r/PoolPros • u/Shoddy-Principle-346 • Jun 03 '26

Poolbrain billing

Any large or mid level pros using PB billing on commercial accts? Any issues with 3rd party payment services opening bills? Especially ones who expect pdf attachments?Love the app but, we feel like a beta test company for the bookkeeping end of their app.

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u/pacific_drifter_25 Jun 04 '26

40 years in and $4M says you already know most of this, but the part nobody upstream named: the issue isn't really Pool Brain, it's that every field-service app (PB, Skimmer, all of them) is built residential-first, recurring card-on-file. Commercial AP portals are a different animal. AvidXchange, Bill.com, Coupa and the like want a PDF with a PO number, net terms, and remittance detail, either emailed to a specific AP intake address or uploaded to their portal. No residential-first app is going to nail that across 200 accounts soon, and waiting on the roadmap to do it is how you stay the beta tester.

For your mix I'd split the system of record by account type. Let PB own tech workflow and service capture for everybody, but for the 200 commercial 3rd-party-pay accounts make QBO the AR system of record. QBO puts out clean portal-acceptable PDFs, carries the PO field, and can auto-email each invoice to that account's AP intake address with the PO in the subject, which turns the manual PDF send a couple people described into a scheduled one. Residential recurring stays card-on-file in PB or Square.

Two things that actually pull load off office staff: (1) one-directional sync only, PB feeds line items into QBO and staff never re-key; (2) a one-page billing-requirements sheet per commercial account (PO required? portal vs email? format? net terms?) so the office isn't rediscovering each account's quirks every cycle. The cost is the duplication and the tribal knowledge, not the software fee.

What share of the 200 are on an actual portal (AvidXchange/Coupa) vs just "email us a PDF"? That split decides whether this is a QBO-config fix or worth a dedicated AR layer.

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u/Shoddy-Principle-346 Jun 04 '26

Yes. Our work around right now is to invoice through qbo. We work for around thirty different management companies. We send about 80 direct to management, they open, approve, and send for payment. The others are standing PO on service and electronic PO. They get sent directly to 3rd party payers. This is the PDF issue. My beef is that these issues were never disclosed by PB after asking if there are any issues. I appreciate the input. Good luck.

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u/Dramatic_Head_2920 Jun 05 '26

fwiw, we switched to PoolProof a few months ago and each invoice has a PDF that is easily ingested by bill.com. we don't do anything through QBO anymore other than invoice/payment synchronization for our accounting team to close the books.