Apex Rental Pro ships with a dedicated Lawn Care business profile designed for recurring service operators — mowing, fertilizer programs, landscape maintenance, snow removal, and property clean-ups. When you set your business profile to Lawn Care during onboarding, the app rearranges itself: customers become Properties and the main workspace centers on Properties, Crews, Schedules, Equipment, and the Property Portal.
This guide covers the lawn-care-specific pieces. Core features like Invoicing, Quotes, Employees, and Analytics work the same way as in the rental profile — see their dedicated guides.
Switching to the Lawn Care Profile
You choose your profile during onboarding. If you already have an account and want to switch:
- Go to Settings → Business.
- Change Industry Profile to Lawn Care.
- Save.
The sidebar rebuilds with lawn-care screens. Your existing customers, quotes, and events are preserved.
Customers & Properties
In the lawn-care profile, each customer can have one or more properties (physical service addresses). That means one customer — say, a commercial owner with three buildings — shows up once in your directory but has three properties on your routes.
Adding a Property
- Open a customer.
- Click Add Property.
- Enter:
- Address and Service Notes (gate code, dog in yard, don't-mow zones)
- Lot Size (sq ft or acres)
- Service Frequency — Weekly, Bi-weekly, Monthly, As-needed
- Preferred Day — e.g., Wednesdays
- Primary Crew — which crew handles this property
- Click Save.
Crews
A crew is a team that goes out together in one truck. Each crew has:
- A name (e.g., "Crew 1 — Blue Truck")
- One or more assigned employees
- Default vehicle / trailer
- Default equipment loadout
Create crews under the Crews sidebar link. Each property is tagged to a primary crew so it shows up on that crew's route automatically.
Schedules
Schedules is the lawn-care version of recurring work planning. Instead of one-off events, you set up a service pattern by customer, property, service mix, timing, and crew ownership.
The Schedules tab keeps the recurring visits organized so the crew knows what to service and when, while the Properties tab keeps the addresses and access notes together.
Adjusting a Schedule
Open a schedule to change its customer, property, service mix, timing, or assigned crew. Those changes update future visits without changing the property record itself.
Skipping or Rescheduling a Visit
Need to skip a week (holiday, weather, customer request)? Use the request flow to move the visit or leave a note for the crew.
Service Schedules
Each property has a Service Schedule that automates the route. Common patterns:
- Weekly mowing April–October
- Bi-weekly mowing with one extra spring clean-up and one fall clean-up
- Monthly fertilizer treatments (6 rounds)
- Seasonal snow removal triggered by threshold
Set it once under the property's Schedule tab and routes populate automatically from then on. Adjust anytime — changes apply going forward only.
Pricing & Invoicing for Recurring Services
Two common ways to price lawn-care work:
Per-Visit Pricing
Charge a flat amount per completed visit. Invoices can be generated:
- Per visit — one invoice each time the property is serviced
- Monthly — one invoice at the end of each month summarizing every visit that month
- Contracted / Seasonal — flat monthly charge regardless of weather-related adjustments
Program Pricing
Sell the customer an annual "program" (e.g., "8 mow visits + 4 fertilizer rounds + 2 clean-ups for $X"), bill monthly, and let the route view track which services have been delivered so far against the contracted total.
Set the pricing model on each property under Pricing.
Property Portal
Each property can have a customer-facing portal at a private, tokenized link. From the portal, your customer can:
- See upcoming scheduled visits
- See service history (date, what was done, crew)
- View photos your crew uploaded
- Request a reschedule or leave a message for the crew
Requests show up in the portal's Recent Requests section so you can approve or update them before the next visit.
Equipment
Crews carry equipment: mowers, blowers, trimmers, sprayers, and trailers. Track each piece in Assets & Maintenance and assign it to a crew so you always know which truck has which mower. Maintenance reminders on crew equipment keep the field assets ready for the next visit.
Lawn Care on Mobile
The mobile app is built to live on a phone mounted in a truck. Crew leaders see:
- Today's route in order
- Tap-through directions to each property
- Property service notes right on the stop card
- One-tap "Arrived / Completed" logging
- Photo upload per stop
- GPS time clock (clock in at first stop, clock out at last)
See Mobile App for setup.
Gotchas
- Profile switching preserves data, but re-labels it: Switching from rental to lawn-care (or back) doesn't delete your records — customers, quotes, and events stay. But menus, terminology, and default screens rearrange. Don't flip profiles casually; pick one and stick with it.
- A property lives under a customer: There's no such thing as a property with no customer. If the owner changes, move the property to the new customer rather than deleting/recreating — this preserves service history.
- Schedules are recurring, not one-off: The Schedules tab is for recurring service work. One-off jobs still use the Quotes / Events flow — don't force a special job into a schedule.
- Skipping vs. rescheduling matters: A skipped visit does not behave like a normal service stop, while a rescheduled one moves the work to another time. Pick the option that matches what actually happened.
- Portal requests are suggestions, not commands: When a customer requests a reschedule or sends a message from the portal, nothing changes until you review it.