Requirements checklist
What to ask for when choosing software for garden design firms.
A checklist built from how garden design firms work, to print or save as a PDF and bring to any supplier meeting.
What the software should cover
Tick each one that matters to your business.
- Site survey and brief
- Drawing issue register
- Plant schedule
- Stage billing and variations
- Site visit notes
- Nursery and supplier orders
Roles that need their own access
Who logs in, and what each person may see or change.
- For principal designers
- For designers and draughtspeople
- For the studio office
- For clients
Reports to ask for
Ask to see each one with your own sample data.
- Fee billed and hours spent, by scheme and stage
- Drawings issued, by revision and recipient
- Plant schedule quantities against nursery orders, by zone
- Proposals still open, won or lost, by source
- Variations raised, approved and unpaid
- Aftercare visits due and plants replaced, by scheme
Systems it may need to connect to
Note which ones you already run.
- SMS and messaging apps
- Calendar
- Accounting export
- Cloud file storage
Questions for any vendor
Put these to every supplier you are comparing.
- Do we draw inside this system?
- How does a client approve a stage?
- Can one scheme have several gardens in it?
- What happens when a nursery changes a species?
- Do hours get tracked against fixed fees?
- Will the demonstration use a garden like ours?
- Who looks after it after launch?
- Can we take our drawing register out later?
- What drives the cost for a design studio?
- How soon can the studio start running schemes in it?
- What should we gather before the build starts?
Where the work usually breaks today
Circle the ones you recognise. They set the order of the project.
- Drawings circulate in several revisions
- The plant schedule drifts from the nursery
- Extra revisions are given away
- Site instructions are lost
- Stage invoices go out late
Prefer to talk it through? See the garden design firms page.