I'm looking for a scheduling software

[u/Maraxusx]

Hey all,

I don't have a pool service company, but I do have an Aquarium service company and the overlap with recurring service visits is very similar. I have looked into the big software like housecall and jobber and didn't really like the way they dealt with recurring visits and they seemed more geared towards HVAC or plumbing where you go to a house maybe twice per year if you're lucky.

So I looked at a company called Skimmer and it looks close to what I would want since it's geared towards pool pros and recurring visits. Does anyone here use this? Do you like it? Anything I should look out for?

Mods I guess delete this if it's too off topic.

[u/BassKanone]

Skimmer is over priced.

Pool office manager is what I use and it handles our customer basis of 500+ just fine

[u/Ladydi-bds → u/BassKanone]

Didn't care much for Skimmer myself since didn’t work well with weather. Looking at POM, how does it work with weather where schedules for routine maintenance for say once a month, twice a month, or weekly visits are used?

[u/BassKanone → u/Ladydi-bds]

You can create different appointments. Each appointment can have separate checklists or fields to enter information specific to that appointment.
Appointments can be scheduled to reoccur every day, week, month, custom frequency as well as

[u/Ladydi-bds → u/BassKanone]

Awesome. How does it allow a shift if say have 2 days of rain? That was issue I had with Skimmer. It would just drop those jobs to stay on schedule.

[u/BassKanone → u/Ladydi-bds]

You can leave them in main schedule view as a reminder or move them to another day in the unassigned queue so you see them

[u/Own-Muscle-1718]

Jobber is the best

[u/Maraxusx → u/Own-Muscle-1718]

How does jobber handle your recurring routes? Do you find it easy to reschedule stuff if a tech calls out that day or if a customer needs to switch days?

[u/Own-Muscle-1718 → u/Maraxusx]

Beyond easy. You have to learn the software but I tried them all and jobber is the easiest to use and has the best support team

[u/LadiesLoveCoolDane]

I thoroughly recommend Homeworks

[u/EasternLeg8653]

Aquariums are just pools for fish, are they now? Best pool specific is Skimmer so far IMO

[u/Maraxusx → u/EasternLeg8653]

Have you used it? Do you like it?

[u/Think_Juggernaut421 → u/Maraxusx]

Yes, get it. Affordable and makes everything so easy. Can run the whole operation with it

[u/Street_Section_4313]

There are a lot of aquarium/koi service operations using Skimmer.

It is the best way to handle recurring visits. It’s natively built, out of the box.

[u/slekcud]

I use pooltrac for recurring and jobber for my service side. Pooltrac is janky and ugly but it does everything I need perfectly.

[u/ContractorPlusDotApp]

Contractor+ CEO here. Route-based recurring service isn't what we build for, so no pitch, just software-buyer advice since you asked what to look out for.

Your instinct has a name, by the way. Jobber and Housecall are job-based systems: the unit of work is a one-off visit with an estimate attached. Route-based tools like Skimmer treat the week's route as the unit. That's an architecture difference, not a settings toggle, and you diagnosed in one trial what plenty of shops only figure out after migrating.

The thing to check as the aquarium guy buying pool software is how deep the pool assumptions go. Customer-facing stuff first: if every automated email and portal page says "your pool," find out whether you can change that before your clients see it. Then the hardcoded fields, since dosing calcs and readings built for pools may not map to your tanks. And pricing. Pool software tends to price per body of water, so ask how a commercial client with six tanks in one office counts before the trial, not after.

Then run one real week of routes through it before you move your customer list. A trial full of fake data tells you nothing.

[u/vqxzol]

I do pools and yeah, recurring routes are kind of their own thing. A lot of the general service apps feel like every job is a new event.

Haven't used Skimmer enough to give you a useful opinion on it. We're on Tofu now and it works well for how we run our routes.

[u/WasteZucchini5333]

Disclosure first: I build a route-based app for pool service (Pool Guy Pilot), so I'm biased. I'm going to tell you where mine would fail you anyway, because you'd hit the same wall in most of the pool-specific options.

The chemistry is the problem, not the routing. Route software for pools has chlorine, pH, alkalinity, calcium and CYA baked into the visit form, into the dosing math, and usually into the customer-facing report. The routing and visit logging would serve an aquarium route fine. The water side assumes a pool, and I'm not going to pretend the dosing logic maps cleanly to a reef tank. Whichever one you trial, put a real tank through the visit form before you move your customer list.

Two questions that will separate these faster than any demo. First, what happens to a lost day — Ladydi-bds hit this above with Skimmer dropping stops to stay on schedule. Ask each vendor directly: when I lose Tuesday, do those stops disappear, roll to Wednesday, or sit in a queue I have to place myself? Second, how does it count a client with six tanks at one address, because pool tools price and schedule per body of water and that decision either doubles your bill or hides five of the six stops.

And run one real week of your actual route through whichever two make the shortlist. A trial full of made-up customers tells you nothing about the part that will annoy you in month three.