Help Center
How to use Pool Founder — from your first customer import to routes, billing, the technician app, and the phone line that answers for you.
Getting Started
Set up your account, import your customer book, and get your first routes running.
Quick start guideHow a new Pool Founder account gets set up: a conversation with George, the AI assistant, who looks up your business from its name and website, asks how you run your business today and leads you through five steps (what you sell, customers and pools, each pool's service, your team, routes), opening each real page beside the chat. The dashboard stays on that conversation until setup is done. Book a setup call any time, or send us your old software's export and we set you up the same day.
Verify your phone or emailA verified phone number or email address is what unlocks sending invoices and quotes, texting customers, taking payments, and inviting teammates. Here is how to verify yours.
The Overview dashboardThe Overview opens on your To do list (the work waiting on you, urgent first) beside today's routes and what customers owe; the Numbers view holds the money row and the Today, Last 7 Days and Last 30 Days charts.
Your To do listThe To do list on the Overview lists the work waiting on the office that people act on (failed payments, overdue invoices, new leads, phone messages to call back, quotes, missed stops, routes with no tech), rolls each kind into one row, puts urgent ones first, clears each item on its own once it is done, has an Ask George button that hands a whole row to George, and lets each person dismiss or snooze items on their own list or take them off it for good.
Finding your way around the dashboardHow the dashboard sidebar is organized: what each item opens, the few items with tabs, the Settings page that lists everything you set up once (with its Find a setting search), and ⌘K to jump to any page.
Video tutorialsPool Founder has a library of short narrated videos, one per feature. Where to watch them: Video Tutorials in the dashboard sidebar, the public library at poolfounder.com/tutorials, the Watch button next to a page title, the top of help articles, and Tutorials on the Account tab of the technician app.
Import your customersBring your whole customer book into Pool Founder from a CSV or Excel file, a screenshot of your old software, or QuickBooks Online — customers, pool locations, and service jobs in one pass.
Set up service in bulkApply one recurring service (formerly a service plan) to many service locations at once — with per-row overrides for rate, preferred day, preferred technician, and visits per week.
Meet George: your help desk in the dashboard and the mobile appGeorge is the help desk built into Pool Founder — in the web dashboard and, for owners and admins, as the "Ask George" button in the technician mobile app. Ask George from the app or the dashboard about customers, schedules, routes, and invoices, show George a screenshot, photo or PDF, get step-by-step directions, stop George in the middle of his answer, or ask to speak to a human.
George knows the page you're on, opens pages for you, and draws chartsGeorge sees the page you have open in the web dashboard, popups included ("this one" just works), can open a page for you ("take me to payroll"), and answers trend and comparison questions with interactive charts and sortable tables you can download as CSV. Web dashboard only; in the technician app George knows "today's route" and "this stop" and can open an app screen for you, but draws no charts.
Scheduled requests, SMS replies, and documents you can downloadAutomations are requests run for you on a schedule ("on Sundays at 6 PM, send me an overview of next week's schedule") or whenever something happens ("when a tech reports an issue, draft a repair work order"), with the result sent by app push, email or SMS. Owners and office staff set them up (technicians can't create automations); any change an automation prepares waits on an approval card, nothing runs on its own. Owners and office staff can also message George by SMS from a verified number, and George can write a report or CSV beside the chat to open, download or print. Set them up on the George page → Automations, or manage them in George in the technician app.
Let George add customers, jobs, and routes for you: approval cards, undoing a change, and George PermissionsAuto mode is the default: George makes changes you can undo right away (Done, with Undo on the card) and asks first for anything that sends a message, moves money or deletes; the Auto / Ask switch by the message box makes every change wait for your approval. Can George add a customer, create a job or route, set up recurring services (service packages), or archive a customer for me? (He can prepare almost any change you can make in the dashboard.) Every company has it (there is nothing to switch on), what George can change today, how your role and the Always / Ask / Never settings decide what he offers, how to stop George asking you every time (Always allow), how the "George wants to:" approval card works (Approve, or a plain "yes" in the chat; Always allow, Deny, cards wait until you answer, Undo; the same cards make changes from the technician mobile app), the George Permissions page (Always / Ask / Never for you, Default / Ask / Never for everyone), and George's memory: the standing facts he remembers between chats ("Remember that we bill on the 1st"), the Remember this button, and the What George remembers list where facts are edited or forgotten, plus the private preferences George notices from your own chats with him. Changes to memory, phone-assistant instructions, automations, employees, and who receives your emails, texts and calls always show a card, and anything George prepares from a text or an automation waits for your approval.
