Operating analysis · Document 03

Crew time and work quality

A full accounting of the paid day against the shift clock, and the quality signals Aspire actually records. Both are reported per Aspire tenant, and both carry the same warning: the spreads between operating companies are large, but a substantial part of each reflects how the work is recorded rather than how it is done.

Shifts analyzed
630,460
Clocked hours
6,144,380
On customer property
84.2%
Tenants
24
Source
ClockTimes + WorkTicketTimes
Period
Jan – Aug 2026

By region — why there is no regional figure here

The measures in this document are not comparable between operating companies, so they are not comparable between regions either. Only Signature books yard and shop time as a separate entry, which makes it look less utilized while doing the same work — and Signature is in Central. Warranty labor varies eighty-fold between tenants, which is not a plausible difference in workmanship so much as a difference in whether crews are told to book rework as warranty at all.

A Central-versus-West utilization figure would therefore measure bookkeeping, not crews. These measures stay valid within an operating company, and the branch tables below are where they should be read. Coverage: Central 9, West 9, East 12 operating companies.

Document 05 carries the regional cut of the figures that survive comparison: contract value, avoidable driving and retention.

Method

Decomposing the shift

Every shift from ClockTimes is matched to that person's booked entries for the same day and split into five parts. Nothing is inferred from the ticket record alone — the shift clock defines the paid day, which matters because the two disagree.

  • Booked on customer property — time attributed to a customer's work ticket.
  • Booked at the yard — time attributed to a ticket whose property is the branch itself.
  • Gaps between booked entries — clocked on, between two pieces of booked work.
  • Before the first ticket — clocked on at the start of the day with nothing booked yet.
  • After the last ticket — last ticket ended, still clocked on.

What does not reconcile is reported as residual rather than hidden: it arises where booked entries overlap each other or fall outside the clock span, so it is a data-quality measure as much as a time one.

An earlier figure corrected. A previous pass reported that 19.2% of clocked time never reaches a work ticket. That blended all tenants and included shifts with no booked work at all. Measured shift by shift, 84.2% of clocked time lands on customer property and the best tenants exceed 89%. Separately, 29,096 shifts carry no booked work whatsoever — the missing time is concentrated there rather than spread thinly across every day.

Crew time

Where the paid day goes

Per Aspire tenant. Utilization is the median share of the shift booked to work.
TenantShiftsClocked hMean shift UtilizationOn propertyYardGaps Before firstAfter lastResidualShifts <60%
Perficut | Quality Care 28,212 188,402.5 6.68 105.8% 110.9% 0% 14.1% 8.2% 5.4% -38.5% 4%
HLM 18,886 200,111.4 10.6 95.7% 96.9% 0% 0.9% 0.9% 0.2% 1.1% 0.6%
Keesen 40,132 376,056.2 9.37 92.2% 89% 0% 2.7% 3.4% 2.2% 2.8% 2.7%
HearLand TX 27,608 268,149.6 9.71 91.1% 86.1% 0% 1.1% 5.5% 1.8% 5.5% 2.3%
Landscape Services Group 11,796 121,382.5 10.29 90.7% 89.6% 0% 1.4% 3.3% 1.5% 4.1% 0.6%
LSI 55,253 541,227.2 9.8 90% 89.8% 0% 0.9% 1.1% 0.7% 7.4% 1.2%
Signature 35,766 392,930.9 10.99 88.8% 83% 5.7% 4.2% 3.6% 0.7% 2.8% 1.1%
LCM 32,361 331,005.7 10.23 87.8% 85.5% 0% 3.8% 5.6% 3.3% 1.8% 2.7%
Wyoming Landscape Companies 9,556 86,760.6 9.08 85.2% 84.2% 0% 5.5% 4.5% 2.2% 3.7% 2.4%
Cutting Edge Serivces, LLC 23,922 238,900.9 9.99 84.4% 82.6% 0% 6% 7.8% 5.8% -2.2% 5.9%
Roark Landscaping Company 15,791 163,551.5 10.36 84.4% 86.4% 0% 11.3% 8.5% 3.7% -9.9% 5.4%
Heartland NE 58,150 593,700.5 10.21 82.3% 82.8% 0% 2.3% 7% 4.6% 3.3% 5.7%
Heritage Landscape Services 61,292 606,927.1 9.9 81.4% 80% 0% 2.3% 6.6% 3.6% 7.5% 6.4%
Heartland AZ 69,266 641,358.7 9.26 80.9% 80.6% 0% 2.5% 7.9% 5.7% 3.3% 4.4%
VerdeGo 23,660 227,527.7 9.62 80.7% 79.8% 0% 2.1% 9.4% 6% 2.7% 3.8%
JML 26,805 260,590.3 9.72 80.5% 81.3% 0% 5.3% 5.5% 5.2% 2.7% 3.2%
Total Environment Inc 22,674 220,690.1 9.73 79.3% 79.8% 0% 10.6% 4% 4% 1.6% 0.9%
Merkle Lawncare Company, LLC 4,762 45,160.9 9.48 79.2% 78.5% 0% 6.4% 7.4% 5.2% 2.5% 8.9%
John Shorb Landscaping Inc 21,303 204,778.7 9.61 78.8% 78.7% 0% 5.5% 6% 6.3% 3.6% 7.1%
Top Care Landscape, LLC 8,733 81,021.9 9.28 78.6% 76.4% 0% 7.3% 8.5% 5.4% 2.3% 11.4%
Columbia Landcare, LLC 10,399 104,348.1 10.03 77.3% 77.5% 0% 10.8% 9% 4.4% -1.7% 11.4%
Cutting Edge Utah 5,031 47,070.2 9.36 75.4% 75.9% 0% 11.8% 11.7% 7.8% -7.2% 17.2%
Schultz Lawnscapes 18,911 200,974.2 10.63 75% 73.3% 0% 5% 13.8% 6.4% 1.5% 14.8%
Agrow Pro, LLC 191 1,752.7 9.18 62.2% 57.6% 0% 3.3% 24.3% 14.9% -0.1% 44.5%

