The Feature Every Pool Service Software for QuickBooks Needs (But Few Have)

As pool service businesses grow in size, they often begin looking for an operational software tool to help connect the various aspects of their business, such as logging service call history,  facilitating scheduling and dispatching, and tracking inventory of chemical usage. And for those who have been using QuickBooks as their accounting system, choosing a pool service management software that integrates with QuickBooks is essential.

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The problem is that most pool service software that are QuickBooks compatible fail to transfer information in real-time. Instead, these tools commonly offer “add-on” integrations that rely on manual checks and balances — where office managers and field reps are solely responsible for balancing two sets of books. This leads to incorrect accounting, breakdowns in communication, duplicate files, and other time-consuming headaches.

But if you use a pool service software solution that syncs in real-time with QuickBooks — even when offline — then your business reaps two significant benefits. 

1. Your accounting is seamlessly connected to your field operations. Work orders created in the field directly affect your bottom line, and the more communication between those two sides of your business, the better.

2. Your accounting data is captured accurately, with any potential mistakes caught in advance. A mistake in accounting data can have significant repercussions, such as thinking your business is in the black when it’s not.  

In this article, we discuss the differences between our sync-as-you-go integration and the add-on integrations commonly offered by other pool service software. Plus, we walk you through how our solution mitigates accounting issues, streamlines your processes, and connects with the other areas of your business.

To see how ServiceTitan’s QuickBooks integration can streamline your accounting and field operations, schedule a call for a free demo. 

Sync-as-You-Go Data vs. “Add-On” QuickBooks Integrations

Most swimming pool and spa service software compatible with QuickBooks fall under the category of being an “add-on” integration. But “add-on” integrations don’t usually migrate data between your field service management software (FSM) and QuickBooks in real time. This leads to several complications.

First, without seamless migrations between platforms, your business is forced to spend more time on manual data migration. Not only is this time-consuming, but it can lead to significant disparities between accounts.

For example, even small businesses will one day encounter the problem of having two customers with the same name. While your FSM will likely allow two customers with the same name, QuickBooks does not. To get around this issue, businesses must modify one customer name, allowing accounting to differentiate between the customers.

But this discrepancy can lead to significant issues, such as your field technicians selecting the wrong customer when they’re doing invoicing. These issues can snowball, forcing business owners to rectify common problems like:

• Incorrect transaction history

• Sending the bill to the wrong customer

• Sending your technician to the wrong customer’s house

Plus, duplicate customers can inflate your allotted user numbers within QuickBooks. QuickBooks has limits on how many customers you can have on file. So duplicate customers will lead you to reach that limit long before you normally would have.

Most “add-on” integrations with QuickBooks don’t offer any features to rectify these issues before they occur. And when they do occur, they don’t offer ways to help with cleaning up duplicates.

For example, let's say your QuickBooks file reaches its limit. Now, you must manually:

1. Search for and delete customers without a transaction history

2. Upgrade to QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise

3. Create a completely new QuickBooks file

So, what we see with “add-on” integrations is software that connects to QuickBooks but doesn’t anticipate the problems that will arise as two different platforms try to speak to one another.

It’s these problems that we set out to solve with our Sync-As-You-Go QuickBooks integration. 

How Our Sync-as-You-Go Integration Works Differently

Sync-as-you-go prevents inaccurate reporting by automatically catching any discrepancies between your QuickBooks files and FSM in real-time. For example, our system validates that you’re putting the transaction under the right customer name. If our system can’t validate it, you’re prompted to either select the appropriate customer on file within QuickBooks or create a new customer account. 

“Add-on” QuickBooks integration tools will just assume that you’re trying to create a new customer. This is what causes growing businesses to have customer duplicates in their QuickBooks accounts, which will make it more difficult to reconcile your books with your FSM.

Finally, we want to be realistic about what a good QuickBooks integration platform should do. The long-term goal isn’t necessarily to reduce the amount of errors that occur — instead it’s to have a process in place that catches errors and lets you quickly correct them. In our experience, add-on integrations often “look good” because businesses don’t see a lot of errors at first. But this is misleading. 

What’s happening is errors are being made — such as duplicate customer accounts — and you’re just not aware of it. But eventually these discrepancies will snowball, costing you significant time and money to fix.

The achievable goal isn’t to get all errors to zero — since we’re often talking about human error. The goal is to make it so your pool service software catches errors and gives you the tools to fix them.

Now that we’ve covered how our QuickBooks integration works differently, let’s take a look at how ServiceTitan’s accounting features work in practice.

