Set up a business system
Install a ready-made system for your agency, restaurant, rentals or practice, make it yours with Getting started, and publish the forms, sites and portals your customers use.
Running a small business usually means a booking tool, a client list, a spreadsheet for the money, a portal you pay for per seat, and an afternoon a week copying the same details between them. A business system is a Wapp that does that work in one place: your records, the automations that chase and remind, the forms, sites and portals your customers use, and the documents you work from. It arrives with a sample business so you can see it working, then a Getting started list walks you through making it yours.
Pick the one for your business
| System | For | What it keeps | What your customers use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agency | Agencies, studios, consultants, freelancers | Leads, clients, projects, tasks, time and invoices | A Start a project form for your website, and a Client portal |
| Restaurant | Restaurants, cafés, bars | Menu, bookings, rota, stock, suppliers and reviews | A Menu site with a printable menu and table QR cards, and a Book a table form |
| Property Management | Landlords and property managers | Properties, units, residents, leases, rent and repairs | A Listings site with an application form, and a Resident portal |
| Clinic & Practice | Clinics, therapists, salons, coaches, tutors | Clients, services, appointments, packages and payments | A Booking page, and a Client portal |
Each one also ships its documents: a guide to how it runs and what to do in your first week, plus the checklists and templates that business uses, such as a proposal template, an opening and closing checklist, a lease template, or a new client intake form.
Install it
If setup takes longer than usual, you can open the Wapp while it carries on in the background. If it stops partway, the screen says what didn't finish, and Report this sends it to the Cheqq team.
What its page shows before you install
A system's page shows the business working before anything is yours:
- A preview of the workspace and each App it ships, with the sample business in them. Some pages also have an Automations tab with the automations at work: the list, a finished run, an approval, and the bell.
- What's included: each App and who uses it, the records it keeps with their sample data, every automation in plain words, the documents, and the Getting started steps. Each automation is marked Runs on its own, or Asks you first when it waits for your yes before it sends.
- Before and after, and answers to common questions, such as what it costs to run.
Talk to us, beside Install, sends the Cheqq team a note about setting it up, and someone replies by email.
Home and Getting started
Every template for running your work has a Home tab and a Getting started list now, not only the business systems, so a Bills & Receipts or a Support Inbox walks you through making it yours the same way, with a guide to how it runs first.
A business system opens on Home, its first tab, while its Getting started list is showing. Home gathers what you need to run it:
- Getting started: the steps that make it yours, and how many are done.
- Database, Automations and People: how many records it holds, how many automations are on, and who has access.
- Apps: the forms, sites and portals it came with. Each shows whether it's Building, Ready to publish or Live, with its address once it's live.
- Docs: the guide first, then its checklists and templates.
Work through Getting started
Each step's button does the work: Read the guide, Set up branding, Add clients, Publish, Turn on. A step ticks itself off when its goal is met: when records you added are in (the sample business doesn't count), when your brand kit is saved, when an App is live, or when the automations are on. Skip a step you don't need, and Undo brings it back.
| System | Getting started |
|---|---|
| Agency | Learn how it works, apply your branding, add your clients, add your projects, publish your intake form, set up the client portal, invite your team, turn on automations |
| Restaurant | Learn how it works, apply your branding, add your menu, publish your menu site, publish your booking form, add your team, add suppliers and stock, turn on bookings and reminders |
| Property Management | Learn how it works, apply your branding, add your properties and units, import residents and leases, set up rent and charges, publish your listings, set up the resident portal, turn on automations |
| Clinic & Practice | Learn how it works, apply your branding, add your services and prices, add your team and hours, import your clients, publish your booking page, set up the client portal, review your policies, turn on reminders |
Want help setting this up? Talk to us, under the list, sends a note to the Cheqq team, and someone replies by email. When you're done with the list, hide it with ×. The message that follows offers Undo; after that the list stays hidden, and the Wapp opens on its records.