Three things this shows

Utilization spans 62.2 – 105.8 points. On 6,144,380.1 clocked hours that range is worth a great deal in principle. In practice most of the gap needs validating before it can be banked — see the caution below.

The idle time is at the front of the day, not the end. Time clocked on before the first ticket runs 0.9 – 24.3% of the shift and is the largest unbooked block in almost every tenant. That is a morning-start question — loading, briefing, dispatch — not an end-of-day one.

Only one tenant books yard time at all. Signature attributes 5.7% of the shift to yard tickets; every other tenant records zero. Their shop and load time is therefore either inside customer tickets or unbooked, which is the clearest single proof that these columns measure recording practice as much as behavior.

Do not rank operating companies on utilization

The yard column shows why. A tenant that books shop time to a yard ticket looks less utilized than one that folds the same work into a customer ticket, while doing exactly the same thing. Comparisons are only sound within a tenant, where recording practice is common. The branch table below is the comparison worth acting on.


Crew time

Lowest-utilization branches

Ranked across all tenants, but read each against its own tenant's figures above. Hours are means per shift.

Branches with at least 50 matched shifts.
BranchTenantShiftsShiftBooked Before firstAfter lastGapsUtilization
Green Cove Springs - AgrowProAgrow Pro, LLC 1919.185.28 2.231.370.3 57.6%
SILVER SPRINGHeritage Landscape Services 3,26710.246.48 1.421.040.71 63.2%
Construction - SchultzSchultz Lawnscapes 79612.398.02 2.531.370.11 64.7%
Hampton - SchultzSchultz Lawnscapes 2,45511.367.86 1.920.870.74 69.2%
Outdoor Solutions - MedfordHeartland NE 8388.485.88 0.980.421.24 69.3%
Ray's Tree - Top CareTop Care Landscape, LLC 1,86910.087 1.720.910.4 69.4%
Chesapeake - SchultzSchultz Lawnscapes 2,5278.275.98 0.920.60.53 72.3%
KensingtonJohn Shorb Landscaping Inc 9,2809.366.82 0.480.731.01 72.8%
Residential InstallVerdeGo 5510.267.53 1.720.960.05 73.4%
Richmond - SchultzSchultz Lawnscapes 9,38810.497.74 1.340.640.49 73.8%
SRL PhoenixHeartland AZ 6,02810.287.65 1.050.560.7 74.4%
Hazelwood - NorthTop Care Landscape, LLC 2,5449.47.05 0.610.481.12 75%
The clearest single outlier is Heritage SILVER SPRING: utilization well below its tenant's own norm, with over an hour before the first ticket and another after the last. It is also the branch whose yard could not be located from crew GPS — 5% clustering, and 13 miles from its own recorded yard. Two independent measures pointing at the same place is worth one site visit.

Work quality

What Aspire actually records

Aspire holds no defect or complaint record, so quality has to be inferred. Three fields carry real signal, in descending order of directness: warranty labor is work redone at no charge, which is the closest thing to a defect; review shows whether anyone checked the work before it was billed; cancellation shows work planned and dropped.

