Manage Symptoms

What a symptom is, where it shows up on a visit, how treatment symptoms and equipment failures differ, and what archiving or deleting one actually touches.

A symptom is a problem your crew can tap on a visit: green algae, low chlorine, curly-leaf pondweed, crabgrass. SettingsSymptoms is where the office keeps that list, decides which visits show each one, and sees what each one is connected to. When you finish this article you will know what tapping a symptom does downstream, and what changes when you rename, archive or delete one.

Two kinds of symptom

The page has two tabs, and a symptom belongs to exactly one of them.

Tab	What it is	Where it appears
Treatment Symptoms	A condition a product or treatment addresses.	The chip picker on a visit, product tags in Inventory, and treatment or dose plans.
Equipment Failures	Something wrong with an installed unit: a pump that will not prime, a heater error code.	The Report Issue picker for crews, and the customer portal's report form.

Type is fixed once added

You cannot switch a symptom between the two tabs. The two lists are read by different pickers, and moving a row would either orphan the products tagged with it or put a pump failure into a chemical treatment picker. If you added one under the wrong tab, archive it and add it again under the other.

The Equipment Failures tab only appears when Issue Intake is on for your account.

What happens when a crew taps one

Which work types show the chip picker depends on your industry:

Industry	Visits with symptom chips
Pool maintenance	Routine Service, Specialty Service
Aquatic (pond, lake)	Lake Treatment, Pond Maintenance, Specialty Service
Lawn care	Lawn Treatment
General service	None. Those visits record observations as notes instead.

Repair, estimate and fountain visits never show chips, which is why they are not offered under Shown On. Scoping a symptom only ever narrows it within the work types above.

After the tap, the symptom flows into the visit's plan:

Pool. Reading symptoms such as Low chlorine or High pH tick themselves from the water test as the tech types, and show a Ticks from Readings badge on this page. Products tagged with a symptom join the Dose Plan at their default quantity. Any algae, cloudy-water or green-water symptom adds a shock and brush step even when the chloramine reading looks fine. Target ranges live under SettingsWater Chemistry.
Aquatic. The treatment plan looks at your rules under SettingsTreatment Protocols first. A symptom with no rule falls back to every product tagged with it for that work type.
Lawn. The treatment plan uses the products tagged with each symptom for that work type.

Products are tagged with the symptoms they treat on the product itself in Inventory, where you can also add a symptom-specific formula when the dose for that symptom differs from the product's default.

Add, rename and scope

Add from the industry list
Click Add from Industry List. The list is the starter set for your industry; entries already in your catalog are marked Already in catalog and cannot be added twice. Equipment failures arrive already scoped to the equipment they fit. Re-adding a name you archived earlier restores the archived row instead of creating a duplicate.
Add your own
Type a name under New Symptom and press Add. Every work type under Shown On is selected by default; turn off the ones where the symptom makes no sense. On the equipment tab, Any Unit is the default; pick specific equipment to narrow it.
Rename
Click the name to edit it in place. Enter saves, Escape cancels. On a pool account, watch the Ticks from Readings badge while you type: if it disappears, the wizard will stop ticking that chip automatically.
Give a failure mode a suggested part (optional)
On the Equipment Failures tab, each row has a Suggested Part picker listing your active inventory. Pick the part you usually replace for that failure, or leave it at None — Optional. When the office builds a repair quote from an issue reporting that failure, the quote opens with that part as a zero-priced draft line, named after the part, so pricing it is one edit instead of a search. A part that has since been deactivated is skipped and the row shows Inactive or Deleted Item until you pick another.
Scope and reorder
The pills under each row save as soon as you click them; the row shows Saving and then Saved. A symptom must stay on at least one work type; to take it out of every picker, archive it. The arrows on the left reorder the list, and every wizard and the field report follow that order.

Archive or delete

Each row shows what references it, for example 3 products · 1 dose formula · 2 protocol rules, so you can see what an edit will affect before you make it.

Action	What it does	Reversible
Archive	Hides the symptom from every picker. Product tags, dose formulas, protocol rules and visit records all stay in place.	Yes, with Restore. Turn on Show Archived to find it.
Delete	Removes the symptom and strips it from products, dose formulas, protocol rules and open issues. A combination rule left with a single symptom is removed too. Past visits keep what they recorded.	No.

Prefer archive

Archive is the right move for a symptom you have stopped using. Delete is for a mistake: a typo you added twice, or a row that never should have existed.

Verify it worked

Open a visit on a work type listed under Shown On and start the wizard. The chip appears in the order you set.
On a pool account, enter a low free-chlorine reading on the Water Test step. The Low chlorine chip ticks itself and the hint under the chips names the reading.
Open a product in Inventory and check the symptom appears in its treatable-symptoms list for the right work types.

Troubleshooting

What you see	Check
The chip is missing from a visit	The symptom is archived, or the visit's work type is turned off under Shown On.
The reading chip no longer ticks itself	The name was changed to something the wizard does not recognise; the row has lost its Ticks from Readings badge.
A product's dose plan line says "Added by your Treatment Protocol"	That line came from an always-include or combination rule under SettingsTreatment Protocols, not from a tapped symptom.
A symptom you deleted still shows on an old visit	Expected. Visit history is never rewritten.

Frequently asked questions

I added a symptom under the wrong tab. Can I move it?

No. A symptom's type is fixed once it is added because treatment symptoms and equipment failures are referenced by different pickers. Archive it, then add it again under the other tab.

Why does a symptom say "Not shown on any visit"?

It is scoped to work types whose visit wizard does not show symptom chips. Turn on at least one of the work types listed under "Shown On".

I renamed "Low chlorine" and the pool wizard stopped ticking it automatically. Why?

The wizard recognises reading symptoms by their key or by a short list of common names. When a name no longer matches, the "Ticks from Readings" badge disappears while you type. Keep the reading in the name, for example "Low free chlorine", or archive and re-add it from the industry list.

What is the difference between Archive and Delete?

Archive hides the symptom from every picker but keeps every product tag, dose formula, protocol rule and visit record that points at it, and you can restore it later. Delete removes the symptom and strips it from products, dose formulas, protocol rules and open issues. Past visits keep what they recorded.

Why does a repair quote open with a $0 line for a part?

The failure mode on the issue has a suggested part. The line is zero-priced on purpose so a quote can never be sent before the office prices it; edit the price or delete the line.

Crews say the chip list is in a strange order.

Chips follow the order on this page. Use the arrows next to each row to reorder; the web wizard, the mobile wizard and the printed field report all use the same order.