Answer a few questions instead of filling in forms
A step like Add your clients or Add your menu opens the Wapp's chat with that step. Cheqq asks one question at a time, and offers the easiest way first, marked Recommended. Pick an answer by its letter, write your own under Something else, or Skip. Then Cheqq does the typing, and tells you what went in and what it left out. When the step's goal is met, it says so, and the step ticks off on Home.
Bring a spreadsheet
Already keep your clients, residents or dishes in a spreadsheet? Attach it with
+ and Add photos or files: a CSV or an Excel (.xlsx) file of up to
5 MB, with up to 10,000 records. Cheqq matches its columns to fields by name and
brings everything in as records. Anything it can't read is left out and named,
and the rest goes in.
Bringing in a spreadsheet spends no AI credits on the records themselves. The conversation around it uses credits like any other message.
Send a photo or a PDF
A menu, a price list, a rota or a stock list on paper works too. Send a photo of it, or attach a PDF, and Cheqq reads it and adds a record for every item, with its section and price. Reading it is part of the conversation, so it uses AI credits like any other message.
Allergens are yours to confirm
From a menu, Cheqq adds dietary tags and allergens only where the menu itself marks them, and never guesses them from a dish's name. Restaurant's Allergens to check view lists every dish the kitchen hasn't confirmed yet.
Publish its Apps
The forms, sites and portals are built while you look around, then wait as
Ready to publish: nobody can open them until you publish. Select Publish
on the Getting started step, or on the App's card under Apps. Once it's
live, the card shows its cheqq.site address to share, put on your website, or
print on a QR code. Only the person who installed the system can publish its
Apps.
Each one looks the part from the start, with real photos, so it reads as finished before you fill anything in:
- Restaurant's menu site opens on a photo of the dining room with your name, today's hours, your address and phone. From the kitchen shows photographed dishes, and each dish shows its dietary tags, and its allergens once your kitchen has confirmed them. Book a table lets guests tap their party size, day and time, sums up their table as they go, and keeps your hours and cancellation note beside the form. The table QR cards open your live menu site, on your own domain once it's connected, so print them from anywhere, even the preview. Publish the menu site first: until then there's no address for the codes to open.
- Clinic & Practice's booking page shows each service with its photo, length and price, and your practitioners with what they offer. A request takes four steps, with your first-visit note and cancellation policy, and Good to know gives directions and your hours.
- Property Management's listings lead with photos of every home. Each home has a gallery that opens full screen, its key facts, and Apply for this home always in reach. The application takes three short steps.
- Agency's Start a project form sits beside your studio's story, What happens next and Selected work, and its thank-you says when your reply will come.
The photos are in your records, ready to swap for your own: the one at the top of a menu site or booking page is in the system's settings, and dishes, services and homes have their own. The ones in your settings stay after you clear the sample business, until you replace them. Photos you upload show sharp in your Apps and load quickly, even on a phone.
Apply your branding puts your logo, colours and fonts on them: see Import your brand from your website. To change an App beyond that, open it in the App Builder. See Manage an App.
Portals for your clients and residents
A portal is an App your customers sign in to. Each person sees only the records that carry their email: a client's own projects and invoices, a resident's own lease, charges and repairs, a practice client's own appointments and packages. They can send you a request, report a repair, or ask to move an appointment, and it lands in your records.
Each portal puts first what that person comes for:
- Agency's client portal: what's waiting on them, each with Reply, then each project with its progress and your latest update, their invoices once you've sent them, with Pay when you use payment links, and their requests. A draft invoice stays yours, even with their email on it.
- Property Management's resident portal: their home, their rent, either All paid up or what's owed, with the date it's next due, their lease, each repair from reported to fixed with your latest word, and what's coming up.
- Clinic & Practice's client portal: their next appointment with a countdown, Add to calendar and Ask to change, their packages with the sessions left, and their past visits.
