Customer updates for landscapers The sub-base is the job. Nobody sees it once the slabs go down.
A new patio is mostly a hole. Days of digging, membrane, hardcore compacted in layers, a drain to take the water away — then the slabs go on and none of it shows. A customer who never saw the dig wonders what they paid for, and one who watches rain stop the job wonders whether you’re coming back. A link with a photo of each layer and a line on wet days answers both.
Free to use. Nothing for your customer to install.
What your customer sees
See a full example job page →A typical job for landscapers, one update at a time
What your customer reads on their link as the work goes on, oldest first. Each line is a photo or a sentence posted from your phone.
Day 1, 8am
Skip arriving at 8. Lifting the turf at the back first.
Day 2, 3pm
Dug out and the membrane is down. Found an old soakaway — photo here.
Day 3, 4pm
Sub-base compacted and the channel drain is in. Photo before it’s covered.
Day 4, 9am
Too wet to lay today. Everything is covered — back tomorrow if it dries.
Day 6, 5pm
Slabs laid and pointed. Keep off it for a couple of days.
What should a landscaper photograph?
The layers nobody will see again: the depth of the dig, the membrane, each compacted layer of sub-base, the fall on the drain, the edge restraints, the root barrier before the soil goes back. A customer who has seen what sits under their patio understands why it took the week, and has the photos if a question ever comes up later.
How do I handle weather delays?
Post a line when the weather stops you: too wet to lay, ground waterlogged, frost forecast for the pointing. Say what is covered and when you expect to be back. Your customer reads it at work, so an empty garden on a rainy day looks like a plan rather than a no-show.
Can the customer check the layout before I fix it?
Post a photo of the slabs dry-laid or the plants set out in their pots, with a line asking them to look. They see it on their phone and can ring you before anything is bedded in, rather than coming home to a finished patio a foot narrower than they pictured.
What if I find something in the ground?
Photograph it and post it before you change the plan: the old footing, the soakaway, the pipe that isn’t where anyone thought. The customer sees the reason for the extra digging or the changed drain route from wherever they are, and the photo stays on their job page for whoever asks about it next.
Is it different from how a gardener would use it?
Same link, different job. A gardener posts a before and after from a visit; a landscaper is usually on site for days or weeks, so the page builds into a record of the whole build. Move the job from Booked to On site to Complete as it goes, and the customer keeps the photos at the end.
What does it cost?
Nothing. How’s the Job is free to use for landscapers, with no card needed to sign up, and always free for your customer, who opens the link in their phone’s browser with no app and no account. It does one thing — show your customer how the job is going — so it sits alongside whatever you use for quotes and invoices. How it compares.