How to Start a Pool Cleaning Business: A 9-Step Guide [2024]

1. Get Certified and Licensed

Pool licenses protect your business from legal issues and hefty penalties. Having the proper licenses and certifications to prove your expertise makes earning customers' trust easier.

You must apply to your state’s licensing board for the necessary licenses and certifications. In some cases, you may also be required to attend training and pass an exam.

Almost every state in the United States requires pool cleaning businesses to have four essential licenses:

• Swimming pool contractor’s license

• Water treatment certification

• Certified pool operation (CPO) license

• Business license and Tax ID (you get this after registering with the Internal Revenue Service)

You might need to apply for additional licenses and certifications depending on your location and services. 

For example, some local governments require companies to have permits before they can service commercial pools. Texas also mandates that pool cleaning companies have a Residential Appliance Installer License.

For more information, visit your region’s contractor licensing board and Department of Licensing and Regulations. You can also ask other pool-cleaning business owners or submit queries on pool forums.

Apply for extra licenses and certifications to broaden your service offerings. For example, you can get a spa service license to serve spas, steam rooms, and hot tubs.

These credentials align with legal standards and build trust with your clients, showcasing your commitment to quality and safety in pool maintenance.

2. Create a Pool Cleaning Business Plan

A business plan is a roadmap document that records your goals, growth milestones, benchmarks, and the strategy for achieving them. It’s valuable because it helps you identify potential roadblocks and how to overcome them.

A business plan also helps you prove your idea’s profitability to investors and lenders.

A comprehensive business plan starts with identifying your target market and their challenges. Are they battling algae growth? Do other pool companies over-chlorinate the water? You can use your market’s pain points to create a value proposition that will resonate with them.

After identifying their problems, create a target persona document, which you can update as your knowledge of your typical customer increases. You’ll need it to run persuasive marketing campaigns. You should define details like the customer’s demographics, pain points, and income level.

Finally, run a competitive analysis by listing all the local businesses offering the same services as yours. Focus on their business model, prices, messaging, and, most importantly, weaknesses. Use those weaknesses to strengthen your value proposition and differentiate your company.

Other topics to cover in your business plan include the following:

• Financial projections

• Pricing strategy

• Operational plan

• Marketing plan

• Management summary

3. Get Financing

You need to secure funds to cover startup costs like licensing fees, equipment purchases, etc.

You can finance your company using savings and proceeds from personal asset sales. This helps you avoid high-interest loan repayments and retain complete control over decision-making.

However, if your personal savings and assets are insufficient to finance your company, explore alternative funding options. You can seek small business loans from banks or apply for low-interest loans from the government-funded Small Business Administration (SBA).

You can also partner with private equity investors, using the business plan you created in the previous step to prove your viability. However, be prepared to surrender a share of your company’s profits and some control.

Pro tip: A compelling and detailed business plan will significantly enhance your credibility when seeking financing.

4. Register Your Pool Service Business

Registering your business helps you comply with regulatory requirements and access tax benefits, low-interest government loans, and grants. It also increases your credibility and gives you legal recognition.

Before you register your business with the authorities, it’s advisable to consult a legal expert who will help you choose a suitable business structure—a sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company (LLC), or corporation. The expert will educate you on the pros and cons of each entity to ensure you choose one that aligns with your needs.

Learn more about the different business entities in this guide from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

After picking a business structure, register your business name with the state and local authorities. Also, apply with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to trademark your business name so no one uses it without your permission.  

Then, obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and a state tax number. You’ll need the EIN to file taxes and open a business bank account. The state tax ID helps you comply with state laws and protect your business from theft.

Finally, cross-check to ensure you have all the necessary permits and licenses to operate a new pool cleaning service in your area. Complying with these legal requirements is crucial to operating smoothly and avoiding legal issues.

The entire business registration process usually costs less than $300, depending on your location and business entity.

5. Handle Finances & Accounting

A vital aspect of running a successful business is keeping accurate transaction records and regularly monitoring your finances. These steps help you maintain a stable cash flow and easily track your business’s profitability.

For starters, open a business account with a bank offering high-interest saving rates and a user-friendly online platform to process payments. Also, apply for a business credit card to build up your credit score and qualify for loans.

Having a business-dedicated account and credit card helps you separate personal and business expenses. This makes filing taxes, applying for deductions, and determining the business's revenue easy.

Next, set up an accounting system to record transactions, create invoices, and accept payments. You can use multiple tools for each financial process or centralize them using ServiceTitan's Field Service Accounting software.

This software helps users analyze and track their financial transactions from one place. It also helps businesses easily track their revenue and expenses over different periods—daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly.

