Setting up Yesoma for a landscaping business

Yesoma's landscaping playbook gives a lawn care or landscaping business a fully working inbox, quote flow, and customer-communication system in about ten minutes. This article walks you through what the playbook installs, how to adapt it to your operation, and how to use the built-in tools to turn one-time yard-cleanup customers into long-term maintenance accounts.

1. Applying the playbook

During onboarding, select Landscaping + lawn care on the industry picker. Yesoma immediately seeds your workspace with:

• Eight services (weekly mowing, bi-weekly maintenance, spring/fall cleanup, hedge trimming, mulch installation, aeration + overseeding, landscape design + install, snow removal)
• Seven customer-facing policies (recurring cancellation, weather rescheduling, property access, damage + insurance, seasonal pricing, payment terms, satisfaction guarantee)
• Eight FAQs pre-written for the questions landscaping customers ask most
• Eight reply templates covering the full customer journey from first inquiry to review request
• A three-step follow-up cadence (day 0 on inquiry, day 3 after quote, day 1 after completion)
• A Google review request set to fire one day after the first full service visit

Everything is editable. The playbook is a starting point calibrated to US residential landscaping — adjust prices, service names, and template copy to match how you actually work.

After the playbook loads, go to Business Brain and review your business description, service area, and response promise. The description seeds your AI reply suggestions, so a few accurate sentences about your crew size, service area, and specialties make the AI suggestions noticeably better.

2. Recurring vs. one-time service in Yesoma quotes

Landscaping businesses run two parallel sales motions and Yesoma handles both.

Recurring maintenance contracts (weekly or bi-weekly mowing) are set up as ongoing services. When you confirm a recurring customer, use the Recurring service welcome template, which sets expectations about visit day, billing cadence, and the 7-day cancellation notice. Recurring clients auto-bill monthly via the card on file — Yesoma surfaces that in the quote and confirmation flow so you never have to chase a payment for a $55 mow.

One-time services (cleanup, mulch, hedge trim, aeration) are quoted and closed like standard jobs. No deposit is required for most one-time work — the quote goes out, the customer accepts, you do the job, and payment is due on completion. The exception is landscape design + install: those projects require a 30% deposit because you are sourcing materials and blocking crew time for days or weeks.

When you send a quote in Yesoma, choose the correct price type. Weekly and bi-weekly mowing are starting from so the customer understands the floor without a binding number before you have seen the yard. Landscape design is custom quote — no number appears until you have sent a formal written quote after the walk-through.

3. Walk-through-then-quote vs. photo-quote workflows

Most landscaping pricing requires seeing the property. Yesoma supports two paths.

Photo quote: For hedge trimming, mulch installs, and smaller cleanups, the first-reply template asks for property address and photos. You can often quote from photos alone and close the job in two messages. The Pricing reply — need to see the yard template handles this gracefully — it gives the customer a ballpark range while being honest that the final price depends on what you find on-site.

Walk-through-then-quote: For landscape design + install projects and any job where condition uncertainty is high, the same template offers a free 15-minute walk-through as an alternative to photos. Once the walk-through is done, send the formal quote using Quote sent — landscaping, which includes a deposit line pre-filled for design projects. The follow-up cadence automatically fires the Quote follow-up (3 days) template if the customer goes quiet — no manual chase required.

For recurring mowing, neither a walk-through nor photos are strictly required for a standard residential lot. You can quote based on address alone (lot sizes are often public record), confirm the price at first visit, and adjust if the property differs significantly. Put a note in the customer record if you need to adjust after the first cut.

4. Seasonal service reminders as a retention engine

The Seasonal service reminder template is the highest-leverage tool in the landscaping playbook. Sent to existing customers at the right moment each season, it converts dormant accounts and adds revenue without any new marketing.

The template lists four seasonal upsells with the season tokens already in place:

• Spring: mulch installation — frame it as weed suppression and curb appeal, not just a nice-to-have
• Fall: aeration + overseeding — position it as the best investment for a thicker lawn the following spring
• Fall / early winter: yard closeout and gutter cleaning (if you offer it) — one last visit before the ground freezes
• Late fall: snow removal contract — the urgency hook is real; route spots fill in October and November

Set a reminder in Yesoma's follow-up system to send this template once per season to any customer who had a visit in the past 12 months but has not yet booked the seasonal service. You can do this with a manual batch send from the Customers tab, or set up an automated follow-up rule triggered by a completed visit tag.

The template uses bracket placeholders ([Spring: ...], [Fall: ...]) — delete the seasons that do not apply when you send it, or customize one version per season and save each as its own template in your library.

5. Weather rescheduling and recurring billing setup

Weather rescheduling is one of the most common friction points in landscaping customer relationships. Yesoma handles it cleanly if you set it up correctly.

Your Weather rescheduling policy (pre-loaded from the playbook) states that rain reschedules carry no charge and you make up the visit within the same week. When you need to reschedule a visit, use the Reschedule action in the inquiry thread — this sends a notification to the customer, updates the visit date in the record, and prevents any confusion about whether the visit was skipped or simply moved.

For recurring billing, Yesoma bills by the card on file at the end of each calendar month for visits completed that month. This means a weather-rescheduled visit that stays in the same month bills normally. A visit that slips to the following month bills in that month's cycle instead. Customers who understand this upfront — the welcome template explains it — rarely question the bill.

If a visit is legitimately skipped at the customer's request (they gave 7-day notice), mark it as skipped in the visit log so it does not appear on the monthly invoice. If it was skipped due to weather and made up later, mark the makeup visit as the billable one.

6. What your reply templates look like in action

The eight templates in the playbook cover the full arc of a landscaping customer relationship. Here is how they chain together in a typical recurring maintenance scenario:

1. Customer sends an inquiry about weekly mowing. Yesoma auto-suggests First reply — landscaping inquiry, which asks for address, service type, and recurring vs. one-time intent. You send it in one tap.

2. Customer replies with the address. You visit the property or pull the lot size from records, then use Pricing reply — need to see the yard or go straight to Quote sent — landscaping if the price is clear.

3. Customer accepts the quote. You send Recurring service welcome, which confirms the schedule, billing terms, and access requirements. The customer knows exactly what to expect — no surprises on the first visit.

4. If the customer goes quiet after the quote, the follow-up cadence automatically sends Quote follow-up (3 days) without you doing anything.

5. After the first full visit, Yesoma fires Post-visit confirmation + review request the next day. It includes a 7-day satisfaction guarantee call-out and the review link. Google reviews from recurring customers compound over a season into a meaningful star average on your profile.

6. At season change, you send Seasonal service reminder to the full recurring list. Responses come back as new inquiries and route directly into the inbox tagged with the source.

For one-time jobs the arc is shorter — inquiry, pricing reply or quote, post-visit confirmation. The no-availability template handles route-full situations without losing the lead: it offers a waitlist and asks whether a one-time service might work in the meantime, which often converts.