Getting started

Half an hour of setup buys you a year of not fighting the app. This is the order that works.

1. Accept your invite

You'll get an email with a one-time link. Click it and set a password. Nobody — including us — ever sees that password, which is why we email a link instead of a password.

No email? Check spam first. If it isn't there, the invite may have gone to a different address than you expect — reply to whoever set you up rather than signing up again, because a fresh signup won't be attached to your shop.

2. Look at the sample job before you delete it

Your shop starts with one worked example: a customer, her mower, and one finished repair with parts, labor, a cause and a correction filled in. It is there so you can see what a completed job looks like before you have any of your own.

Everything in it is prefixed SAMPLE. Open the work order, read how the fields were used, then delete the customer, the equipment, the vendor and the two inventory items whenever you like. Nothing else depends on them.

3. Fill in your shop details

Shop Settings → Shop Profile. This is what prints on every receipt, invoice and customer email, so it's worth five careful minutes.

Legal shop name — the name you actually trade under.
Phone — it appears on tracking pages and in emails, and it's how customers reach you.
Email — customer replies to status emails come back to this address, so use one you read.
Logo — optional, and it shows in the app on ShopForeman and above.

4. Set your rates before your first real job

Shop Settings → Money. Get these right now and every job afterwards prices itself.

Shop labor rate — what you charge per hour.
Sales tax rates — your local rate, plus which of parts, labor and travel are taxable in your jurisdiction. In Georgia, parts are normally taxable and labor normally isn't, but confirm that for where you are rather than taking our word for it.
Shop fees — optional. Shop supplies, card surcharge, that sort of thing.

Taxable toggles apply to every job, not just new ones Changing whether labor is taxable changes what every open work order calculates. Invoices you've already issued are frozen and won't move.

5. Run one real job all the way through

Take an actual repair from intake to closed before you put ten in. You'll find the two or three settings that don't match how your shop works, and it's much easier to fix those with one job in the system than forty.

The full walkthrough is on Work orders.

What to leave alone at first

Feature	Why wait
Custom statuses	The built-in workflow covers most shops. Add your own once you know what's missing.
Team accounts	Set up your own login properly first; add technicians when you actually have one.
Square connection	Worth doing, but not on day one. Get one job invoiced by hand first.

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