Questions people ask before they buy this
Plain answers. If yours isn’t here, ask — the contact page goes straight to the people who built it.
- What is LakeOps?
- LakeOps is software for companies that install and remove docks, boat lifts and shoreline equipment on lakes and rivers. It holds the standing seasonal arrangement for each property and generates each season’s work from it, tracks every dock section, lift, canopy and raft as its own line on a satellite map, and gives crews an app that keeps working with no cell signal.
- Who is LakeOps for?
- LakeOps is built for dock and boat lift service companies in cold climates, anywhere equipment has to come out of the water before freeze-up and go back in after ice-out. That’s most of the northern United States and Canada. It isn’t built for marinas, boat dealers or general contractors — it’s for the crews that put shoreline equipment in the water and take it back out every year.
- What does it cost?
- LakeOps costs $199 a month, and that includes the first 100 properties you service. Above that it’s $1 per property per month up to 1,000, and 75 cents each above that. Users are unlimited on every account, there’s no setup fee, and the 1% service fee applies only if you take payments through LakeOps Payments. The full price card →
- I’ve got 400 properties on a spreadsheet and a legal pad. How long does it take to get in?
- Less time than typing it, because you don’t type it. Bring a spreadsheet or a CSV of whatever you’re running the business on now — customers, properties, the equipment on each shoreline — map your columns, check the preview, and it loads. Addresses are geocoded in the background and you confirm the pins on a map afterward, which is the one part only you can do, because you’re the only one who knows exactly where that lift sits.
- Who’s behind LakeOps?
- LakeOps is a small independent shop, not a venture-backed platform, and it does one trade. That means you’re never waiting behind a ticket queue and you’re never talking to somebody who’s never seen a barge.
- Do I have to re-enter my customers every season?
- No. Each property carries a standing seasonal arrangement listing the equipment and the service, and LakeOps generates that season’s job from it. Finishing this year’s job changes nothing about next year — the arrangement is what carries forward, so you never type your book in twice.
- We looked at general field service software. How is this different?
- General field service software is built around a technician, a date and an address, and four things about dock work break that. Your work is the same customers and the same equipment every year, so re-entering it each spring is wasted weeks. A property is six or eight pieces and a visit usually finishes some of them, so job-level done-or-not-done can’t describe your Tuesday. The weather owns your calendar, so route planning is effort you’ll throw away. And your crews work where there’s no signal. LakeOps is shaped around all four.
- How does scheduling work?
- There’s no calendar scheduling in LakeOps. A crew goes out with a boat, a set of gear, a lake and the bays they’re working, and takes whatever is still waiting there. When the wind turns you send them somewhere else and the work follows, because nothing was ever assigned to a date or a person in the first place. How sending crews out works →
- What happens when there’s no cell service?
- The crew app works with no cell service. The day’s properties, pieces, pins and access notes load onto the phone before the crew leaves the landing, and every completion, clock and note they record afterward goes up when the phone is back in range. Taking a photo needs a signal; everything else the crew types or taps is recorded on the device with no bars at all. How the crew app works offline →
- Will my crew actually use it?
- A hand taps one button when a piece is set, and that’s the whole job. There’s nothing to install and nothing to log into on the boat — the day is already on the phone before they leave the landing. The buttons are big enough for a wet glove, the screen reads in direct sun, and a tap counts whether there are bars or not, which is the thing that decides whether a crew keeps using software or quits on it in week two.
- Do crews need to install an app?
- No. It’s a web app that goes on a phone’s home screen when you want it there. Nothing to get approved in an app store, nothing to push out to a crew in April, and nothing for a seasonal hand to install on his first morning.
- Can two crews work the same property at once?
- Yes, and it’s an ordinary day rather than a conflict. Each crew marks the pieces it actually set, so the fork barge setting the dock and the crane barge setting the lift never overwrite each other, whether they’re there on the same morning or three days apart.
- How does it know which equipment a job needs?
- Every piece and every property can name the gear it requires — the crane barge for a heavy lift or a shoreline you can’t otherwise reach, the small barge for a weedy approach, four hands for a long run. A crew going out with a given boat sees plainly what they can and can’t take on today.
- Does it handle photos?
- Yes, two kinds. Reference photos live on the piece of equipment permanently: what the dock looks like in the water, how it stacks in the yard. Completion photos are taken by the crew on the day and go out to the customer with the bill.
- Does LakeOps do invoicing?
- No. LakeOps charges on completion instead: the job closes, the customer gets an email with the line-by-line detail, the crew’s photos and a link to pay. There are no invoice numbers, no A/R aging, no dunning, and no QuickBooks or Xero sync. If you’d rather bill your own way, use the completed-work report and send nothing. How getting paid works →
- How do we get paid?
- Two ways, and you pick. Turn on LakeOps Payments and customers pay from the completion email — that carries a 1% service fee on top of standard card and bank rates, and the money goes to your bank. Or leave it off, bill exactly the way you bill today, and use the completed-work report as the handoff to whoever does your books.
- Does this do removal season too, or just installs?
- Both, every year, at no extra cost. Every piece carries a winter-storage point as well as an install point, so a fall crew knows where the sections stack before they get there, and anything flagged as damaged coming out is still on the record in March, when it’s repair work you can sell.
- Can the office also run a boat?
- Yes, on one login. The office screens and the crew screens are a switch, not two accounts, so the same person can be at the desk in the morning and on the water at noon — which is most owners in this trade.
- Can we get our data out?
- Yes. Every one of the seven reports exports to CSV and the completed-work report prints. Your property history is yours and there’s nothing in LakeOps built to make leaving difficult. What the seven reports hold →
See it with your own shoreline on the screen
Half an hour. A few of your properties loaded, the pins dropped, a season run through it. If it’s not obviously better than what you’re doing now, that’s the answer you’ll get.