Getting started

What signing up actually creates

Filling in the sign-up form creates two things at once: a company, and you as its owner. There is nothing to configure before that happens — no card, no plan choice. Your trial starts the moment you sign up and runs for 20 days, and nothing about the trial requires a card to begin.

Email verification is offered — you will see a prompt, and it is one of the checklist steps below — but it does not lock anything. You can use every part of the app before confirming your email; it exists so we can reach you if a job ever needs your attention, not as a gate.

The welcome wizard

Straight after signing up, the owner walks through a short wizard. Nobody else does — if you invite an admin or a technician later, they land straight on the dashboard and never see it, because the answers it collects are the company's, not theirs.

• 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. All of it is editable again later from Settings → Your company.
• Sample data, offered by default. More on this below — it's worth understanding before you decide whether to keep it switched on.
• Finish. This is what actually opens the app up — until this step, the owner cannot get past the wizard to anywhere else.

The sample data

Left switched on, WorkOrders builds you a sample workspace: a fake crew, a customer book, and around two dozen jobs spread across the real statuses — some new, some assigned, some ongoing, most completed, a couple deleted. It's hand-written per trade rather than generated on the fly, so a plumber's sample board and an electrician's sample board don't read like the same jobs with the nouns swapped.

It exists so the board isn't empty while you're learning it. It has deliberate limits: no attachments (a sample job has no photo to download), and no mailbox — connecting your inbox is the one step the sample data will never fake for you, because it's the step that matters most.

Removing it removes only the sample — never anything real. 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 happens to be linked to a sample customer or assigned to someone on the sample crew, that link is quietly cleared rather than the real job being deleted with it — it just loses that one connection.

The getting-started checklist

Once you're in, a checklist follows you around: a card on the dashboard showing the next thing worth doing, and the full list at Get set up. It is not a gate — nothing in the app is locked behind any step on it, and you can dismiss it whenever you've had enough of looking at it. It reappears any time you go looking for it at /getting-started.

• Verify your email — so we can reach you if a job needs attention. Not enforced.
• Tell us about your business — the trade details from the wizard, editable in Settings → Your company.
• Connect your inbox — point WorkOrders at the mailbox your job requests already land in. See how work gets into WorkOrders for the options.
• Finish your company details — where status update copies go, and what your outgoing emails sign off with.
• Invite your team — bring in the people who'll actually 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's caught out mid-job.
• Remove the sample data — only shown once you actually have sample data to remove, and only to an owner or admin.

Your first job

Two ways to raise it, and they're worth trying 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 it's the same path a real customer request will take.
2. Raise one by hand. Go to Work orders → New and fill it in yourself. Useful for a job that came in by phone or on-site, but it skips the part of the product that saves you the typing.

What to do in week one

• Send yourself a test email to your WorkOrders address before you tell anyone else about it.
• Connect the mailbox your customers actually write to — see how work gets into WorkOrders for which route fits.
• Invite one other person and watch them go through their own first sign-in — it's a different view of the product than the owner gets.
• Decide on the sample data early. It's easy to leave running by accident and start second-guessing whether a job on the board is real.
• Pick a plan before the 20-day trial clock runs down, rather than finding out on day 21.