Set your business up for the first time

The first time you sign in as the owner, TaskMyJob asks a short series of questions before it shows you anything else. They are not a form for the sake of it — each one changes how the app behaves afterwards, and getting them right now saves you correcting quotes and invoices later. You can skip any question and come back to it in Settings, and nothing you answer here is permanent.

Step by step

1. 1

   Answer how your business operates: quoted work, appointments at a set fee, or both.

   Quoted work means you price the job up and the customer accepts it. An appointment is a booking at one price with no line items — a treatment, a consultation, a call-out. Tick both if you do both; a business that only does appointments never sees the quoting half of the app.

2. 2

   Tell it what you call the people who do the work.

   Engineer, Clinician, Technician, Cleaner, Groomer — whatever your trade says. The word is used everywhere the app would otherwise say Engineer, including on what your customers see. Leave it blank for Engineer.

3. 3

   Say where the work happens: out to customers, at your own premises, or both.

   Then tick whether you also take telephone appointments or hold online meetings. Those two are separate questions on purpose — a salon that does phone consultations is still a salon.

4. 4

   Say whether you are VAT registered, and at what rate.

   If you are not registered, no VAT appears anywhere on your paperwork and no rate is stored. This is the single most important answer in the list to get right.

5. 5

   Add your contact details and address.

   These go on every email and document a customer receives. The postcode also pins your business on the map, which is what the travel times and the booking calendar work from — without it, slot suggestions have no starting point.

6. 6

   Upload your logo and pick your brand colour.

   Your quotes, invoices and booking pages then look like they came from you rather than from us.

7. 7

   Add your bank details.

   They print on your invoices so anyone paying by transfer knows where to send it. Card payments are set up separately and do not need this.

8. 8

   Set your normal working day.

   The hours the business runs, and your usual break. Individual people can be given their own hours later in Scheduling — this is just the default everyone starts from.

9. 9

   Set how far you will travel, if you go out to customers.

   Quoting somebody beyond this warns you before you send it. Leave it blank for no limit. You are not asked this at all if customers always come to you.

10. 10

    Set your usual deposit and how far ahead customers can book.

    The deposit is the percentage you normally ask for to hold a slot. You can change it on any individual quote.