Set up your shop
Seven steps to a working shop. Most shops finish in one sitting.
1Add your company details
- Open Settings. Enter your phone, address, sales tax rate and how many days customers have to pay.
- These print on every estimate and invoice. The tax rate is used on new invoices; you can change it on any single invoice.
2Bring in your customers
- From a spreadsheet: save it as a CSV, then open Customers and choose Import a spreadsheet. Match your columns to ours, check the preview, and import.
- From QuickBooks: connect QuickBooks first (below), then choose Bring in customers and items.
- Customers you already have are matched by email or phone and skipped, so importing twice is safe. You can undo the last import until one of its customers has a job.
3Add your crew
- Open Settings, then Team. Add each person with their email and choose Technician or Office.
- You are shown a password once. Pass it on; they sign in with their email and that password on the web or in the mobile app.
- Technicians see their own jobs. Office users can schedule, invoice and record payments. Only the owner can change billing, QuickBooks and the team.
4Schedule a job
- Choose New job, pick the customer, and describe the work. Leave the date empty if you do not know it yet.
- Open Schedule. Jobs without a date wait on the left. Drag one onto a technician's column at the time you want.
- Drag a job to another column to reassign it, or up and down to change the time. With a keyboard, focus the job and use the arrow keys.
5Send an invoice and get paid
- Open the job and choose New invoice. Add lines from your price book, or add a blank line. Save.
- Choose Send invoice. It gets its number and is emailed to the customer with a link to view and pay.
- For cash or a check, open the invoice and record the payment. Card and bank payments made from the link are recorded for you.
6Connect QuickBooks Online
- Open Settings, then QuickBooks, and choose Connect. Sign in to QuickBooks and pick your company.
- Bring in your customers and items, then choose which QuickBooks item services and materials should use and where payments are deposited.
- From then on each invoice is sent to QuickBooks when you send it to the customer, and each payment when it is recorded. The sync log shows every one.
7Turn on online payments
- Open Settings, then Payments, and choose Set up Stripe. You create or connect your own Stripe account.
- Money goes from your customer to your bank. You pay Stripe's standard rate; we add nothing.
When something looks wrong
- A technician's changes are not showing in the office
- Their phone has not sent them yet. The badge at the top of the mobile app says how many changes are waiting. They send on their own once the phone has a signal; opening the app helps.
- The sync log says QuickBooks needs reconnecting
- QuickBooks signs apps out from time to time. Open Settings, then QuickBooks, and choose Reconnect. Everything that was waiting is sent afterwards.
- QuickBooks shows a different total
- This is almost always sales tax. Check that sales tax is set up in QuickBooks and that the customer's address is filled in there, then choose Try again in the sync log.
- A technician cannot change an invoice
- Once an invoice is sent, only the office can change it. This stops the customer's copy and your books from drifting apart.
- My account says read-only
- The trial ended or a payment failed. Nothing is deleted. The owner can add or update a card under Settings, then Billing.
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