Stop Chasing Payments
The slowest part of running a pool service company is often the part that has nothing to do with pools: collecting money. Pool Founder now handles the follow-up for you. AutoPay charges a saved card the moment an invoice is issued, declined charges retry automatically over the following days, and overdue invoices trigger reminder emails on a cadence you choose.
You still stay in control. Every behavior described here is a setting under Invoice Settings, so you decide how aggressive collections should be and where customer replies land.
AutoPay and Automatic Retries
When a customer has AutoPay enabled with a saved card or bank account, Pool Founder charges it automatically as invoices are issued. No emailed link to wait on, no manual charge to remember.
A single decline used to mean the invoice quietly sat unpaid until someone noticed. Now, if a charge fails, the system retries it on its own over the following days rather than giving up after one attempt. Two settings under the Reminders & collections section govern this:
- Auto-retry failed AutoPay - retries a declined charge automatically at 24 hours, 72 hours, and 7 days after the failure.
- Retry on card update - when a customer adds a new card, any of their open invoices that previously failed AutoPay are re-charged right away instead of waiting for the next retry.
Retries only run when Auto-retry failed AutoPay is turned on. Leave it off and AutoPay behaves as a single attempt, exactly as before.
Automatic Reminders for Overdue Invoices
For invoices that are not on AutoPay, or where retries have run their course, Pool Founder now sends reminder emails automatically once an invoice goes past due. Each reminder is branded and carries a direct pay link. You pick how persistent the follow-up is with the Reminder cadence control:
- Off - no reminders are sent.
- Gentle - reminders on days 7 and 14 past due.
- Standard - reminders on days 3, 7, 14, and 21.
- Aggressive - reminders on days 1, 3, 7, 14, 21, and 30.
Collections do not run forever. The Write off after setting lets you automatically mark an invoice uncollectible and stop reminders once it crosses a number of days past due. Set it to 0 to disable automatic write-offs and keep chasing indefinitely.
The Customer emails section is where you toggle the invoice-created email, payment receipts, and the failed-payment notice, and set a reply-to address so responses reach the right inbox instead of a no-reply.
See What Was Sent, and Why a Payment Failed
Every invoice now has an Emails panel, separate from the Activity timeline. It lists each billing email sent for that invoice and folds in delivery status, so you can see whether a reminder was delivered, opened, clicked, or bounced. It also shows when the customer viewed the pay page. When a customer says they never got the invoice, you no longer have to take their word for it.
On the customer side, a returning customer whose card was declined now sees why on the pay page. A short notice tells them their last payment did not go through and gives the specific reason, along with a prompt to retry or use another method. Instead of a mystery failure, the customer knows their card had insufficient funds or expired and can fix it on the spot.
Choose the Card, Per Job
Some customers run multiple properties and want different jobs billed to different cards. On a maintenance job's page in the dashboard, an AutoPay card picker lets you choose a specific saved card for that job, or select Use customer default to fall back to the customer's standing AutoPay card. A job with its own card bills on its own schedule rather than rolling into a consolidated invoice.
Customers can do the same from the portal. When AutoPay is on and they have more than one saved card across more than one maintenance job, a "Charge specific jobs to a different card" section lets them assign a card per job.
Adding a card in the portal no longer silently enrols a customer in AutoPay. The add-card form now shows an explicit "Use this for AutoPay" checkbox that is off by default, so saving a card and enrolling in AutoPay are two deliberate choices.
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Try Pool Founder free for 30 daysFrequently Asked Questions
Where do I turn AutoPay retries and reminders on?
Open Invoice Settings from your dashboard. Reminder cadence, Auto-retry failed AutoPay, Retry on card update, and Write off after all live in the Reminders & collections section. The invoice-created email, receipts, failed-payment notice, and reply-to address are in the Customer emails section.
How do declined AutoPay charges get retried?
When Auto-retry failed AutoPay is enabled, a declined charge is retried automatically at 24 hours, 72 hours, and 7 days after the failure. If a customer adds a new card in the meantime and Retry on card update is on, their open failed invoices are re-charged immediately with the new card.
Can I stop reminders on invoices that will never be paid?
Yes. The Write off after setting automatically marks an invoice uncollectible and stops reminders once it passes a number of days past due that you set. Set it to 0 if you would rather it never write off automatically.
Does adding a card automatically enable AutoPay for a customer?
No. In the customer portal, the add-card form has a "Use this for AutoPay" checkbox that is off by default. Leaving it unchecked simply saves the card; checking it enrols the customer in AutoPay with that card.