ECM Mulch Yardage & Capacity Planner

Each truck is listed with how many yards it hauls per load. Set each truck’s yards and how many loads the fleet does per day. The planner adds it all up to figure out how many yards you can install in a day. Use + Truck / − Truck if the fleet actually changes. Only change a number if your trucks actually change.

Pick the year and the month you want to work on. Everything below changes to match. “Working days this month” counts Monday–Friday most of the year, and Monday–Saturday during season (September–December), automatically. Change it only for holidays or extra days off. To see a past year, just pick that year and month here and the old numbers come right back.

This shows all 12 months of the year and how full each one is. A higher percent means that month is more booked up. Click any month to jump to it. Use this to spot which months still have room to sell more work.

This is your list of jobs for the month — your “property board.” Type the property name, pick the mulch color (it colors the loads on the dispatch board below), and enter Yards Estimated — that number is what drives the truck loads. As crews finish, type what went down under Yards Installed; Remaining Yards updates on its own. Set Status as the job moves: Approved (sold, sits here), then Scheduled (drops into the dispatch board to put on trucks), then Done (finished, comes off the board). Click a Notes cell to open a full note box. The Advanced view button shows the money columns: Billed $, Bid Yds (type the yards you bid — variance needs it), Loads Left, and Variance (Installed minus Bid). If you delete a job by mistake, hit Undo on the black bar that pops up. Click the little flag (⚑) at the end of a row to turn the whole line red — that’s the “look at this property / read the notes” signal for the team. Click it again to clear it. If a job won’t finish before the month ends, click the carry-over arrow (↷) on its row — only the yards not already on this month’s trucks move to next month’s board as a Scheduled job (so next month’s capacity sees them). Loads already sitting on this month’s dispatch board stay here — mark them installed as they go down — and this month’s row closes out as Done.

This is the big picture for the month. Capacity is how many yards you could install. Scheduled / committed is how much you’ve already sold. Only jobs with a Status of Approved, Scheduled, or Done count toward these numbers — a property listed with no status is just a lead and doesn’t take up capacity. Still to sell is the room you have left. Yards left to lay and Loads left are the work that isn’t finished yet. The bar fills up as the month books out.

Total yards of each mulch color scheduled this month, so you know how much of each color to stage in the yard for loading trucks. The color swatches here match the load colors on the dispatch board. Remaining is what's still left to install (total minus what's marked installed). Jobs without a color chosen yet appear under No color set — pick their color up top and they'll sort in.

This is your truck calendar. A job only shows up here after its Status is set to “Scheduled” up top, and it needs Yards Estimated to have loads. Click the job in the row above to pick it — every open + slot lights up in that job’s mulch color to show where you can drop a load. Click a + to place one truck-load; the load takes the mulch color and shows the yards and color name (a load only carries the yards the job actually has left, so small jobs make small loads). Type each driver’s name in the box under the truck. Use the buttons to mark loads: installed (green edge, adds to Yards Installed), rained out (load turns blue and its yards go back to “left to schedule”), or a truck out (one load 🔧 turns amber, or click an empty cell to take the truck out all day, red). To rain out a whole day, click the Rain out button first, then click the day’s header — the column turns blue and every load’s yards go back to be rescheduled. Removing a load also puts its yards back. When the job is finished, set it to “Done” up top — it leaves the scheduling list, but its truck-loads stay on the calendar so you can always look back and see where the trucks went that month. The Run sheet button prints the day’s loads for the drivers.

Two quick conversions. Top: type square footage and pick a depth to get cubic yards. Bottom: type a number of 2 cu ft bags to convert that into cubic yards, for when a landscaper tells you how many bags they used.

Pick a day and this shows every truck, its driver, and the loads in order — property, yards, and mulch color. Print it and hand it to the drivers, or show the tablet at the yard. It reads straight off the dispatch board, so put loads on trucks there first.

Every property in the planner, across all years. Type a name to see its full history — every month it was worked, the color, billing, and yards installed. Use it when a client calls or when you’re re-bidding.