Know About the Off Visit Before the Customer Does
Pool Founder now runs automated visit anomaly detection on every completed visit. When something looks off, it files a Technician Alert so the office sees it the same day, not two weeks later when a customer calls about a green pool. The page that used to be called Technician Issues is now Technician Alerts, and it holds both the problems your techs report from the field and these new automatic alerts side by side.
The four-minute full-service visit is the classic example. On paper the stop is complete. In reality nobody was there long enough to skim, brush, test, and dose. Now that visit gets flagged the moment it is logged.
What Every Completed Visit Gets Checked Against
After a job is marked complete, Pool Founder checks the visit against three detectors and files an alert (badged Auto) only when something crosses your thresholds:
- Water chemistry out of range - Any reading that falls outside your company's acceptable ranges gets flagged. A depleted sanitizer reading (free chlorine below your minimum) is marked Critical, because that is a swim-safety problem, not a tuning problem.
- Time on job - Compares how long the tech spent at the stop against that job's own historical median, and flags visits that ran much longer or much shorter than usual for that pool.
- Chemical usage - Flags an abnormal visit: a hard per-visit dollar limit you set, chemical cost far above the job's typical spend, or an individual chemical quantity well outside its history for that pool.
These detectors exist to catch problems early, not to watch your techs. A short-time flag is just as often a GPS glitch or a gate code delay as it is a skipped visit. The alert is a prompt to look, not a verdict.
Off by Default, Configurable When You Turn It On
Every detector is off by default. For a solo operator, auto-alerts about your own visits are just noise, so nothing runs until you opt in. Open the Technician Alerts page and click Alert Settings to turn on the detectors you want and dial in what counts as abnormal for your company.
You control every threshold: the acceptable min and max for each water-chemistry parameter, the time cutoffs, the cost cap and multiplier, and how sensitive the per-chemical quantity check is. A Notify admins toggle decides whether a flagged visit also sends a notification; either way the alert is filed to the queue.
The time and cost-vs-typical checks wait until a job has a few prior visits before they compare, so a brand-new account will not throw false alarms. Chemistry ranges and the hard dollar cap work from the very first visit.
How Alerts Show Up
Auto-detected alerts land in the same queue as tech-reported issues, tagged by category (Auto - Chemistry, Auto - Time on Job, Auto - Chemical Usage). Open one and a What was flagged card shows exactly what was recorded against what was expected, for example a pH of 8.5 where your acceptable range tops out at 8.0, or sixty minutes on a job that typically takes twenty.
From there you can Acknowledge Alert to mark it seen, Mark as Resolved with optional notes, or Create Job to schedule a return trip. Completed job detail views also flag any alerts from that visit inline, right where you review the work.
The queue is on the technician mobile app too. On the Route tab, an owner or admin with the alerts permission gets a Technician Alerts card that opens the same list and can acknowledge or resolve right from the field. Push notifications for new alerts open straight to the alert.
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Try Pool Founder free for 30 daysFrequently Asked Questions
What kinds of visits get flagged?
Three things: water chemistry readings outside your acceptable ranges, time on the job far above or below that job's historical median, and abnormal chemical usage (a per-visit dollar cap, cost well above the job's typical spend, or a chemical quantity outside its history for that pool). Those are the only detectors that exist today.
Is this turned on automatically?
No. Every detector is off by default. You turn on the ones you want under Alert Settings on the Technician Alerts page, where you also set the thresholds that define abnormal for your company.
Will it flag brand-new accounts with no history?
The time and cost-vs-typical checks wait until a job has a few prior visits before they compare, so new accounts do not generate false alarms. Water chemistry range checks and the hard dollar cap apply from the first visit, since they compare against fixed limits you set.
Does turning this on mean I am tracking my technicians?
The goal is catching problems before customers do, not monitoring people. A flag is a signal to look closer, and short-time or high-cost flags often have innocent explanations like a GPS drift or a one-off chemical fix. You set the thresholds, and alerts are filed for review rather than acting as any automatic judgment.