Free tool

Crew capacity and revenue planner

See the most your tree crews can bill. Enter your crews, jobs per crew-day, working days and average ticket. You get a monthly and yearly revenue ceiling, what your current utilization leaves on the table, and what one more booked job a week is worth.

How to use your revenue ceiling

A tree crew is a fixed cost. You pay wages, the truck, the chipper, fuel and insurance whether the crew works eight hours or sits in the yard. That is why one number matters so much: how many of your crew-days turn into paid jobs. This planner shows that number in dollars, so you can decide what to fix first.

Start with honest inputs

The starting numbers in the form are only starting points. Replace them with your own. For jobs per crew-day, count your jobs and your crew-days over the last month and divide. For working days, take out rain, holidays and repair days. For average ticket, add up what you invoiced and divide by the number of jobs. If a few huge jobs make your average look high, try a lower ticket too and see how the ceiling changes.

Read the ceiling as a limit, not a goal

No crew runs at 100% all year. Storms, breakdowns and travel eat time. The ceiling tells you the top of the room. If your yearly ceiling is well below the revenue you want, no amount of marketing will fix it, because you do not have the crew capacity. If your ceiling is far above what you bill, the problem is filling the days, not hiring.

Use the utilization slider

Move the slider to the share of crew-days you really book. Watch the "left on the table" number. That is the revenue your existing trucks and people could earn without you buying anything new. For many small tree companies this is the cheapest growth there is. A crew that is booked 60% of the time can add a lot of revenue by getting to 75%.

Where empty days come from

Empty days usually come from a few simple things. Calls that go unanswered while the crew is up a tree. Quotes that get no follow-up. Jobs that are booked three weeks out because the schedule has no gaps. And slow seasons with no plan. Invoca reports that about 27% of calls to home-service businesses go unanswered, and under 3% of those callers leave a voicemail. Your own number may be different, so test it with the answer rate test.

What one more job a week is worth

The last box shows the yearly value of extra booked jobs every week. It is a good way to judge any change. If a missed-call text, a faster reply or a follow-up message books one more job a week for you, this is what it adds, as revenue. It only counts if the crew has room to do the work, so check the utilization slider first. If you are already near 100%, extra jobs mean overtime or a longer wait for customers.

Before you add a crew

A new crew adds capacity, but it also adds cost before it adds revenue. Compare the added ceiling to the loaded cost of the crew, using the crew day rate calculator. Then ask whether you can fill the days you already have. If you cannot answer the phone and book jobs now, a third truck will only add a third crew sitting idle. Read more in our guide on hiring and crews.

This tool counts revenue only. It does not know your costs, your taxes or your weather. Use it to ask better questions, then check the answers against your books. See also the profit margin calculator, our services and our pricing if you want help catching more calls.