Mission Lawn Services App Field Guide
This guide explains the owner dashboard in plain language. It is written for real operators, office staff, crew leads, and helpers who need to understand what each section means without needing to know how the software is built.
The short helper icons inside the app give quick answers. This page is the deeper dive. Use it when a field, button, filter, or workflow feels unclear, especially during onboarding, training, or early testing.
Reports
Reports give the owner a snapshot of work volume, job status, scheduled value, requests, and operational flow for a selected time period.
What Reports Are For
Reports are not just a list of jobs. They are the owner’s quick health check. They answer questions like: What work is scheduled? What is still unpaid? What is overdue? How much work value is on the board? Are customer requests piling up?
Date Range
Use Today, This Week, This Month, This Year, or Custom to control the window of data. This matters because the same business can look calm today but overloaded for the week, or profitable this month but thin next month.
Total Jobs
The number of jobs inside the selected reporting range. This is useful for understanding workload, but it should be read alongside status and value. Ten small jobs and ten large jobs do not mean the same thing.
Scheduled
Jobs that are planned but not yet started or completed. Scheduled jobs are future or current work that should be watched for staffing, route planning, weather, and customer timing.
In Progress
Jobs that have been started but not finished. If this count stays high too long, it may mean crews are not closing jobs, jobs are being interrupted, or the workflow needs cleanup.
Unassigned
Jobs that do not currently have a crew or employee attached. This is one of the most important operational warnings. A job without an assignee can look scheduled on paper while nobody is actually responsible for doing it.
Completed Unpaid
Work that has been finished but has not yet been marked paid. This is where revenue can quietly leak. Completed unpaid work should be reviewed regularly so billing does not fall behind the field work.
Paid Jobs
Jobs that are finished and paid. This helps separate completed work from collected revenue. It is useful for tracking how cleanly the business is converting work into cash.
Scheduled Value
The total dollar value of jobs in the selected range. This is not the same as collected money. It tells you the value of work on the schedule, which helps with planning, staffing, and forecasting.
Requests In Range
Customer portal requests that fall inside the selected time window. Requests are not the same as jobs. They are customer-submitted items that may need review, scheduling, or closure.
Export CSV
Export CSV downloads the report data into a spreadsheet-friendly file. Use this when you want to review data outside the app, share it with an office worker, keep a backup, hand something to a bookkeeper, or do deeper analysis in Excel or Google Sheets.
When To Use Reports
Use Reports at the start of the day, end of day, before billing, before payroll review, after weather disruptions, and during weekly planning. Reports are the owner’s control panel, not just a paperwork feature.
Customers
Customers are the people, households, businesses, churches, property managers, or organizations you serve and bill.
What A Customer Record Represents
A customer record is the account-level relationship. It answers: Who are we serving? Who is responsible for communication? Who is connected to the properties, service plans, jobs, and requests?
Customer Name
Use the name people in the business will recognize quickly. For residential customers, this may be a person or household. For commercial customers, it may be a company, church, apartment complex, storage facility, or property management group.
Email And Phone
These are the main communication fields. They may eventually support customer notifications, billing reminders, confirmations, portal communication, and service updates. Keep them clean and current.
Credit
Credit is used to track customer balance or credit amount. This can support future billing logic. For example, a customer may prepay, receive a credit, or have a balance adjustment.
Visible Notes
Visible notes should contain practical service context. Examples include gate codes, preferred contact method, pet warnings, parking instructions, communication preferences, or “call before arrival.” Avoid writing angry, sarcastic, or legally risky notes here. Assume notes may eventually be visible to more people than you expect.
Lifecycle Status
Lifecycle status helps separate active customers from paused, inactive, or no-longer-served customers. This prevents old customers from cluttering normal operations while preserving history.
Deleting Customers
Be careful with delete. A customer may have connected properties, jobs, requests, service plans, or billing history. In many cases, inactive or paused is safer than deleting.
Residential vs Commercial
Residential and commercial customers are not just different labels. They often require different communication style, scheduling expectations, pricing logic, and service history.
Residential Customer
A residential customer is usually an individual, couple, family, or household. Communication is often more personal. They may care about timing around kids, pets, gates, privacy, landscaping preferences, neighborhood expectations, or special events.
