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Section 01 · Getting started

Getting started

From sign-up to your first checked-in technician in about ten minutes. Each step assumes the previous one is done.

Article 01

Welcome to Alpha

Alpha is a single pane of glass for service businesses — one place to see your crew, your jobs, and your customers in real time. It's built for the people who keep getting interrupted with "where's the crew?" and "what's the status on the Henderson job?"

The product is organized around a few simple ideas you'll see throughout these docs:

  • Organizations own everything. You'll set one up and invite teammates into it.
  • Customers are who you do work for. Each customer has one or more locations.
  • Projects are individual jobs at a customer location, with a lifecycle from draft to closed.
  • Location visits are the check-in / check-out log of when your crew was on site.

Alpha runs in any modern browser — built to work just as well on a phone in the field as on a desktop in the office — and integrates with QuickBooks Online and Google Drive if you use them.

Heads up

You don't need QuickBooks or Drive to use Alpha. They're optional and can be connected later from the integrations page.

Article 02

Create your account

You sign in with your email and a password on Alpha's secure hosted sign-in screen — Alpha never stores your password itself.

  1. Open the app. You'll land on the sign-in screen.
  2. Click Sign in, then enter your email and password — or create your account if it's your first time.
  3. After you sign in for the first time, Alpha checks whether you already belong to an organization. If you don't, you'll be prompted to create one. If a teammate invited you, the invite link puts you straight into their org.
Heads up

Social sign-in (Google, Microsoft, etc.) isn't supported yet. You'll see a single Sign in action — that's the only path in today.

Article 03

Set up your organization

Your organization is the container for everything else: customers, projects, team members, and integrations. The first person to sign up creates it.

The setup screen asks for one thing:

  • Organization name — usually your business name as you'd put it on an invoice.

Click Create organization and you're in. You become the owner — the only role with the power to delete the org or demote and remove another owner.

Not yet configurable

An org-settings page (time zone, default geofence radius, branding) is on the roadmap but isn't shipped yet. For now, geofence radius is set per location when you create it.

Article 04

Invite your team

In the sidebar, open Admin → Team. Click Invite member, enter an email address, and pick a role. The invite is sent immediately — when they accept and sign in, they're in.

Choosing a role

Alpha ships with six roles. Pick the narrowest one that fits — you can change it later.

  • Owner — full control. The only role that can delete the org or demote and remove other owners. Reserved for the people you trust with the entire account.
  • Admin — manages members, integrations, and most org settings, and can view billing and usage. Can see and edit every customer, project, and item; can't delete the org or demote an owner.
  • Project manager — runs the day-to-day. Creates and edits projects and their line items, picking customers and locations from inside each one. Can't manage those catalogs, members, or integrations.
  • Technician — field crew. Sees their own assignments ("My work"), checks in to sites, and updates their own tasks. Can't see the full org pipeline.
  • Accountant — finance-side access. Reads customers, projects, items, and integrations across the org so they can be reconciled against external systems. Can't edit anything.
  • Read only — sees everything they're allowed to, edits nothing. Useful for stakeholders who just need visibility.
Tip

You always need at least one owner. Alpha won't let you demote the last owner — promote someone else first.

Article 05

Add your first customer and job

Two short wizards get you to a working project. Start with the customer.

1. Add the customer

  1. From the sidebar, open Ops → Customers and click New customer.
  2. Step Basics: enter the customer name and any contact details you have.
  3. Step Location: add a primary location (label, address, geofence radius). This step is optional — you can skip it and add locations later from the customer detail page.
  4. Step Review: confirm and create.

2. Add the project

  1. Open Work → Projects and click New project.
  2. On the project form, pick the customer and location, give the project a name (e.g. "Kitchen remodel"), set an estimated start and end date and an initial status, add any line items, and assign teammates — all on one screen.
  3. Step Review: confirm and create.

That's it — the project shows up in your projects list, the timeline, and the Gantt view. Teammates assigned to it can check in from My Work or the check-in pill; Alpha verifies they're inside the location's geofence and flags off-site visits.

Next stop: the How tos.