How ServiceTitan’s QuickBooks Integration Helps Pool Service Businesses

ServiceTitan’s field service software comes with several features designed to improve the efficiency of your processes. 

1. Our software brings dispatching, scheduling of chemical readings, and customer management into one platform. Pool service companies can streamline communication between the office and the field, increasing the efficiency of nearly everything they do.

2. Our QuickBooks integration connects the data between pool service software and your accounting books. This saves you time, so you don’t have to toggle back and forth through multiple platforms to send out invoices and collect payment. 

3. We don’t require you to change any systems. Sometimes pool service software companies will want you out of QuickBooks and into whatever accounting tool they prefer. We’ve found our customers do better when they can stick with the accounting tool they know best.

Note: If you’re running more than one service business, your ServiceTitan integration can support different QuickBooks files.

Setting Up QuickBooks Files in ServiceTitan

The first page you’ll see is a list of your company files. If you haven’t yet linked your QuickBooks to your ServiceTitan software, just click on the Connect a File+ button.

FYI: Unlike most QuickBooks Integrations, ServiceTitan is compatible with both QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online. 

As we mentioned above, you can link several QuickBooks files, letting you access multiple businesses’ records out of one screen.

After you connect your QuickBooks files, you’ll get directed over to the main account page where you can access your Settings, Tools, and Connections.

In the Settings section, there is a breakdown of the different features available. 

Within this tab you can: 

1. Map your current QuickBooks chart of accounts (COA) to your ServiceTitan COA. You can also import your entire QuickBooks COA into ServiceTitan.

2. Map business units to link to a specific QuickBooks file or link to a specific QuickBooks class. This makes it so when you export transactions into QuickBooks, they are grouped similarly to how business units are grouped in ServiceTitan. For example, you can track chemical services and water treatments as separate revenue streams.

3. Use all of the sales tax features that QuickBooks offers (sales tax tracking, paying, and filing) by mapping your tax zones. For example, when you collect sales tax, you can make sure the “same” transaction in ServiceTitan and QuickBooks have the same tax rate. 

4. Map where your transactions are recorded in QuickBooks. Choose whether transactions should be exported at the customer level, service address location, or service address name. This feature is a major win for commercial businesses with customers with more than one location. 

5. Track your inventory within QuickBooks. With ServiceTitan, you can send inventory information over to QuickBooks. This improves inventory management and helps you determine how many jobs you can book before you need to re-supply. 

At the bottom of this screen there is a Connections box and a Tools box. 

• The Connections box displays all currently linked connections between a ServiceTitan user’s computer and QuickBooks. 

• In the Tools box, you’ll find features that let you reconcile customer and vendor information that exists in ServiceTitan and QuickBooks. 

How to Export Transactions to Intuit’s QuickBooks with ServiceTitan

First, click the Invoice tab at the top of your page. That will show which of your transactions still need to be batched and exported. 

Then, click Select or Create a Batch to select the information you’d like to send to QuickBooks. If your ServiceTitan account is linked to more than one QuickBooks file, then you’d also select which QuickBooks file you want to export to. 

After you’ve selected all the information that you need lumped into one batch, click Post Batch in the menu.

Now your information is ready to export to QuickBooks.

One of the things that sets our service apart is that at this stage, if there’s an error or discrepancy discovered between what you’re exporting and what’s currently on file, you’ll get a message alerting you. This lets you fix the issue before exporting your data to QuickBooks, helping you maintain accuracy in your books. 

Let’s say you’re trying to export a batch to QuickBooks. You get a notification saying this looks like a duplicate customer. You’ll be able to either map that batch to the existing customer or create a new record if it’s a legitimate new customer account.

After you make any necessary changes, your transaction is sent to QuickBooks. The end result is a perfectly synced relationship between your FSM and accounting software. 

Streamline Your Accounting and Field Operations with ServiceTitan’s QuickBooks Integration

As your pool services business grows, you’re likely to run into significant accounting and operational errors if your QuickBooks file doesn’t match your service records. 

We’ve seen businesses get bogged down by duplicate customers files, incorrectly sent invoices, and service records that don’t match a customer’s invoice history. Trying to rectify these issues is time-consuming, and can also lead to unsatisfactory customer service, as you may have to reach out to correct any incorrect invoicing.

We made our QuickBooks integration to help keep your records constantly in sync. This way, any potential discrepancy between your QuickBooks file and FSM software is spotted immediately, alerting your team so they can resolve the issue.

In addition to ServiceTitan’s QuickBooks integration, we streamline your field operations with a full suite of features, including scheduling software, credit card payments, service agreements, a mobile app (iPhone iOS and Android) for field technicians, and more. Schedule a call to get a free demo.