A company is born in the setup wizard, a guided sequence of steps that replaces a blank, intimidating setup form. There are two doors into it: signing up from the login page ("Sign up your Business"), or being created by your platform administrator. The wizard is for birth only — later changes to a running company are made in Company setup (see 0.10 Changing your mind).
For a new company, the wizard asks, in order:
- Company details — the company's name, a short code, its default currency, and contact details, plus the email of the person who will administer the company. That administrator account is created as part of setup, and its one-time password is shown once — note it down there and then. The step also asks for the company's country (and its state or province, where the list offers one): this is what makes every time and date in the application read in the company's own local time — the step shows you the timezone it works out, and a Timezone override field (leave it on Automatic) covers the rare area that keeps a different time from the rest of its state or province. See 0.6 for how the profile works and how to change it later.
- Business profile — what kind of business this is (see 0.3).
- Modules — which areas of the application the company needs (see 0.4).
- Features — the feature switches of 0.6, grouped the way this chapter groups them (Structure, Money, Inventory depth, Costing, Automation, Intelligence & capture), preselected from the profile's recommendations. Numeric parameters (how many days before an invoice counts as overdue, say) are noted as "set later" — they live on the company record, not in the wizard — and connectors appear here as enable switches only: the store and advertising keys they need are collected afterwards on the company record, never in the wizard.
- Workflow depth — how many steps selling and buying should have (see 0.5).
- Chart of accounts — the exact chart your company will be born with, assembled in front of you from the standard: the international Core, your country's localization (its tax accounts and tax codes, and local names for shared accounts — a Canadian company sees GST/HST accounts, for example), and your profile's industry additions (a manufacturer sees the factory cost accounts). Accounts marked optional can be switched off here if your business will never use them; accounts the posting engine relies on are locked and say why. What you see on this step is exactly what the company is born with — nothing is added or held back behind your back. (Express setup skips this step too and accepts the standard chart as presented by the defaults.)
- Review & create — a summary of every choice, and one confirming click that builds the company.
You do not start from an empty shell. Behind the scenes the profile brings a starter chart of accounts (the list of accounts your books are kept in), starter tax codes, document numbering, accounting periods, and the standard roles for your team, so a new company can raise its first invoice the same day. It is also born with its first branch — Head Office (HQ) — because warehouses, product costs and several reports key off branches, and a company with no branch could never value its first stock. Head Office is an ordinary branch: rename it, or add more, under System Setup → Branches as the business grows.
Figure 0.1 — The setup wizard. Drawing to be produced after the UI/UX pass: the wizard's step header with each step named, the business-profile cards, and the Express setup button.
Express setup. If the profile's defaults are exactly what you want, the profile step offers Express setup: it skips the modules, features and workflow-depth steps and goes straight to review, applying the profile's recommended choices. Express is not a lesser setup — it is the same company, with the decisions pre-made by the profile instead of by you. And an Express company can revisit every one of those decisions later in Company setup.
After setup, one page becomes your compass: Setup Progress, the first screen in System Setup, which tracks what remains to be filled in (see 0.9).