The Landscaping Company's Journey

The whole application is one calm, scrolling page broken into clearly numbered steps. A company can begin, save its place, and come back. Nothing on this page costs anything, and simply completing it earns the company a directory listing (no fee).

Step 1 — Company Profile

Plain identity and size questions. Every field here is Public — it appears on your listing.

• Legal Company Name (required) — e.g. “ABC Landscaping, LLC”
• DBA / Trade Name — the name customers know you by, if different
• Primary Contact Name (required), Contact Email (required), Contact Phone — contact details are used by CPI to reach you and are Private, never published
• Website, City, ZIP, Year Established
• Employees, Field Crews, Service Vehicles — a quick picture of your capacity
• Counties You Serve — used for matching and shown on your listing

Step 2 — Detailed Qualification Assessment

This is where a landscaping company shows it understands community work. None of it is a test you can fail; it simply builds a fuller, more credible picture.

• Years of HOA / Condo Experience, Largest Community Served (units), Client Retention Rate (%), Current HOA / Condo Accounts
• Emergency Response Time (hours) and Routine Inspection Frequency
• Services You Offer — mowing & turf, ornamental & tree care, irrigation, fertilization & pest, landscape enhancement, storm cleanup, and more
• What Makes Your Company Different? — your quality process, staffing model, or results

Step 3 is where CPI captures the richer “operating basics” that make matching genuinely smart. The important idea for a 65-year-old board member or a busy owner is this: capturing a value is not the same as publishing it. Each field is openly tagged so you always know what will show and what stays private.

• Public — shows on your listing: Service radius, Typical response time, License state, HOA references on hand, Primary service lines.
• Earned — held privately until your paid tier and independent verification, then shown with a Verified badge: License number, General liability limit, Workers' comp carrier, Bonding capacity.
• Private — used only inside CPI for matching & review, never published: Typical contract size (low / high), Equipment owned %, Work subcontracted %, Notable communities served.

The “Draft my basics with AI” button reads the company name, website and services already entered and proposes sensible starting values. The vendor reviews and corrects every one before submitting — the AI drafts, the human decides.

Here the company checks off which credentials it wants CPI to independently confirm. For a landscaping firm this is typically:

• Business License — state or local contractor / business registration
• Liability Insurance — general liability coverage and limits
• Workers' Compensation — active coverage for field crews

Naming a credential here does not confirm it — it simply tells your onboarding specialist and the verifier what to check. Confirmation happens later, in Stage 8.

Three tiers are offered side by side, in plain language:

• Listed — limited self-edits of basic registration fields; get started at no cost.
• Verified — $995/year ($100/mo) — self-edited and independently verified mandatory fields; the trust signal buyers value.
• Professional — $2,995/year ($250/mo) — verified monthly with update-triggered reviews; the full professional toolkit. (This is the Premier tier reached in Stage 10.)

To move from a Listed profile toward verified status, the company selects Verified.

Step 6 — Membership Agreement

A short, readable agreement (operated by Results Systems). The company types an Electronic Signature (full legal name) and Title (Owner, President, etc.).

Step 7 — Application Deposit

A $995 deposit is collected when applying for a paid tier. It is fully refundable if the application is not approved. If the company was given an Admin Code by staff, it can be entered here to adjust the deposit. Verified and Professional are billed only after approval — you are never charged to win work, only to be reviewed.

This is work done for the company, not by it. Before and during review, CPI's research staff and prefill engine assemble a draft of the company's record from public sources — then measure how complete and corroborated it is, and flag anything that disagrees.

• Completeness — how much of the profile is filled in
• Corroboration — how much has been independently backed up
• Open discrepancies — anything that needs a human to resolve

When the reviewer opens the company's application, everything comes together on one screen: the Company Profile, the Requested Verifications, the Qualification Assessment, and the full Operating Basics panel — each value carrying its Public / Earned / Private badge. An “AI-drafted — verify before use” marker reminds the reviewer to confirm any prefilled value.

Collecting documents is not a self-serve guessing game. A named CPI onboarding specialist walks the company through exactly what to send — the license certificate, the insurance declarations page, the workers' comp certificate — and handles each submission on the company's behalf. The Verification Center simply shows the status of each item as it climbs toward VERIFIED.

Every named credential lands in a queue where a CPI verifier reviews it one at a time. For each item the verifier checks the document against the issuing authority and then marks it Verified or Rejected. Only a confirmed item ever earns a Verified badge on the listing — and only Earned fields tied to a confirmed credential become visible.

With the first credentials confirmed, the company reaches published Verified status: its listing now carries the Verified badge and its Earned fields display. The Verification Center makes the remaining picture just as clear:

• What's published — the confirmed credentials and Earned fields now live on the listing
• Open gaps — any credential still pending, any discrepancy still to resolve
• Requirements to reach Premier — what's needed for the full, monthly-verified tier

At this point the company can download an interim analysis — a plain-language snapshot of what is verified, what is outstanding, and the specific items that stand between it and Premier status. This is the document a company uses to close its gaps efficiently.

Using the interim analysis, the company — guided by its specialist — resolves each open item: sends the last document, clears any discrepancy, confirms the final credential. As each gap closes, the verifier confirms it in the queue.

1. Close every open gap from the interim analysis (documents, discrepancies, missing confirmations).
2. Generate the full report — the complete, corroborated profile with every confirmed credential and its Verified badges.
3. Reach Premier Verified — upgrade to Professional ($2,995/year), which adds monthly, update-triggered re-verification so the profile stays current, not just correct once.