Commercial Customer
A commercial customer is usually a business, organization, church, apartment complex, property manager, storage facility, or managed location. Communication is usually more operational. They may care more about consistency, documentation, invoice clarity, liability, access, appearance standards, and proof that the work was completed.
Tone Of Communication
Residential communication can be warmer and more personal. Commercial communication should usually be clearer, more structured, and more professional. With commercial accounts, avoid casual assumptions. Be precise about dates, scope, pricing, responsibilities, and follow-up.
Scheduling Expectations
Residential customers may be more flexible but more emotionally affected by inconvenience. Commercial customers may be less emotional but more strict about timing, access windows, open hours, parking, tenant impact, or property appearance before events.
Service Notes
Residential notes may include things like “dog in yard,” “do not block driveway,” or “prefers text.” Commercial notes may include “contact office before arrival,” “service rear entrance first,” “avoid tenant parking,” or “invoice monthly.”
Billing Difference
Residential billing may be simpler and tied to individual visits or recurring household service. Commercial billing may involve purchase orders, invoice cycles, approval chains, multiple properties, or service documentation.
Why The Label Matters
The label helps the owner and staff think correctly about the account. It is not just data. It changes the expected tone, level of documentation, and operational care.
Properties
Properties are the physical locations where service happens. One customer can have one property or many properties.
What A Property Represents
A property is the location-level record. It answers: Where does the work happen? The customer is who you serve. The property is where the service is performed.
Property Label
Use a short label that makes sense in daily operations. Examples: Home, Annex, Building A, Storage Lot, Main Office, North Campus, South Lot, or Rental House.
Customer Connection
Every property belongs to a customer. This keeps jobs, requests, and service plans from floating loose. If a customer has several locations, the property connection prevents confusion.
Address
The address is the actual service location. Keep this accurate. Wrong property data can send crews to the wrong place, create billing confusion, or make the customer think the business is disorganized.
Filter By Customer
Use the customer filter when the property list gets long. This is especially useful for commercial customers with multiple locations or property managers with several accounts.
Why Properties Matter
Service plans and jobs should attach to the correct property. If they do not, the app may show work under the wrong location, customer history may become muddy, and reporting may lose accuracy.
Service Plans
Service Plans define recurring agreements. They are the template that repeated work can be created from.
What A Service Plan Is
A service plan is not a job by itself. It is the agreement or pattern that can produce jobs. Think of it as the recurring service rule: who, where, what, how often, how much, and how it should behave at season changes.
Customer
The customer attached to the recurring agreement. This keeps the plan connected to the correct account.
Property
The physical location where the recurring work happens. A customer with several properties may have different plans for each location.
Service Type
The category of work covered by the plan. Examples may include mowing, snow removal, aeration, fertilizing, cleanup, weed treatment, or another service type.
Plan Code
The plan code is an identifier that helps keep plans consistent. It is useful when multiple plans have similar names or when reviewing job creation later.
Default Price
The normal price used when jobs are created from this plan. This can usually be adjusted later at the job level if a specific visit is different.
Frequency
Frequency describes how often the work normally repeats. Examples include weekly, monthly, one time, seasonal, or another business-defined rhythm.
Plan Start Date
The date the recurring plan begins. This helps prevent work from being created too early or before the agreement is active.
Handle Separately At EOS
EOS means end of season. This option is for plans that should not follow the normal end-of-season rollover. Use it for special agreements, one-off cases, or plans that need human review before being carried forward.
Plan Status
Active plans are part of normal operations. Paused or inactive plans stay stored but should not create normal recurring work. This is safer than deleting plans when a customer may return later.
Common Mistake
Do not change a job to a different kind of service if it came from a plan that should control the service type. For example, a mowing plan should not quietly turn into a spray job. That creates bad history and billing confusion.
Employees
Employees are team members who perform or manage work.
What An Employee Record Represents
An employee record is the person-level record. It tracks who can be assigned, who belongs to a crew, what role they have, and any useful operational notes.
Full Name
Use the name the team recognizes. This is what appears in assignments, crews, and job views.
