Getting started

What signing up creates

Filling in the sign-up form creates two things: a company, and you as its owner. You don't need to enter a card or choose a plan first. Your trial starts the moment you sign up and runs for 20 days.

You'll see a prompt to verify your email, and it's one of the checklist steps below, but it doesn't lock anything. You can use every part of the app before you confirm your email.

The welcome wizard

Straight after signing up, the owner goes through a short wizard. Nobody else does. If you invite an admin or a technician later, they go straight to the dashboard, because the wizard only asks about the company.

• Your business. Company name, the kind of trade you're in, what you do day to day, your service area, roughly how many people are on the tools including you, and your timezone. You can change all of it later in Settings → Your company.
• Sample data, switched on by default. There's more on this below. It's worth reading before you decide whether to keep it.
• Finish. The owner can't get past the wizard to the rest of the app until they've done this step.

The sample data

If you leave it switched on, WorkOrders builds you a sample workspace. It has a made-up crew, some customers, and around two dozen jobs in different statuses: some new, some assigned, some ongoing, most completed, and a couple deleted. Each trade has its own hand-written set, so a plumber's sample jobs and an electrician's are different jobs.

It means the board isn't empty while you're learning your way around. The sample jobs have no attachments, so there's no photo to download, and there's no sample mailbox. You'll need to connect your own inbox for real.

Every sample record is marked Sample wherever it appears: on the row in the board, on the job itself, and next to a name in your customers or your crew list. A number can't carry a badge, so each tile on the dashboard and the board shows the total and then how many of those are sample records ("3 of 5"). That's most useful for the first few days, when real jobs are arriving and the sample data is still there.

Removing the sample data only removes sample records. Nothing real is touched. You can clear it out at any time from the card on Settings → Your company, or from the "Remove the sample data" step on the checklist below. If a real job is linked to a sample customer or assigned to someone in the sample crew, that link is cleared and the real job stays.

The getting-started checklist

Once you're in, you'll see a card on the dashboard with the next thing to do, and the full list is at Get set up. Nothing in the app is locked until you finish a step, and you can dismiss the checklist whenever you like. You can always get it back at /getting-started.

• Verify your email: so we can reach you if a job needs your attention. You don't have to.
• Tell us about your business: the trade details from the wizard, which you can change in Settings → Your company.
• Set up email intake: email your own WorkOrders address and watch it turn into a job. The mailboxes screen tells you when it arrives. Or connect the mailbox your job requests already go to. Either one ticks this off. See how work gets into WorkOrders for the options.
• Finish your company details: where replies go when we email your crew, and what your outgoing emails sign off with.
• Invite your team: bring in the people who'll be out doing the jobs. See your team.
• Create your first work order: raise a real job and follow it through. See below.
• Choose a plan: pick one before the trial runs out, so nobody gets caught out mid-job.
• Remove the sample data: only shown if you have sample data, and only to an owner or admin.

Your first job

There are two ways to raise it. Try them in this order:

1. Email your own WorkOrders address. Every company gets one at signup, something like yourfirm@jobs.workorders.nz, shown on Settings → Mailboxes. Send it a message the way a customer would, and watch it turn up on the board. This is the better first test, because a real customer request will come in the same way.
2. Raise one by hand. Go to Work orders → New and fill it in yourself. That's useful for a job that came in by phone or on site, but you'll be doing the typing that an emailed request saves you.

What to do in week one

• Send a test email to your WorkOrders address before you tell anyone else about it.
• Connect the mailbox your customers already write to. See how work gets into WorkOrders for which option suits you.
• Invite one other person and watch them sign in for the first time. They'll see the app differently from how the owner sees it.
• Decide about the sample data early. It's easy to leave it there by accident and then wonder whether a job on the board is real.
• Choose a plan before the 20-day trial ends, so you're not caught out on day 21.