Book a setup callGet a free onboarding call with the Pool Founder team — book a time online, we call your phone, and you can reschedule or cancel any time.
Book a support callSigned-in Pool Founder users can book a 30-minute tech support call with the Pool Founder team, over Zoom (the default) or by phone, from inside the app.
Customers & Leads
Manage customers, service locations, the customer portal, incoming leads, and your Google reviews.
Add and manage customersAdd customers one at a time or on the fly from a work order, find your way around the customer page, set a billing address for invoices that go to a PO box or somewhere other than the pool, look up customers on the technician app, call customers from your browser, add internal notes (and delete a note you added by mistake), rename or delete customer tags, and archive the ones you no longer service.
Tag customersBulk tagging: put a tag on many customers at once from the Customers table (or on one customer), take it off again, and filter the list by tags.
Merge duplicate customersCombine two or more customer records for the same person into one: what moves to the customer you keep, what stays behind, and how saved cards and QuickBooks links are handled.
Block a customerBlock (lock) a customer account so nobody can create quotes or jobs for them and staff can view but not edit them, for example when they owe you money, with a reason that shows on their record. Only Owners and Administrators can block, unblock, or edit a blocked customer.
Export customers, jobs, and service locations to CSV or ExcelDownload your customers, jobs, or service locations as a CSV file that opens in Excel or Google Sheets: what is included, what columns you get, and who can export.
Service locations and poolsHow service locations work: multiple addresses per customer, property names for a location (call an address by a name), on-site contacts, bodies of water with gallons, chemistry settings, equipment and warranty tracking (with equipment photos techs see in the app), location tags, who can see customer notes vs location notes, and reusable pool templates.
The customer portalHow your customers sign in with just their email and a 6-digit code, the visibility toggles you control, service requests, self-service billing and AutoPay, and quote responses.
LeadsEvery prospective customer in one place — captured by your phone assistant, submitted through your website, or added by hand — with the calls, texts, and scheduling proposals tied to each one. Add Lead needs only one of a name, phone, email, or address (an address alone is enough, on the web and in the technician app); converting a lead into a customer still asks for a first name and a phone or email.
Sign-up PageA public, mobile-friendly landing page for weekly service sign-ups, with your logo and brand color, showing what each service includes (and, if you choose, its task list and starting price). Each sign-up arrives as a lead. Off until you turn it on at Settings → Sign-up Page, with a link, QR code and website embed.
When a customer wants to cancelRecord why a customer wants to stop service and try to keep them: pause until a date, switch to every other week, a discount, a free fix visit, or keep the pool for a new owner. Cancel if they still want to, and see your save rate in the Cancellations report.
Route FitRanked route options and a suggested per-visit rate on every new lead, on the web dashboard and in the technician mobile app — which day and technician the stop is cheapest to add to, what to charge for it, and one button that creates the customer, the job, and the route stop.
Rate cardSet your own pricing rules once (base price by pool size, what salt, a spa, the filter type or your own questions add, how often, plans, a commercial multiplier, a discount) and price every new lead in one click from the lead page.
Documents and E-SignaturesSend customers a service agreement, liability waiver, access authorization or autopay authorization to sign online, keep uploaded files on the customer, see exactly when and how each document was signed, and see every document customers declined or let expire on the Documents page.
Lead pool detailsRecord the bodies of water a lead is asking about — pool, spa, or hot tub with its gallons, sanitizer, and surface — plus the equipment on each one with photos, so the Route Fit suggested rate estimates chemicals from comparable pools you already service. The pools, equipment and photos carry onto the customer's service location when you convert.
Job feedbackEvery service report email asks customers how the visit went. Their thumbs up, thumbs down, and comments land on the Job Feedback page — with satisfaction and response-rate stats and a per-technician breakdown. Feedback a customer gives by phone, text or in person can be logged by hand, and a rating that was an office problem can be marked not the tech's fault so it doesn't count against them.
