Pool company bookkeeping: builds, service routes and chemicals

Pool and spa companies usually run two businesses that could hardly be more different.

Construction is large, lumpy project work: a signed contract worth a year’s revenue from several service accounts, a build that runs for weeks or months, large deposits, progress payments at each stage, and nearly every trade subcontracted.

Service is route work: weekly visits, chemicals, filter cleans, repairs, openings and closings. Small tickets, steady revenue, and margin decided by route density and chemical cost.

Books that blend the two can show a strong year while one side quietly loses money. Separating them is the first job.

Construction: stages, deposits and subs

A pool build is paid in stages — typically at signing, after excavation, after steel and shell, after plumbing and electrical, after tile and coping, and at finish. The exact schedule is in the contract.

Three things keep the construction books honest:

• Deposits and stage payments recorded as a liability until the work they cover is done. Large deposits make it very easy to fund one build with the next customer’s money, which works until sales slow for a month. The same spiral affects remodelers — see bookkeeping for remodelers.
• Every sub cost coded to the build. Excavation, steel, shell, plumbing, electrical, tile, plaster — most of a build’s cost is subcontracted, and each sub needs a W-9 and a current insurance certificate before they are paid. See who needs a 1099.
• Billed against earned. On builds that run for months, what you have billed and what you have earned drift apart. That is exactly what a WIP schedule measures.

Financing fees

Many pool builds are financed, and the lender often keeps a fee from what it pays you. Record the full contract value as revenue and the fee as a cost, not the net payment as revenue — otherwise financed builds look as profitable as cash builds and you cannot see what offering financing costs you.

Service: cost per stop

Service profitability lives at the stop. A stop costs the technician’s time on site and driving to it at the burdened labor rate, plus chemicals, plus a share of the truck.

Two things usually surprise owners once that is calculated:

Route density matters more than price. A well-priced account in the wrong place loses money. The same economics run through pest control route profitability.

Chemical cost moves. Chemical prices change, and a flat monthly service rate set a few seasons ago can quietly stop covering them. Track chemical cost per stop, per month.

Chemicals and parts on the truck

Chemicals, filters and common repair parts carried on service trucks are inventory until they are used. Counted occasionally, they tell you whether what went onto the trucks matches what was billed out — a gap there is either unbilled usage or shrinkage. See truck stock and inventory.

Flat monthly or per visit

Service is often billed as a flat monthly fee, sometimes with chemicals included and sometimes billed on top. Whichever you use, compare what each account pays against what it costs to service, at least once a season. Accounts that call for extra visits, or pools that take far more chemicals than average, are frequently underpriced.

Seasons

In cold-climate markets, openings and closings bunch into a few weeks and the winter is quiet. In warm markets, service runs all year while construction slows or speeds with the economy and the weather. Either way, a reserve built in the busy months carries the slow ones — the seasonal reserve calculator sizes it from your own numbers.

Repairs and warranty

Paid repairs and warranty work on builds should be separated. Warranty visits belong to the original build, so its true margin includes them, and so you can see whether a particular sub or product keeps bringing you back. See what callbacks are really costing you.

Related

• Deposits and progress billing
• What a recurring contract is actually worth
• Construction bookkeeping, step by step

General information, not tax or legal advice.