Per tenant, tickets scheduled in the period. Warranty share is of actual labor hours.
TenantTicketsWarranty ticketsWarranty h Warranty shareCompleted & reviewedCanceled
HLM 10,365 739 31,547.4 16.01% 28.8% 1.7%
LSI 36,161 3,265 56,198.1 11.23% 11.8% 3.2%
Agrow Pro, LLC 2,703 90 654 9.94% 3% 52.1%
Cutting Edge Utah 7,114 236 3,344 6.29% 70.9% 4%
Schultz Lawnscapes 21,857 472 10,118.5 5.1% 71.9% 4.8%
Landscape Services Group 9,104 391 5,850.8 5.06% 17% 3.1%
Keesen 52,708 1,730 16,789.2 4.65% 16.6% 2.5%
Heartland NE 83,144 1,106 26,753.2 4.58% 29.4% 10.7%
LCM 22,439 547 13,510.8 4.26% 21.5% 0.8%
Perficut | Quality Care 51,204 853 7,884.9 4.12% 70.7% 6.3%
JML 30,303 478 9,908.5 3.96% 46.2% 1.5%
John Shorb Landscaping Inc 25,335 423 7,860.1 3.92% 19.1% 1.3%
Cutting Edge Serivces, LLC 67,323 896 8,866.3 3.84% 66.9% 7%
Wyoming Landscape Companies 8,167 198 2,226.8 2.96% 58.7% 3.2%
Columbia Landcare, LLC 25,690 271 2,464.4 2.4% 87.6% 1.5%
Top Care Landscape, LLC 15,283 209 1,824.4 2.2% 78.2% 3%
Signature 92,994 324 7,714.7 1.98% 62.1% 11.2%
VerdeGo 13,448 223 4,252.6 1.57% 1.5% 5.6%
Heartland AZ 43,026 885 8,194.5 1.38% 20.4% 7%
Heritage Landscape Services 35,033 113 6,726.3 1.1% 4.2% 2.1%
Merkle Lawncare Company, LLC 7,948 23 381.4 0.89% 77.9% 4.9%
Total Environment Inc 34,070 76 1,093.6 0.55% 82% 2.6%
Roark Landscaping Company 19,430 49 415.2 0.25% 33.5% 6.3%
HearLand TX 26,824 23 158.3 0.06% 23.9% 4.8%

Warranty labor is real and material. It is concentrated in very few tickets — typically a few hundred out of tens of thousands — averaging tens of hours each, so it is large-job rework rather than routine touch-ups. Those tickets are individually identifiable and worth reading.

Review discipline is the sharpest divide in the whole analysis. It ranges from 1.5 – 87.6%. Approval, by contrast, sits at 99.8% almost everywhere — so approval is a formality and review is the only real control on work leaving the branch. Where review is in single digits, nothing checks the work before it is billed.

The warranty spread is too wide to be operational

An 80-fold range between the highest and lowest tenant is not a plausible difference in workmanship. Much of it will be whether crews are instructed to book rework as warranty time at all. Treat the figure as usable within a tenant — comparing branches, and finding the specific tickets — and not as a league table.


Tested and rejected

Two measures that did not survive

Revisits as a rework signal. Counting properties completed again within seven days returned 72–87%, which measures weekly service cadence, not rework. Tightening the window, 28–35% of consecutive completions are same-day — several services on one visit — and only 7–14% are next-day. Even that cannot separate rework from a legitimately separate service. Doing it properly needs the service identity on both visits, so that like is compared with like.

Completed work with no invoice reference. Between 54% and 76% of completed tickets carry no InvoiceID, representing tens of millions in Price. This looks like unbilled revenue and almost certainly is not: Aspire invoices fixed-price maintenance at the opportunity level through InvoiceOpportunityService, not per ticket, so an absent ticket-level reference is expected for contract work. Establishing whether anything is genuinely unbilled requires pulling that join and testing time-and-materials tickets specifically. The figure is deliberately not quoted here.


Next

What would make these actionable

  • Read the warranty tickets. A few hundred tickets carry thousands of hours of no-charge labor, and they are individually identifiable. That is a morning's work and it either finds a pattern or rules the area out.
  • Ask one branch what happens before the first ticket. The largest unbooked block is the morning, and whether it is loading, briefing or dispatch delay is not in the data.
  • Establish whether review matters. Test whether tickets that were reviewed differ in warranty rate or estimate variance from those that were not. If review changes nothing, the divide between 4% and 61% is not worth closing.
  • Settle the invoicing question properly by pulling InvoiceOpportunityService, so the uninvoiced figure can be either quantified or dismissed.
  • Normalize the recording differences — yard booking and warranty practice — before any cross-opco target is set on either measure.