Google reviews & your business profileConnect your Google Business Profile to see every review in Pool Founder, reply without leaving the dashboard, get notified of new reviews, and work through weekly AI coaching tasks that strengthen your listing.
Run several companies as one organizationAn organization groups several separate Pool Founder companies into markets (for example Georgia and Florida). The organization's Overview shows each market's customers, technicians, today's stops, revenue collected this month, and open quotes; open a market to see its companies, then open a company to work in it as yourself. Organizations are set up by Pool Founder support.
Equipment parts lists and error codesFind the manufacturer part number for any part on a customer's pump, filter, heater or salt cell (lid O-rings, baskets, impellers, cartridges), see which parts are discontinued or replaced, and look up what an equipment error code means, with causes, steps and the manual page.
Routes & Scheduling
Build routes, create jobs, move stops between technicians, and handle missed visits.
The Jobs overviewWhat the Jobs page shows: what needs attention, active maintenance, scheduled visits a week, recurring revenue, the work order pipeline, visits per week, and where the full list of jobs went.
Create jobsCreate recurring services and one-time work orders, start from a service you sell, and attach task checklists for your technicians.
Pin a temporary note to the top of a jobLeave a short-lived note on a job ("salt cell is broken, chlorine only for now") that shows at the top of the stop in the tech app for the next few visits and expires on its own. How it differs from location notes.
Work orders to scheduleCreate pool openings, closings, and other work orders that need their own visit for all your customers now, with no technician or date, then book them in bulk when spring comes.
Bill the parts you bought and send a tech to get them on the way to the jobAfter a diagnosis visit, record the parts you bought from any store on the work order's Parts orders card, put them on its line items (at your price, or cost plus a parts markup), and book the visit with a pickup stop at the store right before it. Also covers expected dates, backorders and customer approval.
Visit plans for multi-visit work ordersSet up a work order that takes several visits on a set rhythm, like a green-to-clean 3 times a week or a 14-day plaster startup, choose whether the tasks are done every visit or once for the whole job, plus the ready-made starter services for work orders, formerly one-time services (openings, filter cleans, repairs, a Service Call / Diagnostic visit) you can add with blank prices.
Build and optimize routesAssign jobs to technicians and days with the drag-and-drop Route Builder, undo a stop you moved to the wrong technician or day, auto-assign and rebalance routes, and optimize stop order with Google Maps.
Route Health and Optimize allSee where your routes lose miles: customers who'd be a shorter drive on another day, routes whose stops aren't in their best order, and technicians who spend most of the week driving to their area. Then optimize every route's stop order in one go, or plan this week's days the way they'll really run.
Transfer and move jobsMove jobs to another technician or day — temporarily for one date or permanently onto a new weekly route — even while a route is being run.
Cover a technician until a date (vacation, time off)Hand one pool, several pools or a technician's whole day to another technician for a date range, such as two weeks of vacation. The visits come back to the original technician automatically after the end date.
Rebuild your routes when someone's hours changeDescribe who is working when (half days, a day off, a part-timer, towns to stay in) and he rebuilds the routes for you: just for a date range, or as your new regular schedule. You see the plan before anything changes.
Change someone's hours for a day, right on the Route ScheduleClick a day's hours on the Route Schedule to give a technician a shorter or longer day, mark them off, or change every week. When a day runs past their hours, Fix picks the stops to move.
Subcontracted jobsHow to handle a job a subcontractor does for you: there is no subcontractor assignee, so you create the job, log the visit when the sub finishes, and record what you paid them as a job cost. Bill the customer as usual.
When a job was scheduled, visited, invoiced and paid, and who did itThe Activity tab on every job page: a When, What happened, By table of scheduling, visits, invoices and payments, notes, texts, alerts, parts orders, and changes made in the app or by George.
How technicians are notifiedWhich schedule changes send a technician a push notification, what the notification says, why appointment times are not pushed, and how to check whether a tech was told.
Reschedule missed stopsWhat happens when a route is left running overnight, and how to move missed or skipped stops to another technician or day in one step.