Email And Phone
Contact information can support future notifications, scheduling, field communication, and internal follow-up.
PIN
A PIN can support simple identification or future field-access workflows. It should be handled carefully if used for login, time tracking, or employee-specific actions.
Role
Role separates owner, manager, and employee responsibilities. This matters for future permissions, dashboard visibility, and accountability.
Home Crew
Home crew is the employee’s normal crew assignment. It should represent where that employee generally belongs. Temporary changes should be handled through job assignment or dispatch, not by constantly changing the employee’s home crew.
Status
Active employees can appear in normal assignment choices. Inactive employees should stay out of normal scheduling while preserving history.
Notes
Use notes for practical context. Examples: “Orange crew lead,” “prefers morning route,” “new hire,” “snow only,” or “do not assign to chemical jobs.” Keep notes professional.
Crews
Crews are groups of employees that can be scheduled together.
What A Crew Represents
A crew is a scheduling group. It helps the owner assign work to a team rather than choosing individual employees for every job.
Crew Name
Use clear names that are easy to say and recognize. Examples: Blue, Red, Orange, Mowing Crew, Snow Crew, East Route, or Fertilizer Team.
One Crew Per Employee
Each employee should belong to one home crew at a time. This keeps the normal structure clean. If someone temporarily helps another crew, assign them through the job or dispatch process instead of rewriting their home crew.
Crew Lead
The crew lead is the person responsible for that crew. There should only be one lead per crew. If you change the lead, the app should make that change obvious so the owner does not accidentally create two leaders.
Add Employee To Crew
Adds an available active employee to the crew. If someone is already on another crew, that should be treated carefully so the normal crew structure does not become muddy.
Make Lead
Promotes a crew member to lead. If a lead already exists, the owner should confirm the change before replacing the old lead.
Remove
Removes the employee from the crew. This should not necessarily delete the employee record. It simply changes the crew relationship.
Common Mistake
Do not use crew changes for every temporary dispatch decision. Crews are the normal structure. Jobs are where one-off exceptions should happen.
Customer Requests
Customer Requests come from the customer portal and need owner review.
What A Customer Request Is
A customer request is something the customer submitted. It is not automatically the same thing as a scheduled job. It may need review, clarification, scheduling, or closure.
Request Type
The category or subject of the request. Examples: weed treatment, aeration, schedule change, cleanup, fertilizing, snow concern, or other.
Requested Timing
This tells you when the customer wants the work done. ASAP means they want it soon but did not choose a specific date. A dated request means timing matters more and should be reviewed carefully.
Dated Priority Request
A dated priority request has a specific date or timing concern. These are highlighted because missing the timing may frustrate the customer even if the actual work is simple.
Filter By Customer
Shows requests from one customer only. This helps when you are handling all requests for a specific person, business, or property manager.
Filter By Property
Shows requests tied to one property only. This is useful for commercial accounts, multi-property customers, apartment complexes, or managed locations.
Schedule
Starts the process of turning a request into work. Scheduling should connect the request to the correct customer, property, service type, date, price, and assignment.
Mark Read
Acknowledges that the request has been seen. This does not necessarily close it or schedule it. Use this when the request is reviewed but still needs later action.
Close
Closes the request when it no longer needs action. Do not close a request just because it is annoying. Close it when it is resolved, rejected, duplicated, or no longer relevant.
Communication Tone
Customer requests often carry emotion because the customer is asking for help, timing, or a change. Keep responses clear, calm, and specific. For residential customers, a warm tone usually helps. For commercial customers, clarity and accountability matter most.
Jobs
Jobs are the actual scheduled work visits. They are where customers, properties, service types, dates, prices, and assignments become real work.
What A Job Represents
A job is a specific work visit. It answers: What are we doing, where are we doing it, who is responsible, when is it scheduled, what does it cost, and what is the current status?
Customer
The customer this job belongs to. The customer should match the property and service plan. If the customer is wrong, reporting, billing, and history can become unreliable.
Property
The physical location where the job will be done. This is especially important for customers with more than one property.
Service Plan
Optional. Choose this when the job comes from a recurring agreement. If a job is created from a service plan, be careful about changing fields that should be controlled by that plan.
