The Customer

The Challenge

The Results

Great Western Tree Care specializes in providing top-notch tree care services to the Castle Rock, CO, and Denver Metro areas. From tree pruning and removal to pest management and watering, their team of certified arborists has the knowledge and experience to keep your trees healthy and strong.

When Great Western Tree Care began operations on January 1, 2018, the company consisted of just Founder and President Chad Szpunar and one employee, Morgan Burnett, Trim Manager & Lead Climber. The two wrote proposals on paper templates with carbon copy estimates and invoices, and used QuickBooks for accounting.

“Our second year in business, we started to grow at a ridiculous pace. We achieved 140% growth in 2019, nearly 100% in 2020, and have continued to grow significantly. To keep track of our increasing number of customers, we had to find a better system than carbon copy paper.

“I already knew about SingleOps because a friend I was contract climbing for used it and raved about it. I always intended to use the app as soon as the time was right. We never considered other apps. I had used Arborgold working for another company, but I was never a fan. It seemed more complicated than productive,” stated Chad.

“I didn’t know how powerful SingleOps really was when I used it as a contract climber. I was given work orders generated by SingleOps and I loved the way they were presented. I loved the cleanness. It was very professional looking and made sense. But once I got my hands on it with Great Western Tree Care, I quickly realized it’s an extremely powerful tool that could do a ton. Four years later, we’re still finding more value in SingleOps,” said Chad.

Stephanie Szpunar, Office Manager & Vice President, said, “We integrated SingleOps with QuickBooks and are now able to use the tool to generate and send invoices, as well as exporting payroll. The things I like most are how easy the invoicing process is and sending reminders for past due. Before I had to go through and individually re-email invoices.

“The crew also loves SingleOps. They use it to punch in and out, and we use it to track their timecards. It’s easy and very user friendly. We haven’t had any complaints.

“We also use the ‘Lead Bucket’ all the time. When new prospects call in, we add them to SingleOps and assign the estimate to an arborist. It’s very easy to do and wonderful.”

“With SingleOps, we can make it easy for customers to request a quote online and pay invoices online.

“SingleOps is also helpful for creating proposals. Sometimes I create one on my iPad right there with a new customer.

“When there are multiple trees to prune and remove, I’ll include a map and notes for the crew. It’s phenomenal to be able to go back and look at maps to see what was done a few years ago,” said Chad.

“Our plant healthcare contracts automatically renew every year. Some services are performed annually, and others every two or three years. We send customers renewal info, including any price increases, as we had this season. This year we have about 900 renewals to go through.

“SingleOps has saved a ton of time. If we didn’t have software, it would be a complete disaster,” explained Stephanie.

“I love the filter option. We can pull up a service like annual fertilization in any given zone (based on zip code) to see everything that must be done. I don’t know how we’d keep track without software. 

“We have one customer who owns multiple properties that we’ve done a ton of work on. It could get confusing when each property is due for service, but with SingleOps it’s as easy as pulling up her name, and sorting to see what must be done this season. It’s user-friendly for us. I can’t even imagine not having software,” said Stephanie.

“Another feature I love is the ability to enter notes that can only be seen by the designated appropriate audience. ‘Client Notes’ can be seen by both the customer and the crew on both the proposal and work order. We can use ‘Crew Notes’ for more details the crew needs to know, but the customer might not understand, and ‘Internal Notes’ are for the office only,” said Chad.

Stephanie also watches the SingleOps webinars to learn about what’s new in the system, in addition to listening to the Green Industry Perspectives podcasts.

“We signed up for FleetSharp integration, which is really cool. It uses GPS to keep track of our crew and vehicle locations in real-time. We also have the Automations module which allows us to automatically follow up on un-accepted proposals and automatically send notifications on invoices coming due soon. We can add a link for customers to leave a Google review. It was all easy to get set up,” concluded Chad.