Storm week is won before 8 a.m.
The wind drops around three in the morning. By first light every homeowner on the block is calling tree companies in the order Google lists them and stopping at the first one that picks up. You are on a saw.
Most software helps you chase leads. We build the storm lane: an instant answer on every missed call, a hazard question that ranks the danger jobs ahead of the hedge trims, and a deposit link that holds the slot before the next truck pulls up the street — running on the same machine that handles your ordinary Tuesdays.
Storm work can't share a board with a two-week backlog.
Your planned lane books two to six weeks out at standard pricing. The emergency lane runs zero to forty-eight hours at a premium, with an insurance adjuster reading the invoice. Same crew, same phone, completely different clock — so it gets its own pipeline, its own response targets and its own pricing, and a triage question that decides which lane a call lands in before anyone drives anywhere.
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Priority 1
Dispatch now · 24/7
Active hazard
Tree on a house, on a vehicle, or into a conductor — dispatched the same day, around the clock, after the utility has cleared the line. The intake asks this first, so it never sits in a queue behind a quote request.
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Priority 2
Same day
Blocking
Across the drive or across the road. Nobody is in danger, but nobody is going to work either — and the customer is watching the street for whoever shows up first.
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Priority 3
Within 48 hours
Standing hazard
Leaning, split, or hung up over a structure. It is not down yet, which is exactly why it needs a written assessment and a date rather than a promise to come by.
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Priority 4
Scheduled
Cleanup
Debris and downed limbs with no live danger. Real revenue, batched into tight geographic clusters so the storm week pays for itself twice.
Everyone gets a status text
The published norm in this trade is a status message to the customer within about four hours, whether or not a crew has reached them. It is the single cheapest way to stop a homeowner ringing the next company on the list.
The surge is its own line item
You already price emergency work at a premium — the published range is roughly 1.75 to 2 times standard. Broken out as its own line, an adjuster reads it as an emergency rate. Buried in a total, it reads as a dispute.
Storm quotes expire faster
Standard estimates carry ~30 days. Storm quotes carry ~7 to 14, with the expiry printed on the document. Visible expiry is one of the most reliable close mechanics published in this trade.
We didn't guess at your business.
This kit was designed against how tree care companies really operate — a sales lane, a production lane and a storm lane on three different clocks, a compliance gate nobody sane skips, and a backlog of standing trees that were quoted and never bought.
Three lanes, and a fork inside the first one.
Selling, producing and storm response cannot share a board. And inside selling there is a second split most systems ignore: the free estimate on a scoped job, versus the paid arborist assessment — credentialed, an hour or two on site, a written report, billed by the hour. Two calendars, two intake paths, two prices.
The first question isn't “when” — it's “is it on anything?”
One answer decides the lane, the crew, the gear and the price. Ask it in the intake form, in the chat widget and in the text that answers a missed call, and the board sorts itself. Ask it three days later on a callback and you have already lost the job.
Nobody climbs before the gate clears.
The locate ticket, the municipal or HOA permit, the signed property-damage release, traffic control if the street is involved. The best operators treat that as a stage a job has to pass, not a note in someone's phone — and your board should refuse to advance without it.
The tree you didn't sell is still standing.
A declined removal isn't a lost lead, it's a deferred one — the hazard is still in the yard and the customer still knows it. Lost reason captured on the way out, then six- and twelve-month re-touches, plus a dormant-season pass over every unsold estimate you have.
Three boards, with the stage names this trade actually uses.
Not a blank CRM you have to design. These are the boards your account opens with — and the marked stage in each is the discipline the best operators refuse to skip.
Tree Care Sales
Quote to commitment- New Lead
- Triage
- Estimate Scheduled
- Proposal Sent
- Follow-Up
- Won / Deposit Paid
Tree Care Production
Two to six weeks out- Job Scheduled
- Pre-Job Cleared
- In Progress
- Completed
- Approved / Invoiced
- Paid / Closed
Storm Response
Zero to forty-eight hours- Intake Triage
- Prioritized
- Dispatched
- Made Safe
- Cleanup / Haul
- Invoiced Same Day
What “Pre-Job Cleared” actually holds
It is a real gate, not a label. A job cannot move to In Progress until every one of these is recorded on the card — and if someone drags it anyway, the owner gets an alert naming what's missing.
- Locate ticket number and the date it stays valid through
- Permit status, where the tree is protected, municipal or on an HOA
- Signed property-damage release
- Traffic control arranged, where the street is involved
The locate ticket typically needs two full business days before anything gets ground or dug in most states — which is why it sits on the board where the schedule can see it. Stump grinding is usually a separate return trip, so it books its own visit and pulls its own ticket.
The follow-up you keep meaning to build.
Every one of these ships switched on and named for tree care. None of them is a template you have to find, wire up and remember to turn on.
