BlogRunning the place, updated
Take stock without putting the plants down
Most nursery records get written twice. The first time is on a clipboard in the row, and the second is at a desk that evening, by someone who would much rather be doing anything else. The second time is where numbers get mistyped and notes go missing, and on a busy day it slips to tomorrow, by which point the stock has already changed.
Where counts go wrong
A count is only as good as the moment it was taken. A figure written in the row at ten in the morning and entered at six in the evening describes a block that has since sold, been dumped or been moved, and the person typing it has no way to know. The handwriting is rarely the problem. The gap between the two writings is.
The reasons get lost first. A clipboard has room for "minus 20" and not for why, and a dump with no reason teaches you nothing next year. Sizes drift too, because whoever is typing has to turn a scrawl into the right product, and "the blue hosta in fours" can match three of them.
Running a count you can trust
Count by block in the same order every time, so a missed bench shows up as a gap rather than a lower total. Write the reason for every dump at the moment you make it, even if it is one word, because frost, disease and grade-outs call for different decisions next season. Count what is ready separately from what is still growing on, since only the first can be sold.
Then shorten the gap between counting and recording, which matters more than counting more often. A one-person yard can do this by entering the count before leaving the house. A larger operation is usually better off with rolling counts, a few houses each week, than with a whole-nursery count weekend that is out of date by the following Wednesday.
When a count disagrees with the books, find out why before you correct it. A block that is fifty short usually has a reason, such as a sale nobody recorded, a move to another house or a dump that never got written down. Fix the number without finding the cause and it will be short again next month.
Counting with Sprout's Walk
Sprout's Walk removes the second writing. You walk the house with your phone and say what you see, such as "count the hosta in house 4, there are 180" or "dump 20 from house 4, frost damaged". Walk reads the whole change back with the plant, size, place and number, and saves nothing until you say yes. Each change lands on the lot with your own words as the note, so in July you can see who counted what in May and why. On a small yard the stock is right before supper, and a larger crew can count from several phones at once.
Walk understands US English and listens in Chrome and Edge but not Firefox. What you say is sent to the speech and language services that do the listening, so do not describe anything you would not put in an email.