Hortus Gardens has increased revenue each year for three years while maintaining an 18% profit margin. 85% of their clients pay digitally within 24 to 48 hours, and in one week they collected 20–25 payments that used to be delayed in the mail, all because they switched from whiteboards, spreadsheets, and Aspire to SingleOps.

Snapshot

The Outcomes

Hortus Gardens is a design-build and horticulture company based in Lexington, Kentucky, with a second branch in Louisville. Hortus handles its own design and installation, and takes on something most companies in the space skip: high-end plant health care, fine pruning, and detailed garden maintenance for clients who want more than a mow-and-blow crew.

Their newest division specializes in moving full-grown trees. Using two spade trucks, the team can lift and relocate 20- to 30-year-old trees to residential properties, horse farms, and high-end retail sites. Between Lexington and Louisville, Hortus now operates with 24 team members across 5 crews, supported by a design team and a Director of Horticulture.

When Hortus started, the business ran on whiteboards and a basic invoicing tool built for their sister design firm. It worked for tracking time and sending invoices, but it couldn’t handle real job costing or the more robust scheduling needs of a growing crew count.

When it came to choosing an operations tool, Partner Sammy Shores brought perspective. He’d already run a 120-person team on Aspire, and knew it was too costly and too rigid for the business Hortus was building. The team researched Jobber, ArborGold, and SingleOps by Granum before choosing SingleOps due to its simplicity, mobile-friendly interface, and a CRM that actually made sense for the field. Four years later, they’re still the platform and making tremendous gains.

Crews see what’s coming before they show up.

Recurring, high-end gardening work depends on detail, and the SingleOps platform keeps that detail organized for Hortus. The team documents site notes and before-and-after photos on every visit, then builds recurring routes so crews can pull up their schedule and see photos of a property two days before they’re on-site. Load lists are ready first thing in the morning, and if a team needs any backup, they can instantly see who’s nearby and call in help. For their clients, this behind the scenes orchestration creates a seamless, white-glove experience that Hortus has built a reputation on.

Time tracking that holds up in the field.

Every clock-in and clock-out feeds real-time job costing data, the numbers the Hortus leadership team needs to set benchmarks and grow the business. Sammy shared that the crews are empowered with the information they need, all from a mobile experience that works reliably in the field. Even with spotty cell service on rural properties, crews aren’t fighting with any tech to track work and get the job done and have all the details on hand.

Invoices get paid in a day or two, not weeks later.

The Hortus team automated estimates and invoicing, enabled ACH and credit card payments, and synced everything with QuickBooks Online. Their clients now enjoy a professional, familiar experience and pay faster because it’s just easier for them. Hortus can see who paid, when, and how, directly in SingleOps, without logging into a separate portal making accounts receivable work much easier.

Faster payments mean faster cash flow. In a single week, the team collected 20-25 digital payments that would have otherwise been paper checks sitting in the mail, and clients now pay within 24-48 hours of getting an invoice, instead of weeks later. That predictability gives the Hortus leadership team the confidence to plan ahead knowing revenue is coming, and when. Paired with real-time job costing and time tracking, the team has the visibility they need to set benchmarks, see where they’re actually making money, and keep growing without losing control of the numbers.

Four years in, the SingleOps platform has done exactly what Hortus needed it to do. It replaced whiteboards and a barebones invoicing tool with a system robust enough to handle real job costing, real-time time tracking, and recurring garden route scheduling, and simple enough that a growing crew count could actually adopt it. 

Sammy describes it as “robust… but also simple and easy… easy to try and follow.” The financial impact has been just as concrete: roughly 85% of Hortus’s clients now pay digitally, most invoices are settled within 48 hours, and payments sync automatically to QuickBooks Online the moment they land.

And when Hortus needs help fast, they get it: Sammy points to Granum’s SingleOps support as consistently quick and responsive, a live, North America-based team on the other end of the phone instead of a call center routing them in circles.

Four years, two branches, and one growing tree division later, Hortus Gardens hasn’t outgrown SingleOps. They’ve grown with it. And wherever Hortus goes next, whether that means going deeper with the SingleOps platform or moving operations over to the breadth of the LMN platform, they’re not shopping for a new partner. They’ve already got Granum in their corner.