Unplanned and open stops: create, assign and move themCreate lightweight to-do stops with just a note and an address — leave them open for any technician, or pin them to a route — move an unplanned stop to another technician or another day with Move, and invoice them after completion.
Pause, skip, and archive jobsSkip a single visit, suspend a job until a restart date or until you resume it, or archive it entirely — and restore an archived job later without losing any history.
Log a past completionRecord visits that happened outside the app from the web dashboard — backdate completions with technician, tasks, chemicals, parts, and photos — and browse every completed stop in one ledger.
Admin route toolsWatch technicians live on the Field Operations map, skip stops or force-complete routes from the office, start and complete routes on behalf of a tech, and audit every schedule change in Schedule History.
Reading the Route Schedule's week numbersWhat Stops this week, Completed, Customers and Technicians count on the Route Schedule, and why Stops this week can be lower than your active recurring services.
Billing & Payments
Invoices, billing modes, online payments, quotes, and your Pool Founder subscription.
The Invoices overviewWhat the Invoices page shows: what needs attention (failed payments, past due, unbilled work orders, unsent drafts), what you're owed, what came in this month, the next billing run, invoiced vs collected by month, how late balances are, who owes the most, the latest payments, and where the full list of invoices went.
Maintenance billing modesHow recurring services bill in Pool Founder: per visit, monthly or weekly flat rate, or externally — plus the Upcoming Billing page (what bills and when), recurring line items, priced tasks (charge extra for a task like a filter clean when it is checked off), queued one-off charges (including work orders added to the next maintenance invoice), chemical billing, and seasonal schedules.
Create and manage invoicesCreate and send invoices (or create one without emailing it, to text the pay link yourself), edit and refund them, charge saved cards, copy payment links or text them to the customer, print mailed invoices (paper billing), and configure invoice emails, your sales tax rate, reminder cadences, auto-retry, the failed payment (returned payment / NSF) fee, and write-offs. Also what order the All invoices list shows invoices in and how to sort them (click a column header, or Last sent, Last paid, Newest).
Accept online paymentsConnect Stripe to take card, debit, and ACH payments with autopay, pass the card fee to customers where allowed, request cards or bank accounts on file by email (one customer or all at once), limit a customer to card or bank only, and show Pay by Zelle on invoices.
Reconcile bank depositsMatch every Stripe deposit in your bank account to the customer payments inside it — per-customer breakdown with invoice links, fees itemized, and a CSV export for your bookkeeper.
Record and void manual paymentsRecord cash, check, and Zelle payments on invoices — and void a payment that was mis-keyed or applied to the wrong invoice, without losing the paper trail.
Store creditGive a customer store credit instead of refunding their card. The credit sits on the customer's account and comes off their next invoices automatically, before any card or autopay charge.
Let customers pay over timeOffer Klarna and Sunbit monthly financing on invoices and quotes. You are paid the full amount up front; the customer pays the lender monthly. Covers the Invoice Settings switch, what customers see, paying a quote in full, fees and limits.
Work order billing and depositsHow one-time work orders get billed: prepay jobs end to end (a 100% deposit invoice sent or charged to a saved card, or invoicing up front, and what an up-front invoice locks), requiring a deposit, the Waiting on deposit status and deposit reminder texts, the Work Order Billing page's five stages (Deposits due, Ready to bill, On a maintenance bill, Invoiced unpaid, Paid last 30 days), invoicing one or many work orders at once, Mark as already billed, and Add to next maintenance invoice, which puts a repair on the customer's next monthly bill instead of sending its own invoice.
Parts from inventory and taxable line itemsCharge tax on work order and quote line items, add parts and chemicals from your inventory to a quote or work order at quantity × unit price (it never takes them out of stock), and see how discounts, deposits, billing, and QuickBooks handle the tax.
Consolidated billingBundle a customer's recurring services into one invoice on a customer-level monthly or weekly schedule — enrollment, fee passing, billing without visits, and how the rollup bills.
Tips and gratuitiesLet customers tip your technicians from service report emails, the invoice pay page, and the customer portal — then track what each tech is owed and mark tips paid out.
QuotesCreate and send quotes your customers can accept online, track them through draft, sent, accepted, and rejected, and convert accepted quotes into work orders or recurring services — with deposits, discounts, chemical billing, and QuickBooks Estimate sync.