The email on their record decides what they see. Cheqq copies it onto their projects, leases or appointments for you. With the automations on, changing it on the client or resident carries the new one onto everything of theirs the portal shows, so they keep seeing it.
To let someone in, publish the portal, then invite them:
They open the link and sign in with Continue with Cheqq, using that email. Someone new to Cheqq creates an account there with the same email, or continues with Google, and goes straight to the portal. See Portals for what a portal can and can't do.
See how the business is doing
Each system has an overview dashboard: its numbers first, then charts, then the lists you act on.
| System | Dashboard | Numbers | Charts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurant | Service overview | Covers today and over the last 2 weeks, the average rating, requests to confirm | Covers by day, where bookings come from, how bookings turned out, reviews by stars |
| Clinic & Practice | Practice overview | Appointments, takings and attendance over 30 days, packages ending soon | Appointments by week, takings by month, appointments by service, how clients found you, how appointments are booked |
| Property Management | Portfolio overview | Occupancy, rent collected over the last 12 months, what's overdue, open work orders | Rent collected by month, homes by status, open work orders by trade, occupancy by building, overdue by home |
| Agency | Studio overview | The open pipeline, what you've won in the last 90 days, unpaid invoices, hours in the last 7 days | Invoiced by month, the pipeline by stage, where leads come from, client hours by project |
Amounts show in the currency their field is set to, and occupancy and attendance as percentages. To work in another currency, change it on the field. A figure with a trend compares this period so far with the last, as in ▲ 12% vs last week. The sample business fills the dashboard in from the start, and once it's cleared, your own records do. See Dashboards.
Messages to your customers ask you first
Anything a business system sends to a customer asks you first: a reply to an enquiry, a booking confirmation, a reminder that an invoice is overdue, a late notice, a renewal offer. The run pauses and you get a notification showing who it's to and how it starts. On the run's page, What happens if you approve shows exactly what goes out: who it's to, the subject and every word. Approve lets it go. Decline stops it, so you can reply yourself.
It only asks when there's a draft to approve. If Cheqq couldn't write one, nothing is sent and you're told, so you can write to them yourself. In a batch, like a round of rebooking reminders, the ones Cheqq couldn't write are left out, and the approval names who still needs a message.
A few routine messages go at once:
- Restaurant and Clinic & Practice: the reminder the day before a booking or an appointment.
- Property Management: rent reminders, and the receipt an applicant gets when they apply.
Each system sends from its own Cheqq email address, set up when you install it. You'll find it in the system's settings (Studio settings, Restaurant settings, Office settings or Practice settings) as the address emails go from. When people reply, their answers come back into Cheqq.
Let it run on its own
Every automation that asks starts on Ask me first. Once its drafts are what you'd have sent anyway, you can let it go:
- Approve and stop asking, beside Approve, approves this one and stops asking from then on.
- After you've approved the last 3 as drafted, the approval offers Let it run on its own.
- The automation's header says Asks you first or Runs on its own. Select it for the Ask me first switch.
Running on its own, a message goes out without waiting for you, and its run still shows exactly what went out. Turn Ask me first back on whenever you like, and the next one asks. Only people who can edit the automation can change this. See Ask me first.
Every automation installs switched off. Turn on in Getting started switches on the ones that run by themselves in one go. A few, like Restaurant's supplier orders and rota check, you switch on yourself under Workflows when you're ready.
Clear the sample business
The sample studio, trattoria, portfolio or practice is there to show the system working. When your own records are in, select Clear sample data: Home offers it while the sample is there, and so does its setup page. Cheqq asks first, then removes the sample records. Your setup records stay, such as your settings, a restaurant's menu sections and dining areas, or a clinic's services, along with everything you or an automation added and any sample record you've edited.
Related
- Manage a Wapp: moving around a Wapp, updates, and deleting one.
- Manage an App: building, branding and publishing Apps.
- Bring your work into Cheqq: moving over from Airtable, spreadsheets and Zapier.