What PoolBoss Says
Look at every pool before you say yes, and price the cleanup apart from the service. Charge a one-time recovery fee to bring a neglected pool back. Start your normal monthly rate on the first clean visit. Take photos on day one, and don't take over the old company's price by default.
A pool company folds. Within days, a dozen of its customers have your number. Their pools have gone weeks with nobody on them, and every customer expects the old price. You haven't seen a single pool yet.
This is a good day to grow and an easy day to lose money. Below is what to check on the first visit, why you shouldn't take the old price, how a recovery fee should change with pool size, how many accounts to take at once, and which ones to pass on.
How do I take over pool accounts from a company that quit?
Take them on in three moves. Look at the pool. Price the recovery apart from the service. Then put the pool on your route. Don't quote a monthly price over the phone before you've seen the water.
A pool that's clean on your first look joins the route like any other new customer, so use your normal new-customer intake. The rest of this post is about the pools that aren't clean.
- Look first. Go to the pool, test the water, take photos, and check the equipment and the gate. This visit is to learn what you're taking on. It isn't the first service.
- Split the price in two. A one-time recovery fee covers the extra work and chemicals to bring the pool back. Your normal monthly rate covers service once the pool is clean.
- Start the route when the water is clean. Until then the pool is a recovery job, not a route stop. The monthly rate starts with the first clean visit.
Don't take the old company's price
Every customer will tell you what they used to pay. Treat that as a question, not a promise. You don't know what the old company's costs were, and you don't know what the pool needs yet.
Price each account from your own numbers, your own time, and your own cost per stop. What a stop should be priced at walks through how to get there. Then say it to the customer in plain words: the first charge is a one-time cleanup, and the monthly price starts when the pool is clean.
Hypothetical example: you take on 12 pools. Say each one needs 90 extra minutes of recovery work, and your time is worth $70 an hour (use your own number). That's 1,080 minutes, or 18 hours, which comes to $1,260 of work. If you quote the old price and no recovery fee, you absorb all of it.
Put the cleanup on its own invoice line. A cleanup folded into the monthly price disappears the first time the customer asks why the bill went up. In PoolBoss an invoice takes line items for the service and any extras, so the one-time fee sits next to the monthly service as its own line.
The first visit is a look, not a service
Plan the first visit as an assessment. You aren't cleaning anything yet. You're writing down what the pool is, before you touch it.
- Test the water and write down free chlorine, pH, and alkalinity. These numbers are your proof of where the pool started.
- Take photos of the water, the walls, the filter, and the equipment pad before you touch anything.
- Look at the pump, filter, and heater. Note anything that leaks, makes noise, or won't run.
- Check the gate and the fence. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says fences should be at least 4 feet high, and gates should open out from the pool and be self-closing and self-latching. If the gate doesn't latch, write it down and tell the customer the same day.
Sort each pool by what you see, then price it
Not every pool needs a recovery fee. Sort each one by its condition on the first visit. Bringing a green pool back covers the algae work itself. The table below shows how to charge for each condition.
The photos from the first visit are what make the fee fair. A dated photo and a set of readings show the customer where the pool started.
| Condition | What it needs | How to charge | Monthly rate starts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clear | A normal first service | No recovery fee | First visit |
| Cloudy | Chemical balance and extra filter time, usually a second visit | A one-time recovery fee for the extra visit and the chemicals | First clean visit |
| Green | Algae treatment over several visits | A larger one-time recovery fee | When the water is clear |
| Swamp (can't see the bottom) | Debris out first, then chemistry | The largest recovery fee, or quote it by the hour | When the water is clear |
| Equipment down | A repair before the water can be treated | The customer approves the repair first | When the pool runs |
Recovery costs grow with gallons, so one flat fee is wrong
The easy quote is one flat cleanup fee for every pool. We think that's the wrong quote, and the dosing engine shows why. Chemicals scale with the water in the pool.
Hypothetical example: a neglected pool reads free chlorine 0, pH 8.2, and alkalinity 50. The PoolBoss dosing engine says what it takes to bring each reading back to the middle of its range. A 30,000-gallon pool takes about three times what a 10,000-gallon pool takes. For the acid, the engine's own note is to add about three-quarters, retest, then top up.
Charge every pool the same fee and you lose money on the big ones. Price recovery by size and by condition. The table is only the chemicals to restore normal readings. It has no algae shock in it, so a green pool costs more than these numbers.
| Pool size | 12.5% liquid chlorine (free chlorine 0 to 2.5) | Muriatic acid (pH 8.2 to 7.5) | Baking soda (alkalinity 50 to 100) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 gal | 27 fl oz | 42 fl oz | 7.5 lb |
| 20,000 gal | 54 fl oz | 84 fl oz | 15 lb |
| 30,000 gal | 80 fl oz | 126 fl oz | 22.5 lb |
Take them on in batches
Twelve neglected pools is a lot of extra work in one week, and your regular customers still need their visits. Take the clear pools first, then the ones close to your existing stops. Those add the least work.
Hypothetical example: you take on 12 pools and each one needs 90 extra minutes of recovery work. That's 1,080 minutes, or 18 hours. In one week, that's more than two full 8-hour days on top of your route. Take 4 pools a week and it's 6 hours a week for 3 weeks.
Give the rest of the list a start date, in writing, so the customers waiting know when to expect you.
Accounts to pass on
You don't have to take every customer who calls. Some accounts start at a loss and stay there.
- Pools far from your existing stops. Drive time on every visit is a cost you pay every week, so price it in or pass.
- Pools that need an equipment repair the customer won't pay for. You can't keep the water right with a pump that won't run.
- A customer who won't agree to a recovery fee on a pool that needs the work. The account starts at a loss.
- A customer who prepaid the old company. That money went to the old company. Don't promise to honor it unless you decide to.
- A pool with a safety problem the customer won't fix, like a gate that won't latch. Write it down either way.
Keep day one on the pool's record
The photos, readings, and notes from the first visit only help if the next tech can find them. In PoolBoss each pool keeps its notes and history, and a visit holds readings, photos, and notes. With keeping the condition and history of every pool you take on, the day-one photo is still on the pool in month six.
If you get the customer list as a spreadsheet, PoolBoss can import the customers and pools from it. You still build the route. PoolBoss doesn't judge a pool's condition or set a recovery price. You do both.
A note on the other side of this: if the old company's owner says you can't take the customers, ask a lawyer. This post isn't legal advice.
Sources
- Safety Barrier Guidelines for Residential Pools: Preventing Child Drownings, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