Plans and your subscriptionHow Pool Founder pricing works: $49 a month for your first tech plus a set price for each tech after, the founder rate, the 30-day trial, the business line add-on, and managing the card on your subscription.
Technician Mobile App
Everything technicians do in the field — routes, visit completion, and field actions.
Run your routeHow the Today tab works in the technician app: starting and finishing the route, the odometer modal, pausing, how to re-optimize your remaining stops mid-route from your current location, reversing the route (running your remaining stops backwards in one tap), transfers, per-stop arrival estimates, mileage trips, and working offline — including looking up a customer's address and phone number with no signal from the on-device customer directory and adding an unplanned stop for them.
Complete a visitEverything on the mobile completion screen: task views, checklists, test-strip scanning, water chemistry with automatic LSI, chemicals and parts, the Extras step, voice fill, editing completed visits, and sharing your work. Also how an admin makes the chemistry form start blank every visit instead of pre-filling last week's readings (the Pre-fill Chemistry From Last Visit toggle on the Technician App Settings page of the web dashboard).
Chemical dosing recommendationsThe mobile app's Balance calculator tells technicians exactly what to add after a reading: current vs target readings, live LSI for both, and each dose in the company's own products, scaled to the pool's volume and each product's strength. Orenda-style, checked against Orenda's calculator, works offline, no AI. How targets are suggested, adding doses to the visit, adding missing products to inventory, and what happens when pool data is missing.
Work orders and unplanned stops in the fieldCreate work orders, recurring services, customers, bodies of water, and vehicles from the truck; add unplanned stops; pick up open stops; and manage job tasks and notes in the field.
Edit a job from the mobile appChange a job's rate, billing, chemicals, extra charges, service report, preferred schedule, and name, or a work order's taxable line items, from Job Details on the phone, or suspend and resume service. Who can edit and what stays on the web.
Invoices and leads from the fieldCreate, send, edit, and charge invoices from the truck, send quotes, bill purchased chemicals to the next invoice, and work the whole leads pipeline — add a new lead (capture a prospect with your GPS), see which route day fits and what to charge, and convert them in one step — all from the technician mobile app.
Account and settings on mobileThe Account screen in the technician app: map provider, task view modes, call forwarding, the share prompt, push notifications and quiet hours, the notifications feed, and reporting issues.
Phone, Texting & Email
Your business line, the AI assistant that answers calls, texting, email, and service reports.
Set up your business phoneChoose between free call forwarding on the number you already have and a $25/mo business line (a new number, or your current number ported over), then get your calls answered around the clock.
The AI phone assistantHow the Live Assistant answers your calls 24/7 — setup, what it can and can't do, urgent messages, opt-in call transfers, privacy guarantees, and the settings you control — including where to change the assistant's name and what it says when it picks up (Messages → Phone → Settings → Assistant → Identity and greeting).
Texting and the Phone inboxEvery call and text on your business line in one inbox — reply, pin or archive a conversation, approve assistant drafts, send photos, schedule a text to send later (or hold texts typed after hours until the next morning), set up the eight automated texts including lead follow-up sequences and deposit reminders, and manage carrier registration. Turn on the on-the-way and invoice-ready texts even without a business phone line: they go out on the shared toll-free number. Add the review link the review request text sends right on its row.
The phone panelThe phone at the top of every Pool Founder page opens a phone panel in the bottom-right corner: dial any number from your business line, answer calls, see recent calls, and watch your AI assistant on a call live with a transcript, then take the call over with one click.
Saved repliesSave the answers you text over and over — pricing, service days, what to expect — and drop one into any text reply on the web or in the mobile app, with the customer's name already filled in.
Text broadcastsText one service update — a rain delay, a route change, a closure — to a filtered group of your customers, with a live count of who can actually receive it and a per-recipient record afterwards.
Keep your phones on QuoConnect your Quo (formerly OpenPhone) workspace so Pool Founder texts customers from your Quo number, and every Quo call and text shows up in the Phone inbox.
Email, your domain, and blastsTrack every customer email with delivery, open, and click data, send from your own domain, and reach your whole customer list with one-off email blasts.
