Getting started

Signing up takes a minute and no credit card. You get a 30-day free trial on the Basic plan, and you verify your email before your first sign-in. If you came in from a paid plan on the pricing page, setup opens with checkout first, and a link to use the 30-day trial instead.

1. 1Fill in the signup form: the kind of work you do, your company name, your name, email, phone, and a password. You also accept the Terms of Service here.
2. 2Watch for the "Verify your Managolio email" message and click Verify email. The link is good for 24 hours, and you can send a fresh one from the check-your-email screen.
3. 3Sign in. Your first sign-in opens the guided setup instead of the dashboard.

The owner walks through nine steps. Your progress is saved as you go, so you can close the tab and pick up where you left off.

1. 1Welcome: what you will have when setup is done.
2. 2Your business: business email, address, an optional license number, and your logo.
3. 3Pricing: your margin floor and the A, B and C grade cutoffs.
4. 4Payment terms: your default payment schedule, plus your warranty if you offer one.
5. 5Getting paid: Venmo, Cash App and Zelle handles, and your check-by-mail details.
6. 6Your team: send invites to your teammates.
7. 7Import data: bring contacts and leads in from a CSV.
8. 8How it works: the path a job takes, and the emails your customer gets along the way.
9. 9All set: choose Go to dashboard and you are in.

Yes, and it is short. Until you finish, Managolio takes you back to the setup flow, resuming at the step you left. Three steps have to be filled in because they decide what your customers receive: Your business needs a business email and a full street address, Pricing needs grade cutoffs that descend from A to C, and Payment terms needs a schedule whose milestones total 100%. The rest of the steps advance on Continue whether or not you do anything on them.

The trade you pick on the signup form tailors your new workspace. Everything it sets is a starting point you can change.

1. 1Which optional modules start on or off, so a handyman does not open the app to a permits pipeline.
2. 2A project number prefix for your job numbers.
3. 3A default payment schedule, for example deposit, start and completion.
4. 4Default workmanship warranty language.
5. 5A handful of starter price book items priced for your trade.
6. 6A starter permit jurisdiction with a checklist, when Permits starts on.

Settings is a modal that opens over whatever page you are on, not a separate section of the sidebar. Its nav has two bands: Personal (Profile, Security, Notifications, Appearance, and Billing for the Owner) and Organization, which only Owners and Operations Managers see.

1. 1Click your name and avatar in the top right, then Settings.
2. 2Or press Cmd+K on Mac or Ctrl+K on Windows and choose Settings.
3. 3Use the "Find a setting..." box at the top of the nav to jump straight to a control by name.
4. 4Organization settings are grouped into Company, Sales & delivery, Money, and Workspace.

Your company details and logo appear on every proposal, contract and invoice your customers see. Owners and Operations Managers can edit them.

1. 1Go to Settings → Business profile.
2. 2Under Company information, upload a logo for light backgrounds and one for dark backgrounds. No logo? Turn on "Use company name when no logo" to show your company name instead.
3. 3Fill in Company, Project number prefix, Business email, Phone, Website, and your street address.
4. 4Decide whether to leave "Show this address on customer documents" on. Some states require your address on a home improvement contract, so check yours before turning it off.
5. 5Check your Business timezone. We set it from your browser at signup, and it drives the dates and times your customers see.
6. 6Add your Review link, for example your Google review page. Managolio asks the customer for a review when their project is completed. Leave it blank to skip those emails.
7. 7Click Save changes.

Licenses are stored one per state. The license for a job's state is the one that prints on that job's proposals, contracts and invoices, so multi-state contractors never send the wrong number.

1. 1Go to Settings → Licenses.
2. 2Under Licenses & registrations, click Add license.
3. 3Choose the issuing state and enter the license number. Prefix, class, classification, monetary limit, bond amount and expiry are all optional.
4. 4Save, and add another for each state you work in.
5. 5The setup flow asks for one license for your business state. Everything else gets added here.

Those are optional modules, so the app stays as simple as your business needs. Which ones start on depends on the trade you chose at signup. Turning one off removes it from the sidebar and from search, and its pages stop being reachable. Your data is kept and comes back if you switch it on again.

1. 1Go to Settings → Modules.
2. 2Under Available modules, switch on what you want: Subcontractors, Field operations, Analytics, Permits, or Maintenance plans.
3. 3Claims is the warranty side of the app, and its switch sits with the warranty settings it controls: Settings → Invoicing, under Contract defaults.
4. 4Field operations cannot be turned off while you have Crew members, because it is their only workspace. Remove them first.

Only the account owner can invite people, resend an invite, or change someone's role. Basic includes 5 team members and Pro includes 15; the free trial gets Basic's 5.

1. 1Go to Settings → Team & roles and click Invite member.
2. 2Enter their first name, last name and email, then choose a role: Owner, Operations, Estimator, or Crew.
3. 3Click Send invite. They get a "Set your password" link that works for 7 days, and they choose the password themselves. You never see or set it.
4. 4They show as Invited until they activate. Use the resend button on their row if the email went astray.
5. 5Crew can only be invited when the Field operations module is on, since that is their workspace.

Invited teammates get a shorter welcome than the owner, written for their role: what they can do in Managolio, quick links into the areas they use, their own name and phone, and which email notifications they want. There is a Skip setup button if they would rather get straight to work. Crew land in Field Ops afterwards, everyone else lands on the Dashboard.

The price book is your reusable list of labor and materials with your real costs. Adding an item to an estimate copies its cost onto the line, so editing the price book later never changes estimates you have already built. Owners and Operations Managers edit it; Estimators can see it because the builder prices against it.

1. 1Go to Estimates and click Price book.
2. 2Click Add item and enter a Name, a Category (Labor, Materials, Permits & Fees, Equipment, Disposal, Subcontractors, Contingency, or Other), and a Unit (Each, Linear ft, Sq ft, Hour, Day, or Lump sum).
3. 3Enter your Unit cost, an optional Waste %, and an optional SKU and Vendor.
4. 4Click Add. Your edits are staged, not live yet.
5. 5Click Save changes in the unsaved-changes bar to commit them. Nothing changes for existing estimates either way.
6. 6Turn an item Active off instead of deleting it when you want it out of the picker but kept on old estimates.

Moving over from another tool or off paper does not mean starting from scratch. If a job is already sold and the customer already accepted it, an Owner or Operations Manager can bring it in whole from Projects, using Import project: it creates the customer, estimate, accepted proposal and project in one step, at whatever stage the work is at now, and records any deposits you already collected. No estimate or proposal email is sent, so the customer is not re-pitched a job they already agreed to. Brand-new work still starts the normal way on the Leads page. See Projects & jobs for the full walkthrough.

The search palette jumps you to any page or record without clicking through the sidebar. It only shows what your role and your switched-on modules allow.

1. 1Press Cmd+K on Mac or Ctrl+K on Windows from anywhere in the app, or click Search... in the top bar.
2. 2Start typing. It searches projects, estimates, permits, leads, subcontractors, documents and schedule events, and matches page names too.
3. 3Use the arrow keys and Enter to jump straight there. Choosing Settings opens the settings modal in place.

Nothing you entered during setup is locked. Each step has a home in Settings.

1. 1Your business → Settings → Business profile.
2. 2The license you entered → Settings → Licenses.
3. 3Pricing → Settings → Estimating, under Job grading.
4. 4Payment terms and your warranty → Settings → Invoicing, under Contract defaults.
5. 5Getting paid → Settings → Payment methods, where you also connect Stripe for card payments and QuickBooks for your books.
6. 6Your team → Settings → Team & roles.
7. 7The automatic emails your customers receive → Settings → Customer emails.