Your Guide to Investing in Swimming Pool Business Software

The goal of most businesses is to grow; creating more income, more jobs, and more happy customers. So, in any business, there comes a time when you need to move away from storing your receipts in an old shoe box and doing all your scheduling on sticky notes. The swimming pool industry is no different in this regard.

However, unlike many other industries, anyone whose business involves building, installing and/or maintaining pools (or spas) knows that the needs of a swimming pool business are complex. Out of the box software designed to make business procedures more efficient or to streamline processes like invoicing or quoting often require expert customization in order to meet the most basic requirements of this industry.

Why Is The Swimming Pool Industry More Complex?

When you are evaluating a swimming pool software you may find that most systems suit part of your requirements, but not all. If you look at Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that can manage your equipment, supplies and construction management, often they are not easily set up to quote for stand-alone maintenance services like cleaning and water testing as these may have different staff, pricing, and scheduling.

Not only do you need to be able to quote for construction, but many companies also allow the public to by directly from them, so you also need to be able to track and manage stock. Whether your business has an online shop or a physical store (or both), inventory control may not be the biggest part of your business, but letting it slide will be costing you. Potentially creating chaos in your warehouse with over ordering, underordering and excess time spent trying to track down stock location.

If you provide additional regular services such as pool cleaning, water testing and water treatment you need to be able to create schedules for your staff so that clients don’t get missed, track the products used – and be able to manage the profit margin of products – track the amount of time spent, and of course generate invoices.

Out of the box accounting software can of usually deal with services and costing products OR physical sales, OR construction costing, not all three. Being in the business of manufacturing and selling swimming pools means that you have unique and complex requirements that are not found in other industries. The average builder or construction firm doesn’t sell lumber direct to the public, and the standard retail store doesn’t offer a cleaning service.

Software Needs

Construction & Installation

If part of your business includes installing and/or constructing swimming pools, then you will need to make sure that you invest in software that is able to make your job easier and your business run more efficiently.

You need software that can adapt to each job, but still run with the same basic template.

• How many workers will be needed for the job?
• Given the size of the job, what equipment and parts will be needed, and how many of each?
• Will, there be any discount applied (if you are installing the exact same pool in 5 locations for a motel chain you might want to offer a discount)
• Can you break the job down into its stages to allow for easier project management?
• Are you able to look up pool data by size, style or location suitability?
• Are you able to make allowances for surrounds, landscaping and subcontractors?
• Are you able to create a service and maintenance agreement that starts once the installation has been finalized?

Maintenance & Service

Are you able to access client information easily? What about when you’re on location or on the road? Are you able to update client records on location, including taking photos – which is helpful to record damage, problems, as well as a job, really well done (learn how here)?

Are you able to have your schedule updated in real time so that you can ensure your service staff have the most up-to-date contact list and are able to be in the field working with maximum efficiency? Is your service team able to record time they’ve spent on the job to make invoicing time-based jobs easier?

What about keeping track of chemicals used, amounts, pH levels? All of this information should be able to be recorded and accessed easily by staff in the field, without needing to find the right notebook (or the right page in multiple notebooks) or call back to the office to get someone to access the record on the computer system.

Sales

Whether you are selling directly to the public or maintain a stock of chemical supplies or pool parts, you need to be able to keep track of your inventory. If your staff are also able to access this inventory information instantly (ideally while on-site as well), they are more able to give clients time frames for repairs, replacements and ensure that you have very happy customers.

Remember that ability to be able to take photos and attach them to a client’s information? What if you can also record permission from that client to use those images for marketing and be able to show potential new clients ideas (https://www.pinterest.nz/MLandryNow/swimming-pool-ideas)

Accounting

Ultimately you do want to be paid! Hopefully, the software you choose can help with that. Look for something that can generate reports about what is happening in your business, but you also need to be able to do basic things like create invoices and monitor debtors and creditors. Can your system be integrated with your accountant’s system? How hard is it to import banking information? Are you able to see which products are running at a loss? Are you able to see why? Will you need a separate Point Of Sale system or can you use software that will be able to work with your sales and marketing information, as well as your quoting and maintenance system?

Payroll

Payroll can be an issue for many in the swimming pool industry, as they not only have casual, part-time and full-time but also contractors and subcontractors; all of whom are on different pay rates and contracts. To complicate matters, different states have different requirements for compliance (click here). Then there is time sheet management.

You could probably find several systems that work well for each aspect of your business (or punch cards, notebooks, and filing cabinets), but evaluate their worth against a system that can integrate and streamline your business.