencing causing inefficiencies or crew fatigue?
While underperforming properties are where you’ll focus most of your attention, there are a couple other things to keep in mind when reviewing properties:
Don’t Ignore the Properties Performing Well
It’s just as important to monitor properties that are coming in under estimated hours.
Have Account Managers do site checks on these:
- Are crews skipping required tasks (like weeding or trimming)?
- Are service quality and customer satisfaction still strong?
Catching shortcuts early helps avoid client dissatisfaction and headaches at renewal time.
Look at Time-Based Variance Views
Viewing property labor variance over different timeframes gives more context:
- Year-to-Date (YTD): How are you tracking so far this calendar year?
- Rolling 12 Months: Ideal for long-term contracts or seasonal swings; compare this year to last year.
- Last 30 Days: Spot issues early—before they affect your margins for the full season.
📊 How BomData Helps You Put This Into Practice
BomData’s Property Analytics makes it easy to track labor performance and take action before issues escalate—all using the data you’re already capturing in Aspire.
🏆 Property Analytics Dashboard
- See your Top 10 properties with the highest labor hour variance, both over and under
- Quickly identify where to focus attention each week
- Filter by division, branch, or date range for tailored insights or search for a specific property by name
- Color-coded rankings help highlight the most pressing issues visually
- Use the Dashboard View for real-time display in the office or breakroom
🔍 Property Details View
- Drill into a specific property to understand where and when the variance is occurring
- Compare Actual vs. Estimated hours across divisions, services, and specific weeks
- View multi-year trends for long term properties
- Click into specific tickets for deeper investigation
- Align labor data to contract start/end dates for smarter renewal planning
By staying proactive and using the right tools, operations managers can protect margins, improve crew efficiency, and deliver consistent service quality across all properties.
With BomData, all of this becomes easier—and faster—to manage. Pair this guide with our dashboard, and you’ll have a complete system to keep labor hours on track all year long.