Here are the software’s key features that assist pool service businesses with accounting tasks:

Accounting for the Front Office: This feature simplifies front-office financial tasks such as invoicing, payment processing, and financial reporting. This helps entrepreneurs to reduce administrative overhead and minimize errors.

Accounting Periods: Businesses use this feature to create and manage their accounting periods. The feature automatically creates and delivers key financial reports directly to your inbox.

Accounts Payable: This displays all the amounts you owe vendors and contractors in one place. This helps you follow up on overdue invoices and avoid late payment penalties.

Accounts Receivable: Businesses use this report to view all outstanding invoices at a glance. This helps reduce the hassle of chasing down overdue payments at the end of the month.

By integrating these accounting functions, businesses can ensure better financial control, improve compliance, and enhance profitability through streamlined operations.

6. Invest In Pool Cleaning Equipment

You must purchase high-quality pool cleaning equipment, as your company’s success and service quality depend on it. Having quality tools also limits downtime and reduces repair expenses.

To ensure you receive quality equipment, it’s advisable to only buy from a manufacturer or supplier with a positive online reputation and a warranty. You should also solicit price quotes from multiple suppliers to find one that matches your budget.

Rather than the false economy of buying substandard tools and materials, only buy essential ones like the following:

• Pool brushes 

• Skimmers

• Vacuums

• Water chemistry testing kits

• Pool chemicals

Learn more about the essential pool cleaning tools and equipment you need to start your business.

After purchasing your equipment and tools, you need to monitor them regularly to maintain their quality. It’s also vital to track the number of each item available in your warehouse and trucks. Instead of using clipboards and spreadsheets, you can use ServiceTitan's Contractor Inventory Management Software to streamline this process.

One prominent feature of this software is equipment tracking. It helps users track each tool, piece of equipment, or material's exact location and availability. This ensures techs always have the necessary items to handle each project.

Furthermore, the Equipment History function records each piece of equipment's service history. This information helps you make informed decisions about repairs or replacements.

One significant advantage of ServiceTitan’s Contractor Inventory Management Software is that it integrates with the customer relationship management platform (CRM). Therefore, every item or material you install for a customer automatically reflects in their service history.

Also, ServiceTitan’s system uses CRM integration to automatically update your replenishment schedule to replace any item a technician adds to a customer’s invoice.

Field technicians can access a customer’s service history, including the installed equipment, using ServiceTitan's Field Service App. This mobile application gives on-site techs real-time access to customer details and service histories, helping them arrive prepared to handle the job.

Additionally, the app empowers on-site techs to share job updates and forms directly from the field. This helps to maintain one source of truth and streamline communication between the tech and office staff.

7. Price Your Pool Cleaning Services

This stage involves assigning a monetary value to your services that match your target profit margin and customers' willingness to pay.

Customers, particularly homeowners, hire businesses that set a fair price commensurate with the value they are getting. Also, correctly pricing your services helps you compete favorably with other companies without damaging your profit margins.

Research the current market rates to arrive at a price that balances attracting customers and generating profit. You can ask potential customers or cold-call competitors, feigning to book an appointment. Then, a competitive price for each service should be set, including a healthy profit margin.

You can use hourly or flat-rate billing methods when setting your prices. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. There are also specific situations in which to use either one.

For example, it’s better to use hourly rates for complicated projects with hard-to-predict timeframes, such as pool installations. This ensures you receive fair compensation for the time you dedicate to the project.

On the other hand, flat rates work for simple jobs with a predictable timeframe, like routine pool maintenance. Some customers prefer to be billed using flat rates since they don’t have to worry about unexpected price increases.

Either way, the right pricing strategy will depend on balancing customer preferences with your business goals to ensure profitability and competitiveness.

8. Get Insurance for Your Pool Cleaning Business

A crucial part of running business operations is minimizing risk exposure. That’s what an insurance policy helps you achieve.

Business insurance policies transfer the financial burden associated with unforeseen risks and liabilities from you to the insurance provider. They also help you operate legally, especially since some local and state authorities require pool cleaning businesses to have insurance.

Here are the key types of insurance every pool service company should have for comprehensive risk coverage:

• General liability insurance protects against claims for property damage or bodily injury caused by your services. 

• Commercial property insurance covers loss or damage to company assets such as equipment, supplies, and your physical location.

• Workers’ compensation insurance covers medical expenses and lost wages in case of work-related injuries.

You should consult an insurance agent with experience in pool company insurance policies to ensure you pick the right provider and a policy that protects you from risks peculiar to pool cleaning companies.

You can also consult our pool cleaning insurance guide to learn more about policies suited to your business needs.

