Welcome. Foreman is built to live in your pocket, not on an office desk. If you can text, you can run it.
This guide takes about fifteen minutes to read and covers your first week. You don’t have to do it all at once.
A few things are still on the way, and we say so plainly below rather than letting you find out the hard way. The big one: sending texts from Foreman is waiting on phone-carrier approval. Texts coming in work today. Until outgoing texts turn on, your quotes and invoices go out by email — which works right now.
When you finish signing up, Foreman shows you a short list of what’s still open, in plain words, with what happens if you skip it. The same list sits at the top of Settings any time you want to check. Here it is.
Settings → How customers pay → Connect Stripe
You’re connecting your own Stripe account. Your customers’ money goes straight into your bank — we never hold it.
Have your bank account and routing number handy. This is the one step people have to stop and go find paperwork for, so do it when you’ve got ten quiet minutes.
Stripe sometimes says “pending” for a few hours while it verifies you. That’s normal, and it switches itself on. You can keep working meanwhile.
Settings → Your text number
Foreman offers you a few real local numbers in your area code. Tap one and it’s yours, for about a dollar a month.
Here’s the important part: calls to it ring your cell, exactly like today. Nothing changes about how you answer the phone. What changes is that texts to it stop disappearing. Somebody texting that number becomes a lead in Foreman on their own, even if you’re under a sink.
One thing to do after: put this number on your Google Business Profile, your van, and anywhere else you advertise. That’s what starts the leads flowing.
Set up once → Price book
Put in your five or six most common jobs with what you normally charge. Don’t try to be exact and don’t try to be complete — you’re just making sure a quote doesn’t start from a blank page. You can add more forever.
Settings → Team
Work alone? Skip this one. It’ll stay on your list and that’s fine, it isn’t nagging you.
Got a tech or two? See Your crew below.
Open it in your phone’s browser and hit Share → Add to Home Screen. Now it’s an icon sitting next to your texts instead of a bookmark you’ll never find again.
Settings → Business details
Thirty seconds now, and every review request Foreman ever sends has somewhere to point. Without it, nothing sends.
Today is home. It isn’t charts. It’s a short list of what to do next, ordered by money.
You handle things right on the card — no digging. Tap something by mistake? There’s an Undo for about six seconds.
The whole app is six places along the bottom and the side — Today, Schedule, Money, Messages, Customers and Jobs — plus a quieter Set up once group where Price book, Team and Settings live. Two of them do most of the work:
Your day on a timeline, and a week view once you’ve got a crew. Tap a job to move it or hand it to somebody else.
Cash is right now (who owes you, how late, one tap to chase). Numbers is the pattern (what you brought in, how often you win quotes, your average job, how many days people take to pay).
Do this once with a real customer and you’ll have the whole thing.
Build it from your price book and send it. Today it goes out by email — so make sure you’ve got the customer’s email address. Texting joins in as soon as the carriers approve us.
Your customer opens the quote on their phone. No login, no account, no app.
They tap approve, and then they pick their own appointment slot from real openings in your working hours. No phone tag, no “let me check and call you back.”
Set Settings → Working hours first so the times it offers are times you’d actually show up.
Open the job on your phone and everything’s on one screen:
Gate codes live in two places, so enter them once and forget: Internal notes on the job for one-off stuff, Property notes on the customer for the things that are always true.
Then hit Finish job — photos and costs travel with it.
You make an invoice from a finished job — that’s how the photos, costs and details come along with it. Your customer gets a link and pays by card, or you record cash or a cheque yourself in two taps.
If they’re slow, Foreman follows up for you (a maximum of two nudges, at least three days apart) so you don’t have to be the bad guy.
When the money lands you get a small celebration and the invoice flips to Paid.
Four doors, all landing in the same place.
Settings → Leads from your website
Copy the snippet and paste it on your site — or hand it to whoever runs your website, that’s completely normal. Every form-fill becomes a NEW LEAD card on your Today screen.
Using WordPress? There are click-by-click instructions right on that screen for WPForms, Contact Form 7 and Elementor. Any website form that can send data works: Squarespace, Wix, a hand-built page, anything.
One rule: keep the little consent sentence under the phone field. It’s what makes texting your customers legal. Don’t let anyone delete it to tidy up the design. What that consent covers.
Same screen. The first card shows your own Foreman email address, something like yourbusiness@in.foremandesk.com.
Set your normal business email to forward there, and lead emails from Angi, Thumbtack and Google Local Services file themselves as leads. No copying, no retyping.
You’ll have to click a confirmation link that Gmail or Outlook emails you before forwarding starts working. Watch for it.
Already on. A complete stranger texts your Foreman number and they show up as a lead with their message attached. Nobody typed anything.
Messages holds your text threads and your email threads together. One place to look, not four apps.
You can reply to email threads from there today. Replying to a text thread joins in when outgoing texting turns on — until then, tap the customer’s number and text them from your phone.
Every invoice carries a secure pay link. Money goes to your bank through your own Stripe account.
Record it yourself in two taps and the books stay straight.
Foreman sends a polite reminder with the pay link. Two at most, three days apart. Switch it off any time in Settings → Customer messages.
On a late invoice, Text reminder writes the message and hands it to your own phone, so it goes out today from your number.
Money → Cash shows what you’re owed, split into how-late buckets, with a CSV for your bookkeeper. Money → Numbers shows the pattern: revenue, win rate, average job, days-to-pay, and how much is repeat business.
Not connected to Stripe yet? Nothing breaks. Your customer still sees the invoice, just with a “call to pay” note instead of a card button.
Settings → Team to add a technician, then tap Invite. Foreman copies the invite link and opens your own messaging app with it ready to send — you text it to them yourself. When they open it, Foreman emails them a sign-in link. No passwords for anyone to forget.
What a tech sees: My day, the job they’re on, My week. What a tech doesn’t see: your prices. Not the quote, not the invoice total, not your margin. That’s deliberate, and it’s the first thing worth showing them.
They can start and finish jobs, pause the clock, add photos, send you a note, flag extra work they’ve found, and log costs with receipts — all without ever seeing what you charged. They can’t move a job or change its date; that stays with you.
We’d rather you knew than guessed.
Sending texts from Foreman — Waiting on the phone carriers. Incoming texts already work; outgoing quotes and invoices go by email until this clears. This is the big one and you’ll hear from us the day it turns on. Automatic review requests are waiting on the same thing.
An AI front desk that answers customer texts for you — Built and waiting on the same carrier approval. Leave it switched off for now.
Phone notifications — The switch is in Settings → Customer messages but it isn’t doing anything yet.
Job forms and a public booking link — Mid-repair. If you find them in the menu, they’ll look empty rather than broken. Skip them this week.
Repeat and recurring jobs — On the list.
A map of your day — On the list.
Deposits and part payments — On the list.
Costs and margins in your price book — On the list. You can already log costs on a job today.
And to be straight about one thing people ask: Foreman does not text back your missed phone calls. That doesn’t exist. It catches texts, website forms and emails.
Email hello@foremandesk.com. A real person reads it and we’re fast.
If something’s confusing, tell us — early on, that’s genuinely the most useful thing you can send us.
Want the short version of any of this later? The help centre has one-screen articles you can look up mid-job — including a shorter getting-started, connecting Stripe and quote to paid.