How to add your first job

Everything in TradePlanr hangs off jobs: the diary fills itself, invoices start pre-filled, and every property builds a history worth having. Which means the one habit that makes the whole app work is small — when a customer books you in, put the job in the app, not just in your head or a text thread.

This tutorial walks through creating that first job properly: the customer, the date, and the notes your future self will thank you for. It genuinely takes about two minutes.

1. 1. Start a new job

   From the Jobs tab, tap to add a new job. Give it a title that will make sense in a list of fifty — “Boiler service — 14 Elm Road” beats “Service” every time, because in three months the list is all you'll see.

   The new job screen with the title field ready to fill in

2. 2. Attach the customer

   Add the customer to the job — either pick an existing one or create them on the spot with a name, phone number and address. This is the link that matters most: it's what carries their details onto the invoice later, powers SMS reminders, and builds the job history under their name.

   Resist the temptation to skip this on small jobs. A job without a customer is just a diary entry; a job with one is a record.

   Attaching a customer to a job, with the option to create a new customer inline

3. 3. Set the date and time

   Pick when the work's happening and the job lands in your diary automatically. If the customer's flexible, book it anyway and drag it later — a job on the wrong day in the diary is far safer than a job that only exists in a WhatsApp message.

   Tip

   If you've synced TradePlanr with Google or Apple Calendar, the job appears there too — so even the version of you that only checks one calendar can't double-book.

4. 4. Add notes while you still remember

   Write down what the customer actually told you: the fault they described, where the stopcock is, “gate's locked, text on arrival”, the colour they chose. The best time to capture this is the moment you book the job, because by next Tuesday it's gone.

   You can add photos to the job too — handy for a “send me a picture of the fuse board” before you quote.

   The job notes section with access details and a description of the work entered

5. 5. Save it — and make it the habit

   Save the job and you'll see it sitting in the Jobs tab and the diary. That's the loop: booking comes in, job goes in the app, and from then on the date, the details and the eventual invoice all look after themselves.

   Do this for every booking for a fortnight and it stops being a task — it becomes how bookings work. The diary becomes trustworthy, invoicing becomes one tap, and the Sunday-night “what's on this week?” scramble quietly disappears.

One job added is the hard part done. From here, the natural next steps are organising your week in the diary and turning a finished job into an invoice — both covered in their own tutorials.