Service reportsConfigure the automatic after-visit email customers receive (summary, chemistry, and photos — every photo in the email is clickable to open the full-size original), resend a report for any visit, and collect customer feedback and optional tips.
Portal messagesTriage service requests customers send from their portal — statuses, assignment, AI-suggested replies, internal notes, and one-click job or quote creation.
Team & Permissions
Employees, time tracking, payroll, vehicles, and role-based permissions.
Employees, time tracking, and payrollAdd employees, track hours and mileage automatically from the mobile app, run payroll summaries, and set up vehicle costs so your profitability numbers are true.
Technician pay models, the quality bonus, and scorecardsPay technicians hourly, per stop (per pool), hourly plus per stop, or on commission instead of hourly; pay each technician their own rate for the same service (tech rates: a senior tech earns more for a shaft seal than a new one, without a service per tech), carried through to the work order; give one customer (an odd or oversized pool) or one work order (pulling a motor vs a quick valve fix) its own tech pay per stop without making a new service, and let technicians enter a work order's tech pay themselves from the app; the technician scorecard, whose score is the average stop rating over 30 days, and its targets (skip rate and more); add a quality bonus earned by average-stop-rating tiers or by hitting every target; list every stop and repair a technician did in any pay period (including custom dates) with what each one paid; read the scorecard behind every payroll row; and rate each completed stop out of 100 (stop ratings), with extra credit for a customer thumbs up; mark each technician as a W-2 employee or a 1099 contractor so the payroll export splits for Gusto or ADP.
Attendance, pay runs, incentives, levels and inspectionsSee every morning which techs started their route, who's late and which techs didn't start their route or never showed up, and move a missing tech's stops in one tap; get a text when a route hasn't started; approve each week's pay with one tap (1099 contractors get their statement, your payroll inbox gets the CSV for Gusto or ADP); add a bonus to a tech's pay; pay techs automatically for 5-star Google reviews, customer thumbs up, covering a teammate's stops and perfect weeks; run contests with a leaderboard; set up tech levels (Level 1, 2, 3) that pay more; record drive-behind inspections; track continuity (same tech, same day, same time) and revenue at risk per tech; and show each tech their own pay in the app (My Pay).
Fuel and expense log on trucksTechnicians log fuel, maintenance, repairs, and other truck expenses from the mobile app; the office sees them on each vehicle page with period totals, a real fuel cost per mile, and flags for odometer or MPG readings that look wrong.
Team chat: group chats and direct messages with your crewGroup chats and one-on-one messages between employees, with photos and videos, on the web (Team → Team Chat) and in the mobile app (Comms tab → Team). Customers never see team chats.
Your profile, and Do Not Disturb for callsChange your own name, phone number and photo, and turn on Do Not Disturb (for a while, or on a weekly schedule like lunch) so incoming calls stop ringing you in Pool Founder.
Truck maintenance, repairs and shift inspectionsEach truck has a profile: a maintenance schedule (oil change, tire rotate and balance) that tells you when it is due, repair orders with the shop and the bill, drop-off and pick-up at the mechanic as a stop on a technician’s day, and walk-around inspections with photos at the start and end of each shift.
Roles and permissionsGive each employee a role with granular permissions — edit the built-in roles directly, build custom roles, and see exactly which permission gates each feature, including who can see customer notes, location notes, contact info, and part prices.
Settings & Analytics
Task templates, water chemistry, alerts, profitability, QuickBooks, the API, and referrals.
Tasks, task groups, default tasks and services (recurring services and work orders)Tasks and task groups on one Tasks page, with built-in default tasks and ready-made checklists like Pool Opening and Pool Closing; build reusable checklists for visits, repeat tasks every N weeks, make tasks required, and set task prices. Service plans and one-time services are now one Services page holding everything you sell: recurring services (formerly service plans or packages) that keep every pool on them in sync, and work orders (formerly one-time services or work order templates) for one-off jobs like openings.
Water chemistry settingsChoose which water-chemistry readings technicians record, which are required, their order and default values, on the All pools, Salt and Chlorine tabs (one Chlorine setup covers tablets, liquid, cal-hypo and dichlor); built-in setups (salt pools require Salt, chlorine pools show CYA), Reset, filling in pools with no type (Detect, Review), and custom measurements like ORP or borates.
