Before You Switch Landscape Software, Rehearse Monday
Switching landscape software for 2027? Rehearse a working Monday with real records before trusting the import, from the first route to the last invoice.
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Before you switch landscape software for 2027, ask the new system to get your company through a Monday.
Use real examples from your business in the vendor’s supported trial or test process. Have the people who do the work try them. Keep customer messages, charges, and other live actions out of the rehearsal.
A successful import tells you that records were accepted. Monday tells you whether the office and crew can use them.
The landscape software comparison can help you choose candidates. This is the exercise to run before moving the business into one.
6:45 a.m.: a crew lead opens the day
The crew lead needs the first property, the work, and the access instructions.
Give them an account with more than one service address. Ask them to find the correct site on the device they use in the field. Let them do it without the person who prepared the import pointing at the screen.
A billing address in the service-address field can survive an import perfectly well. It becomes a problem when someone drives there.
Notes need their context too. “Use side entrance” is less helpful if the new system attached it to the company rather than the relevant property.
The vendor may be able to support the relationship you need. Your records still have to land in that relationship correctly. Discovering the mismatch during a rehearsal gives you time to fix it.
8:10 a.m.: a familiar customer asks for more work
A commercial customer calls about another property.
Can the office find the existing customer, identify the new site, and record an inquiry without treating it as approved work?
Use an example where the billing contact and operational contact differ. The office needs to know who can discuss the work and where to send the proposal. The fact that both people belong to the same company does not make their roles interchangeable.
This is also a good point to check open estimates. Find the latest scope and its actual approval status. If the migration preserved the price but lost the distinction between proposed and accepted work, the next customer conversation can become uncomfortable.
Write down the mismatch you found. “The import looked off” is difficult to hand back to a vendor. “This customer’s second property became a separate billing account” is something they can investigate.
10:30 a.m.: the week’s plan changes
Use an example your office recognizes: a moved visit, a seasonal pause, or a start date that differs from the normal recurrence.
Ask the scheduler to show the resulting workdays.
Seeing “weekly” on the recurring job is encouraging. Seeing the correct visits on the correct dates is better evidence. A recurrence can keep its label while losing an exception.
For 2027 maintenance, look at the first service week and another week with a known change. If you operate winter services, use those examples too. A snow workflow may be represented differently from a mowing route.
Then have the crew lead find the updated instruction. The office’s calendar and the field view both need to tell the same story.
If better routing is part of the reason for changing systems, bring the route density math into the review. A new interface does not help a route if it cannot preserve the property and scheduling information needed to plan it.
1:15 p.m.: a new inquiry enters from the website
Send a controlled test request through the entry point the business will use.
Follow it into the new tool. Can the office find the property, requested service, and useful notes? Who receives the notification? Is the request represented as an inquiry, or has a connection turned it into a confirmed job?
Check whether the old workflow is still listening. Two destinations may be intentional during a transition, but two independent sets of customer reminders usually deserve a closer look.
The same applies to any automated lead handoff. Confirm the actual trigger and destination action. A working connection between apps does not establish that everything synchronizes in both directions.
The CRM follow-up article explains why the next action matters. The rehearsal should end with someone in the office able to say what they would do with this request.
4:00 p.m.: the numbers need to agree
Choose an account with an outstanding balance or a deposit.
Have the person responsible for those records compare the authoritative numbers with what the new workflow shows. Decide which system owns the balance during the transition. A neat customer record is not financial reconciliation.
Do the same with records that remain in an archive. If closed history will stay in the old platform, make sure staff can retrieve what they need and understand where it lives.
Exporting clients is only one part of this move. Jobber’s client export documentation and import documentation describe their own supported data and requirements. Read the current guidance for each platform involved; a customer export should not be assumed to include every job, attachment, or balance.
Ask the vendor to show you what will transfer and what requires a different process. Get a concrete answer for the records your Monday depends on.
Friday: decide whether Monday is ready
At the end of the rehearsal, collect the problems the office and crew found.
Some may need data cleanup. Some may need a different mapping between old and new fields. Some may reveal a limitation you need to accept or a reason to reconsider the move.
Assign those corrections before setting the final changeover time.
You also need to account for work happening after the final export. Customers will still call, accept proposals, change dates, and make payments. Decide where those changes will be recorded and how they reach the new system.
A brief period with two tools needs a clear purpose. Staff should know which one controls new work, messages, and financial actions. “Keep both updated for a while” can create two imperfect versions of the business.
Keep the old records accessible until the agreed checks pass and your record-retention and recovery arrangements are covered.
Winter can be a good time for this work if the office has room to do it. Snow operations, renewals, and year-end tasks can make that same period busy, so choose capacity rather than a month on the calendar.
The best demonstration of new software is an ordinary working day that your team can complete without someone from the migration project standing behind every chair.