A technician's day

Techs live on their phone, so their side of PoolChecker is built phone-first: one screen for the day, one screen per stop, and one obvious button at every moment. This article walks the flow so you can train a tech in five minutes.

My Route

A tech signs in and lands on My Route: today's progress, the next stop as a big card, the rest of the day below it, and tomorrow's truck-loading list at the bottom.

The big card always offers the one right action:

1. Start My Day begins the route.
2. I'm Here, Start Stop stamps the arrival time and opens the stop screen.
3. If a stop is already underway, it becomes Resume Stop.

Navigate & Notify opens turn-by-turn directions and, when texting is set up and the customer has consent, sends them an on-my-way text with the ETA. One tap does both.

The stop screen

Everything about the visit in tabs:

• Checklist: the work items for this pool. Which items appear is up to you; see the setup section below.
• Chemistry: enter readings and get instant, volume-aware dosing advice with exact amounts. Fields color as you type: green in range, amber off, red critical.
• Media: before and after photos, short videos, and the pool's permanent photo gallery.
• Notes: typed or dictated by voice.

The yellow sticky note (gate codes, dogs, quirks) sits at the top of the stop where it cannot be missed.

Approved work waiting at the stop

When a customer approves a quote for that pool, a green Approved quote card appears at the top of the stop with the job and the total. The tech taps Start work, does the job, and taps Mark work complete, which moves the quote along the pipeline toward invoicing without anyone calling the office. If the quote needs a deposit that has not been paid yet, the card says so and holds the button, so the truck never does unfunded work. See the quote lifecycle for the full path.

Skip & Reschedule handles locked gates and rainouts: the stop moves to tomorrow or the next service day, optionally texting the customer.

Where the checklist comes from

The checklist a tech sees is not hardcoded; it is the ripple effect of a setup you control:

• Templates live on the Pools page, Checklist Templates tab. You get starters (Full Service, Chemical Check, Filter Clean, Spa Service) and can edit them or build your own; one template is marked the default.
• Each pool can carry its own assignments. Assign one or more templates to a pool and the stop screen offers those as selector chips, with your default preselected. A spa gets the spa checklist, the problem pool gets the extended one, and nobody has to remember which is which in the field.
• A pool with no assigned template (and no older list of its own) uses your default template: Full Service, unless you make another one the default. The stop screen, Record Service, and the pool page all show that same list, so the system works before you customize anything. If you delete your default without setting another, those pools get PoolChecker's built-in list instead.

Completing a stop

On completion, PoolChecker can enforce an after photo and can automatically text or email the customer a service report with a link to their own pool report page. Both behaviors are toggles in Settings, Notification Preferences, Service Completion Rules.

Then the app rolls straight to the next stop: Navigate to Next Stop, or Finish My Day on the last one.

Quiet things happening in the background

• GPS breadcrumbs are recorded only while a tech has an active route during business hours, never off the clock. Techs see a privacy notice while it is on.
• Spotty signal is fine: work saves on the phone and syncs when coverage returns.
• Techs earn badges for streaks, chemistry accuracy, and speed. Small thing, but crews check the leaderboard.

Next: invite your team.