9. Market Your Pool Cleaning Business

To grow your income, you need to grow your customer base by attracting as many leads as possible using marketing strategies.

Beyond generating leads and referrals, marketing helps you retain top-of-mind awareness so that customers contact you whenever they need pool cleaning, maintenance, or installation services.

Considering the digital nature of most customer inquiries, your marketing plan must establish an online presence by creating a website and building an active presence on a social media platform your target audience uses. Also, optimize your website for the search terms prospects use to find pool companies online.

Additionally, build a strong online reputation by soliciting reviews from satisfied customers. Encourage technicians to request one before leaving and text or email review requests to customers immediately after completing a job.

Finally, your marketing plan should include offline strategies like direct mail, sponsoring local teams, and partnering with complementary businesses to build local brand awareness and reach non-internet users.

Pool cleaning companies use ServiceTitan's Home Services Marketing Software to manage, automate, and streamline their marketing efforts. 

The platform seamlessly integrates with Google Ads and Google Analytics, which provides valuable performance insights. You can use the data to gauge the effectiveness of specific copy and visuals, which helps you decide what to employ in other marketing campaigns.

Another helpful tool in ServiceTitan’s Home Services Marketing platform is the Ads Optimizer. This AI-powered tool uses conversion data from ServiceTitan to train Google to display your ads to only high-quality leads—i.e., people likely to need your pool maintenance services.

ServiceTitan’s Home Services Marketing platform also has tools tailored to the unique needs of each marketing channel.

For example, the Marketing Pro—Email platform has a template library for creating attractive emails and an intuitive dashboard for displaying campaign performance.

It also has an Audience Builder for segmenting your customer base, allowing you to send emails tailored to their needs. This helps increase open and engagement rates, which translates to greater revenue.

Another valuable tool is the Local Services Ads integration, which empowers customers to book appointments and pick preferred times using a calendar booking widget. Every job booking automatically enters ServiceTitan’s CRM and scheduling tool.

This seamless booking process saves CRMs the hassle of answering customer calls and manually updating schedules to accommodate new jobs.

Finally, recognizing the power of a positive online reputation for service businesses, ServiceTitan created the Reputation Management tool.

It centralizes all customer reviews from multiple listings into one dashboard, from which you can view and respond to each review. You can also program the tool to notify you whenever a customer leaves a review, ensuring you respond immediately and remedy negative feedback.

These tools help highlight positive interactions and address any concerns promptly, fostering trust and supporting long-term business growth.

How Much Does It Cost to Start a Pool Cleaning Business?

Starting a new business in pool cleaning typically costs between $2,000 and $10,000. The actual amount depends on the costs of the following:

1. Essential equipment 

2. Labor rates

3. Overhead such as insurance and business licenses

4. Company vehicles

5. Cleaning chemicals such as chlorine

6. Marketing budget

The influence each item has on your startup costs depends majorly on the scale of your operation.

Are Pool Businesses Profitable?

The answer is yes.

The global market size for pool cleaners was $1,292.95 million in 2021 and is projected to grow to $2,731.87 million by 2027 at a CAGR of 13.28 percent.

Also, pool owners must regularly clean and maintain their pools, generating regular income for pool cleaning companies.

However, the actual profitability of each pool cleaning company depends on several factors:

1. Nature of client base: You generate more revenue consistently when a significant portion of your client base is on service contracts.

2. Pricing strategy: Setting fair prices generates more profits and attracts more customers. 

3. Job completion rate: Completing multiple jobs daily helps increase your revenue. You can optimize your routes and technicians’ schedules using software like ServiceTitan to complete more jobs daily.

4. Customer growth rate: Acquiring more customers than you lose grows your income.

What Initial Investments Are Needed to Start a Pool Cleaning Business?

When starting your pool cleaning business, you can expect to spend on the following:

1. Equipment: This will consume a significant portion of your budget. Some examples of the tools you’ll need include pool brushes, skimmers, and testing kits.

2. Business licensing and insurance: You’ll also need to budget for licensing fees and business insurance to protect against liabilities.

3. Marketing Materials: A portion of your startup costs will be used to attract potential customers using offline and digital marketing strategies.

4. Software: Investing in the right pool service software is advisable to cut down administrative costs and increase revenue.

Over to You

With the help of this guide, you can now start aiming for a successful pool cleaning business.

Remember to save operation and overhead costs by automating processes using pool cleaning company software like ServiceTitan. You can also use the tool to help technicians close more deals in the field and complete more jobs daily.

ServiceTitan is an all-in-one solution service providers use to streamline operations, enhance customer satisfaction, and increase profitability. Join thousands of other home service businesses nationwide who already use it.