Service Type
The kind of work being performed on this job. Examples include mowing, snow, aeration, treatment, cleanup, or fertilizing. The service type should match the actual work and any connected plan.
Assign To Crew Or Employee
This determines who is responsible for the job. Assigning to a crew is best for normal team work. Assigning to an individual is useful for solo work or special exceptions.
Special One-Job Override
If an individual already belongs to a crew but is assigned directly to a job, that is a one-job override. The point is to keep the normal crew structure intact while allowing real-world flexibility.
Job Title
The label shown in owner, crew, and customer task views. A clear title helps everyone understand what the job is without opening every detail.
Price
The charge for this specific visit. The price may come from a service plan, but the job-level price is what matters for that visit.
Scheduled Date
The date the job is planned. If the job is delayed, skipped, or rescheduled, update the status and date carefully so the board stays honest.
Status
Status tracks where the job sits in the workflow. Scheduled means planned. In progress means started. Completed unpaid means done but not paid. Paid means completed and collected. Overdue means it needs attention. Skipped, weather delayed, and blocked access explain why work did not happen normally.
Duplicate Override
Use duplicate override only when the app warns you that a similar job may already exist and you intentionally want to create another one. This prevents accidental double scheduling.
Unassigned Jobs
An unassigned job has no crew or employee attached. This is a serious operational gap because the job may look scheduled while nobody owns it.
Common Mistake
Do not casually change a job into a different kind of work if it came from a recurring plan. If a mowing job becomes a spray job, the app may preserve a history that no longer makes sense.
Dispatch Thinking
Dispatch Thinking explains how the app treats crews, employees, and one-off job assignments.
The Core Idea
The app separates normal structure from temporary reality. Employees have home crews. Crews have leads. Jobs can still handle exceptions.
One Crew Per Employee
The employee’s home crew lives on the employee record. This keeps the normal team structure clean and predictable.
One Lead Per Crew
Each crew should have one clear lead. Multiple leads create confusion. No lead creates accountability gaps.
Temporary Coverage
Temporary coverage should happen through job assignment, not by constantly changing the employee’s home crew.
Individual Job Assignment
An individual can be assigned to a job, but if that person already belongs to a crew, the manager should acknowledge the special one-job override.
Why This Matters
The goal is to keep daily operations flexible without making the permanent records sloppy. Dispatch needs room to breathe, but the database still needs a backbone.
End-of-Season Handling
End-of-season handling controls how seasonal or recurring work should be reviewed, paused, rolled forward, or handled separately.
What EOS Means
EOS means end of season. For lawn and snow businesses, some work naturally ends, pauses, or changes when the season changes.
Normal Rollover
A normal recurring plan may continue into the next season or be prepared for future scheduling without needing special review.
Handle Separately
Use this when a plan should not follow the normal rollover path. Examples include special pricing, customer-specific agreements, seasonal uncertainty, commercial contracts, or one-time exceptions.
Why It Matters
End-of-season cleanup is where old agreements can accidentally turn into new work, or active customers can get missed. Clear EOS handling protects the schedule and the customer relationship.
Common Mistakes
These are the mistakes most likely to create confusion, billing errors, dispatch problems, or bad customer experience.
Changing The Wrong Level
Do not change a customer record when the issue is really a property. Do not change a property when the issue is really one job. Do not change a home crew when the issue is just one day of temporary coverage.
Confusing Requests With Jobs
A customer request is not automatically a scheduled job. It needs review, scheduling, or closure.
Letting Jobs Stay Unassigned
Unassigned jobs are dangerous because they can look real without being owned by anyone.
Using Delete Too Quickly
Deleting records can erase useful history or break relationships between customers, properties, jobs, plans, and requests. When in doubt, pause or mark inactive instead.
Using Notes Carelessly
Notes should be useful and professional. Avoid writing anything you would regret if a manager, employee, customer, or attorney saw it later.
Letting Service Plans Drift
If service plans are not accurate, recurring jobs will not be accurate. Plans should be reviewed when customers change scope, pricing, frequency, or properties.
Not Updating Status
A job status should reflect reality. If the work was delayed, skipped, blocked, completed, or paid, the status should say so.