Instant answer, then the hazard question
Web form, chat widget, Facebook lead form, Google Business Profile and missed call each get their own intake — an SMS out in under five minutes, the source tagged, a card on the board, and the hazard answer routing the lead into the storm lane, the paid assessment, or a scoped estimate visit.
Missed-call text-back, day and night
The caller gets a text immediately and the office gets a notification. The after-hours version carries your emergency dispatch line — because tree-on-a-house calls do not arrive during business hours.
Two slots inside 24 hours, never open-ended
Estimate visits are offered as a specific choice of two, not “someone will call you.” The confirmation asks the homeowner to be there, because on small trims the decision happens in the driveway.
The paid assessment on its own calendar
Credentialed risk assessments and written reports book to a separate, longer calendar with their own confirmations — a billable hour, kept out of the free estimator's route.
Proposal follow-up, five to seven touches in two weeks
Front-loaded and automatic: delivery, a thank-you, a receipt check, social proof, then a task telling someone to make the human call — and the whole sequence stops the moment the customer replies or the job moves forward.
Deposit fires on won — crane work first
Over your threshold, the deposit invoice sends itself the moment a job is won, at your percentage. Crane jobs fire theirs before the crane is booked. The discipline you already believe in stops depending on somebody's Tuesday afternoon.
The gate guard
Locate ticket, permit, release and traffic control each become a task with an owner and a due date — and a job that moves to In Progress with any of them unset raises an alert instead of quietly proceeding.
Complete, invoice, review, refer
The completion checklist releases the balance invoice the same day. Payment landing triggers a review ask that routes happy customers to Google and unhappy ones to you. Thirty days later, a two-sided referral offer, sized to the job.
Storm customers become maintenance customers
Fourteen days after an emergency job closes, the customer gets a maintenance quote — the standing hazard you noticed while you were there, the pruning the rest of the yard needs. Almost nobody harvests this without automation.
Cycle reactivation off the next-service date
Every completed job stamps a return date from the species cycle — young and fast-growing trees on a shorter loop, mature ones on a longer one. Cabling systems and previously flagged hazard trees get an annual re-inspection touch.
Seasonal pushes on the trade's own calendar
The dormant-pruning window through winter, the storm-prep push in late winter, spring program enrollment, and the autumn deadwood and stump-backlog sweep — each scheduled, each capped so you never look like a spammer.
Compliance rails, on from day one
STOP and HELP handling, consent capture, unsubscribe and broadcast caps. Plus two tree-specific ones: anything near a power line waits for owner review before a crew is assigned, and a protected tree raises a permit task before a removal is ever quoted.
A removal is one payday. A program is a book.
Plant health care is a subscription business hiding inside a project business — three to six visits a year on a calendar the industry already publishes, billed on autopay. It is also the reason your best customers ring you first when the wind comes through, because priority storm response is what a membership buys.
The slow months are the selling months. With the leaves down the canopy is legible, pathogens and insects are inactive, and the schedule isn't full yet — the published best window to sell large pruning and removal, run as a scheduled campaign rather than a good intention.
Dormant inspection and dormant oil, then deep-root feeding and early scouting. The storm-prep push runs alongside it, to a base that has just watched a winter of weather.
Treatments, the mid-summer drought and stress check, and the late-summer monitoring round. This is also peak storm season, which is when a member finds out what their priority response is actually worth.
Renewal is flagged two months before it lands and the offer fires on its own. Autopay runs the billing and failed payments get chased automatically. The published target for a program run this way is ~85% renewal — a systems outcome, not a memory outcome.
Dormant inspection and a spring feed. Published market pricing sits around ~$300–500 a year; you set yours.
Adds targeted treatments and an annual written report. Published pricing around ~$600–1,200 a year — and in tiered offers, the middle option is the one most customers take.
The full round calendar, priority storm response and ongoing inventory monitoring. Published pricing from around ~$1,500 a year.
Most tree companies take days to answer. That's the opening.
Speed to the first response is the one advantage in this trade that costs nothing to hold and that almost no competitor actually holds — and in a storm week it is the whole game.
More likely to qualify a lead when the first contact happens inside the first hour, across ~1.25 million leads studied by Harvard Business Review.
Of contractors respond to an inbound inquiry within five minutes. Published guidance in this trade is that most tree companies take two to three days just to get the estimate scheduled.
Of sales are reported to happen after the third contact — which is exactly why the proposal chase runs five to seven touches inside two weeks instead of one hopeful email.
The published range for storm customers who convert to ongoing maintenance clients when somebody follows up. The follow-up is a workflow here, not a memory.
Figures are published industry research, shown to illustrate where the opportunity sits — they are not a projection of your results. The response-time studies are cross-industry and directionally relevant to home services rather than native to it. Conversion and follow-up figures are trade-published ranges; yours will differ.
Your first thirty days.
Configuration is ours, not yours. Here's the sequence — and the one point where we need something only you can give us.
