Getting started with Simple Scheduler.

Welcome to Simple Scheduler

This guide assumes you are an owner or office manager at a service business (cleaning, landscaping, HVAC, pest control, pool maintenance, or anything similar) and you want to replace the spreadsheet or whiteboard you are using today. If you are joining an existing workspace as a crew member or dispatcher, ask the owner to invite you instead and start at Team setup.

Step 1. Create your account

Head to /signup, enter your business name, your working email, and a password. You will receive a verification email from Resend within about a minute; click the link and you land on the empty workspace.

The signup flow provisions one workspace and assigns your account the owner role. You can rename the workspace later in Settings, General. The workspace URL slug is auto-generated from the business name; keep it short, because it appears in shareable links to the booking widget.

If you intend to manage more than one company from a single login (a parent operation with two LLCs, for example), finish step 1 with the first company and then add the second from Settings, Workspaces. Each workspace bills independently through Stripe.

Step 2. Import your customers

Customers are the single most useful thing to import first. With customers already in the system, every later step (creating appointments, sending confirmations, building recurring schedules) becomes a two-click operation.

Open Settings, Customers, then click Import customers. The wizard accepts a CSV with these columns, all lowercase and snake_case:

first_name,last_name,email,phone,address,city,region,postal_code,notes

Only first_name and last_name are required. Empty cells in optional columns are accepted. If your existing system exports a different shape (Jobber, ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, or a QuickBooks export), the wizard provides a column-mapping screen so you can match its headers to ours without rewriting the file.

Imports are idempotent on email: re-uploading the same CSV updates existing rows rather than duplicating them. Watch the post-import summary for the count of created versus updated records; a large updated count on a first run usually means duplicate addresses already exist in the file.

Step 3. Add your team and crews

From Settings, Team, click Invite teammate. Enter their email and choose a role:

• Owner. Full access, billing included. Reserve for actual owners; one or two is normal.
• Dispatcher. Can build and publish schedules, manage customers, and run reports. Cannot change billing.
• Crew lead. Sees their crew's assigned work, marks jobs complete, and edits visit notes.
• Crew member. Sees today's work in the mobile app. Cannot reassign jobs.

Once teammates are in the system, build crews from Settings, Crews. A crew is a named group of teammates that appointments get assigned to. Most businesses run between two and ten crews. Pick a naming scheme you will not regret in six months (color names, cardinal numbers, or lead name all work; truck numbers if your fleet is stable).

Step 4. Configure services and frequencies

Services are what you sell. From Settings, Services, add each one with a name, a default duration, a default crew size, and a price. Examples for a residential cleaning company:

• Initial deep clean (240 minutes, 2 people, $480)
• Standard weekly clean (90 minutes, 1 person, $145)
• Move-out clean (300 minutes, 2 people, $620)

For services that repeat, tag a frequency: weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or a custom interval (every 28 days, for example). Frequencies drive the recurring-appointment engine. See recurring jobs for the full mechanics, including how holiday rollovers and crew-swap logic work.

It is normal to add new services later. Most operators ship the first three and add edge cases (one-off deep cleans, project bids) as real customer requests come in.

Step 5. Embed the booking widget

The booking widget is a JavaScript snippet you paste on your marketing site so customers can request appointments without picking up the phone. Open Settings, Booking widget, copy the one-line script tag, and paste it just before the closing body tag of your homepage.

The widget reads your service catalog, your team's availability, and your crew capacity, then offers eligible time slots. New bookings land in Pending requests where a dispatcher confirms or declines them; confirmations fire automatically and the appointment joins the calendar.

Full configuration options (theme colors, pre-filled customer info, per-service routing, GDPR consent text) are documented in Booking widget.

Step 6. Send your first confirmation

From the calendar, click any empty slot. Pick a customer (the customers you imported in step 2 are searchable), choose a service, set the date and start time, and assign a crew. Save the appointment.

Click Send confirmation on the appointment slide-over. The customer receives a confirmation email with the date, time, service, and an iCal attachment they can add to their own calendar. By default the appointment is now confirmed; you can configure two-step confirmation (customer must reply yes) per service in Settings.

Congratulations, the workspace is live. Repeat for the rest of the week and you have a published schedule.

Common gotchas in week one

• Time zones. The workspace time zone is set at signup from your browser. If you run crews across more than one zone, check Settings, General and pick the time zone of your office (not your customers). Appointment times then display per-crew in the field app based on the crew's default location.
• Customer email duplicates. When two household members share an email (a couple, parent and adult child) the import wizard treats the second row as an update to the first. Either give one of them a plus-suffix address (alice+ss@example.com) or omit the email from the second row.
• Crew availability. By default crews are available Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm. Update working hours from Settings, Crews if your real schedule differs, otherwise the booking widget will offer slots your team cannot work.
• Pricing surprises. Service prices are exclusive of tax. If you charge tax, enable it in Settings, Billing, set your rate, and the appointment total auto-recalculates.
• Mobile app sign-in. Crew members install the iOS or Android app and sign in with the same email you used to invite them. Their first sign-in is the trigger for the invite to consume; until then their seat is reserved but unused.

Where to get help

Every screen in the app has a contextual help icon in the top-right corner that links straight to the right doc. The full library lives at /docs, with deep dives into recurring jobs, the booking widget, integrations with QuickBooks and Stripe, and the public REST API.

If you need a human, email info@simplescheduler.com or open a ticket from /contact. We answer every support email within one business day, and most are answered same-day.