Chemistry trends on a poolSee every water test for a pool charted over time against its target range, including LSI with its status colors — on the body of water, service location, job, and customer pages.
Technician AlertsOne queue for problems technicians report from the field and automatic alerts from completed visits — chemistry out of range, unusual time on job, abnormal chemical usage. Plus issue templates (alert types with a severity and office instructions) techs pick on Report an Issue.
Profitability analyticsSee revenue, costs, and margin by day, week, or month and by job, customer, route, and technician — plus revenue and profit per hour, gross vs net profit, vehicle costs, recurring revenue (MRR), and how to log job costs (an expense such as a dump fee or a subcontractor) against a completed or already-invoiced job.
QuickBooks syncConnect QuickBooks Online, import customers and items, tune what syncs (invoices, payments, refunds, quotes, products, Stripe fees), and monitor sync activity. Includes what to do when an invoice is paid in Pool Founder but QuickBooks still shows it open (nothing — the missing payment is retried automatically within about an hour; do not mark it paid in QuickBooks yourself).
Heritage Pool SupplyConnect your Heritage Pool Supply account, search the catalog with your own pricing and branch stock, place orders with a PO number and delivery date, track order status and deliveries, and receive orders into your chemicals and parts inventory, on the web and in the technician app.
API keys and the Leads APICreate and revoke API keys, authenticate with Bearer tokens, and push leads into Pool Founder from Zapier or your own code with the Create Lead endpoint — including the smsConsent flag that lets follow-up texts reach a web lead. Also read open invoices with pay links and customers with route days.
Connect Claude to Pool Founder: step-by-step setupTurn on AI assistants in Settings → API, add Pool Founder as a custom connector in Claude or Claude Code, allow access, and ask about your customers, schedule and invoices in plain English. Assistants can also make changes after the person confirms, like adding a customer or a job (never money, emails or texts); an owner can turn Allow changes off to make them read-only. Each person sees and does only what their role allows.
Spread out repeating tasks like filter cleans so they don't all come due the same week, and set when one was last doneEvenly distribute (stagger) a repeating task such as an every-4-week filter clean across your route with Spread them out, so a few pools come due each week instead of all at once. Customers moved over from another app have no visit history, so every repeating task (a filter clean every 26 weeks, an acid wash) looks due on the first visit. Set when it was really last done: on one job, in bulk from the Tasks page (one date, spread them out, or from a CSV), from the technician app, or by asking George.
Referral programsTwo programs on one page: refer another pool company to Pool Founder and earn $150 cash, or run your own program that credits customers for referring neighbors, with a flat credit or one month of the new customer's service for both.
Manage your chemicals inventorySet customer prices and a per-chemical sales tax rate, track real costs for every chemical, keep stock counts accurate with restocks, and control billing with the Always Charge toggle.
Chemical usage and cost analyticsSee how much of each chemical you are using, which customers and pools use the most of it and what you spend on them, what those customers were billed, and the margin — on a chemical's Insights tab, the Chemicals tab of Profitability, and on customer, job, location, and pool pages. Includes the Chemical usage report: how much of each chemical every technician (or customer) used today or over a date range, with Export CSV. Also why Billed reads $0 for chemicals included in the monthly rate, and how the pages switch to a usage-first view automatically (quantities, visits, per-visit usage — no setting to flip) when you never entered chemical costs and every screen shows $0.00.
Manage your parts inventoryKeep a catalog of replacement parts with photos, customer prices, a cost you can update without entering inventory, an order link to your supplier, archiving or recategorizing many parts at once, low-stock alerts, and restock history, plus a parts catalog in the technician app where each tech sees retail prices only if their role allows it.
Add your brandingSet your business name, upload your logo and pick brand colors once — they appear on quotes, invoices, the customer portal, and service report emails automatically.
Notification settingsControl how Pool Founder reaches you — push and email channels, category toggles, overnight quiet hours, a daily digest email, and the in-app notification feed.
ActivityThe Activity page lists every change made in your Pool Founder account, newest first, and who made it: a teammate, George, or Pool Founder support.