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Days 1–3
Your account is built, not handed to you blank
All three pipelines, your service menu, and the fields this trade actually needs — species, trunk diameter, height, condition and hazard rating, proximity to structures and lines, access difficulty, equipment needed, locate ticket and permit status, disposal choice, and a lost-reason list that separates “price” from “tree left standing.”
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Days 3–7
Lead capture and triage go live
Web form, chat widget and your Google Business Profile wired to an intake that asks the hazard question and takes photos — photos are what let the storm queue rank itself. Missed-call text-back switched on with its after-hours variant. Every source tagged so you can see which ones actually produce.
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Week 2
Two things we need from you
Text-message registration and your sending domain both require a real human with your business details — regulation, not paperwork we invented. We prepare the submissions; you approve and sign. This is the one step that sets your go-live date.
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Week 3
Payments connected
Your Square account and dual-priced invoicing go live: e-signed proposals with good, better and best options, deposit invoicing at your percentage and threshold, crane pre-billing, and text-to-pay links ready for same-day balances.
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Week 4
The recurring engine is armed
The program book, the renewal flag, cycle reactivation off next-service dates, the long-tail passes over unsold estimates and declined hazard trees, and the seasonal pushes — all scheduled against your calendar, then running whether or not anyone remembers them.
Every automation ends at a payment. So we own that part too.
Follow-up that ends in “I'll send an invoice” is half a system — and in this trade the invoice is the job. Your account runs on Square for processing, with dual-priced invoicing on top: the cash price is the price, and a customer paying by card sees the card price beside it and chooses.
The deposit that books itself
The industry line is ~25–50% down on anything over ~$2,500, collected before anyone climbs. Right now that's an invoice somebody builds by hand on Monday for a job that was won on Thursday. Here it fires on won — and on crane work it fires before the crane is booked, which is the scariest receivable in the trade.
Storm week, invoiced the same day
Emergency jobs bill the day the tree comes off the house, with your surge rate as its own line for the adjuster and a short, visible expiry on the quote. The alternative is a pile of paper tickets at the end of a chaotic week, some of which never get billed at all.
Text-to-pay, because they're standing in the yard
Your customer isn't at a counter. Same-day invoicing from the truck is the published difference between collecting in 30-plus days and collecting in under 14 — and a pay link in the thread is what makes same-day realistic.
Dual pricing on volume you already run
Deposits, completion balances and program autopay add up to steady card volume at ~3% in processing. Dual pricing hands that cost back. Your net-30 commercial and municipal accounts paying by check notice nothing — they already pay the cash price.
Two plans. Month to month.
Everything above is included in both — all three pipelines, the storm lane, the program engine, the payment rails. The difference is how much marketing and reporting surface you want on top.
- CRM and all three pipelines
- Unified inbox — text, email, chat
- Calendars and online booking
- Website and funnels
- Forms and surveys — hazard intake with photo upload
- AI lead follow-up
- Payments and invoicing
- Everything in Starter
- Full marketing suite
- Reputation management
- Social planner
- Memberships
- Documents and contracts — the e-signed proposal with good, better, best
- Advanced reporting
- Priority support
Fair questions.
My storm work goes through insurance. I can't have card-fee games on an adjuster's invoice.
There are no games on the invoice. Dual pricing is a cash-discount mechanic: the price you quote is the cash price, and a card price is derived from it — both visible, the payer chooses. You are already line-iteming your emergency rate separately for the adjuster; the invoice stays exactly that clean. And when a carrier pays by check or bank transfer, dual pricing never enters the picture at all.
Half my revenue is commercial and municipal. They pay net 30 by check.
Then nothing changes for that half, and that's fine. Dual pricing only matters where cards happen — residential deposits, completion balances paid by link, program autopay. That's exactly the volume where ~3% was quietly leaking.
I already run SingleOps. I'm not ripping that out.
Don't. Your field-service software stays the source of truth for crew routing, job costing and equipment — that's the documented best-practice split in this industry, and nobody sensible pretends a marketing CRM dispatches crews. What moves is the marketing, the follow-up and the money.
Is this just a generic CRM with a tree sticker on it?
No, and the stage names above are the first test — they are the boards your account actually opens with. The second test is what you can't buy anywhere else: we went looking for a tree snapshot that ships storm triage tiers, an intake that asks the hazard question first, a locate-and-permit gate on the production board and a program renewal engine. Nobody publishes one. That gap is the reason this build exists.
The next storm is already on somebody's forecast.
Board now and the lane is live before it lands.
Automate With Us provides software and configuration services. Figures shown are published industry research or illustrative examples — they are not projections, guarantees, or representations of the results you should expect. Individual results depend on your market, pricing, capacity and execution. Processing costs vary by card mix and volume; the ~3% figure is illustrative and your effective rate will differ. Payment processing is provided through Square and is subject to Square's approval and terms. Text-message and email sending are subject to carrier and regulatory registration. Terms · Privacy