Most pool companies don’t have a scheduling problem so much as a consistency problem. The route is the same every week, until a pump fails, a technician is out or a new customer wants Thursday. Good pool route scheduling keeps the weekly stops fixed and makes room for everything else around them.
One day, one area
Pools are small jobs with drive time in between, so the route is the profit. Group pools by neighborhood, give each neighborhood a day, and resist the customer who wants a different day across town. A stop that adds twenty minutes of driving every week costs you more than it earns.
Every-other-week pools need the same discipline. Keep them on their area’s day and split them evenly between the two alternating weeks so one week isn’t twice as long as the other.
Order matters inside the day too. Start with the pools that need the most time or the earliest access, end near the shop or the supply house, and keep commercial pools with set hours at the times their managers expect. Once the order is right, write it down and stop re-deciding it every week; the route should only change when the customer list does.
Set up each pool once
In Sentra Scheduler each pool is a recurring job at the customer’s address: weekly or every 2 weeks, all year or for a season, with the time on site and the price per visit. The visits come due each week, Monday to Sunday, and wait in the tray until you put them on a technician’s day. Every 2 weeks counts from the week the job starts, so the alternating pattern never drifts.
Gate codes, dog warnings and where the equipment pad is go on the site’s access notes, so the technician sees them on the visit instead of calling the office.
Record the water every time
The record of what you measured and what you added protects you when a customer’s pool turns green the week after you left. Decide what every visit must capture, and make it required:
- Chlorine and pH readings.
- What was added and how much.
- Filter or basket cleaned, and anything the customer should know.
- An after photo of the water.
In Sentra Scheduler these are the job type’s close-out questions. Mark them required and the visit can’t close without them. They’re free answers the technician types in; there is no chemical stock count, so if you track inventory, keep doing it where you do it today.
Repair calls alongside the route
A pump that won’t prime or a heater that won’t fire can’t wait for next Tuesday. Repair calls come in from your website’s request button, email or a phone call, each with a response time for its job type. On the schedule, drop the call on the technician whose route passes closest; Sentra Scheduler leaves time for the drive and warns if the day runs past their hours. If a repair runs long, push the rest of the day back in order with one step.
Skipping a week
Customers go on vacation and close the pool for a week. Unschedule or move that week’s visit; the recurring job keeps the next ones coming. If a customer switches from weekly to every other week for the winter, change the job and its untouched future visits follow.
When the technician is out
Every pool company has the morning a technician calls in sick with fifteen pools on the route. Decide in advance who covers which areas, and keep the route list where anyone in the office can see it, not in the technician’s head. In Sentra Scheduler the day’s visits sit on the technician’s lane; move the lane’s visits to another technician, or hand single stops to whoever is closest, and the new technician’s phone shows the stops with access notes and Navigate. The customer’s arrival window and reminder email still apply, so a changed technician doesn’t mean a missed promise.
Time off entered ahead of time is better still: a visit dropped on a technician who is off shows a conflict on the card, so vacations are planned around rather than discovered on the day.
The week in numbers
A weekly pool is priced on about 52 visits a year, so its annual value shows up on the job and the customer. The forecast counts every weekly visit in each month, which tells you whether the spring rush needs another technician before it arrives. For the general approach to steady weekly work, read weekly service routes.
A quick checklist
- One area per day, alternating weeks balanced.
- Each pool set up once as a weekly or every-2-weeks job.
- Readings and chemicals required at close-out.
- Repair calls placed on the nearest route.
- Skipped weeks moved or unscheduled, not deleted.
That is pool route scheduling that survives a busy summer. See how the pieces fit together for a pool company on the pool service page.