Guides · 19 in this series

Set up Clamp.

19 short guides to the settings that make Clamp work for your business, in the order to do them. Start with Getting started.

  1. 1Set up Clamp: the six Getting started stepsGetting started is the short list of setup steps that make the rest of Clamp work for your business. Each step takes a few minutes.
  2. 2The Settings menu, section by sectionSettings is where you tell Clamp about your business once. This page walks the whole menu top to bottom and says what each row does.
  3. 3Setting your overheadOverhead is what it costs to keep your business open whether or not a job is running. Clamp divides it into your revenue goal to work out your markup.
  4. 4Setting your markupYour markup turns job cost into price. Clamp keeps three markups (normal work, high-risk work and change orders) and prices every estimate from them.
  5. 5Setting labor costsClamp turns every hour logged on a job into dollars at a loaded rate. Set the rates once and every job's labor cost fills in as hours come in.
  6. 6Your business profile and document defaultsBusiness & Documents holds what prints on what your customer sees and the defaults that start every new document. Set them once and every new document picks them up.
  7. 7Backing up and restoring your dataYour leads, documents, receipts, mileage and settings live on your phone. Data & Backup is where you make sure they also live somewhere else.
  8. 8The accountant exportThe accountant export builds what your bookkeeper or CPA needs from what you already keep in Clamp: a set of CSV files, plus a summary and a check that they agree.
  9. 9Auto mileage trackingClamp can notice when you drive and record each trip on its own. Each trip waits for you to say whether it was business or personal, then goes into your mileage log.
  10. 10Auto time on siteClamp can log how long you're at a job site with no clock in or out. When you leave, it asks you to confirm the job and the hours.
  11. 11The customer portal: how it works for youThe customer portal is a private web page for each customer. They open, sign and pay your documents there, with no app and no password.
  12. 12Your contractor's customer portal: a guide for homeownersYour contractor uses Clamp to run your job. The customer portal is your private web page for it, where you read, sign and pay from your phone or computer.
  13. 13Teams and sharingTeams lets the people who work for you use Clamp under your business. Each person's role decides what they can see and change.
  14. 14Lead CustomizationLead Customization changes how leads look and behave in your list: your lead sources, the numbers on the Leads tab, the Timeline Fit labels, job length presets and when a lead counts as not moving.
  15. 15Follow-up and appointment remindersTwo phone notifications keep leads from going quiet: a morning follow-up alert when you have flagged leads, and an alert on the day of an appointment. Both are off until you turn them on.
  16. 16Recording payments, credits and refundsHow to record what a customer paid, what you paid a vendor, and the money that goes back the other way: credits, refunds, returns and the final bill. Clamp records payments; it doesn't process them.
  17. 17Your first day on a Clamp teamFor someone who has just been invited to a business's Clamp team: how to join, what you'll see, and how to log your time, mileage and receipts so they land on the right job.
  18. 18Using Clamp as a subFor a subcontractor invited to a job by a contractor who uses Clamp: how to accept, what you see and share, how to agree dates, and what stays private. It's free.
  19. 19Scheduling installs, deliveries and inspectionsThe shared schedule puts every install, delivery, inspection and work day on the job, and asks the crew member or sub you pick to confirm it. Nothing counts as booked until they do.