> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://learn.withessential.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://learn.withessential.com/administration/using-the-essential-assistant/what-the-essential-assistant-can-and-cant-do.md). # What the Essential Assistant can and can't do The Essential Assistant is the in-app chat that looks things up across your whole business and answers how-to questions. It's grounded to the page you're on, so when you have a specific quote, invoice, customer, property, contact, asset group, task, subscription, or inspection report open, it already knows that record without you pasting anything in. It can search and describe across customers, properties, contacts, asset groups, scheduling, tasks, subscriptions, automations, inventory, quotes, invoices, and pricing. It can also answer read-only business questions with complete lists, counts, grouped statistics, rankings, and joins across related records—for example, revenue by customer, open receivables, quote conversion, technician workload, or properties belonging to matching customers. Results respect your role, enabled business modules, and the business you are signed into. It also answers how-do-I, where-is, and why-is-this-blocked questions using Essential's help documentation. It can also change things, always with your approval. It can propose edits to a draft quote or draft invoice, including line items, discounts, and the customer-facing description. Separately, it can take actions across the app on your behalf, grouped by area below. It proposes them as an action card you confirm or reject; see [Asking the Assistant to do things: actions you confirm](/administration/using-the-essential-assistant/asking-the-assistant-to-do-things-actions-you-confirm.md). ### Customers, contacts, properties and tasks Create, update, and archive customers, properties, and contacts; set contact roles; append customer and property notes; post timeline comments; create tasks and change their status or notes; add customer custom fields and set their values; send a one-off email or text you compose. It can also move a property onto a different customer — which deletes the old customer when that was its last property, so it confirms that with you first; give a property its own billing profile (payment terms, autopay, tax exemption) and update or remove it; save a property's access details from the task that asked for them; edit or delete a comment already on a timeline; log a completed step on a task; and add, tick off, or delete to-dos on your own private list. ### Scheduling, visits and assets Schedule, reschedule, or backlog a visit, update its instructions, or delete one that hasn't happened yet; add asset groups, add assets, set asset attributes and asset group custom fields, rename a group, make it inactive, or delete it; create, update, or delete recurring service schedules, set how a whole group's schedules are handled, and record a service completion for one asset; rename a visit batch, move its window, set who can self-book it, or cancel its remaining visits. ### Quotes, invoices and jobs Create draft quotes and invoices, send them to a contact, and void them; edit a quote's or invoice's content, dates, terms, line items and discounts; give an unsigned quote a fresh validity window; finalize an invoice and sync it to accounting; email a payment receipt once an invoice is paid; link jobs to quotes and invoices in either direction; set a job's custom fields, stock location and recorded parts; delete a job; and correct or email a work acknowledgment. ### Pricing, items and inventory Set or clear a price override for a customer or for one of their properties, or apply a set of overrides in one all-or-nothing batch; add, change or remove pricebook items and create reusable discounts; rename a stocked item, change its SKU, and set its reorder level; move stock between inventory locations or in and out of stock, and correct an item's on-hand count after a stock take; and raise a purchase order, update or close it, and record what arrived. Pricebook changes are business-wide and apply to new quotes and invoices, not to ones that already copied a price. Creating a purchase order records the order — it doesn't contact the supplier — and receiving one adds stock at your default location, cumulatively, so a delivery recorded twice counts twice. ### Inspection reports Start a new report on a visit or a property, duplicate an existing one into a fresh draft, submit a finished report, delete a report, and email a submitted one to a contact. On deficiencies it can resolve, reopen, record a retest, and clear or restore one. New reports are created empty — the Assistant opens the report, it doesn't fill in the inspection. Submitting doesn't email anything, so filing a report and sending it to a customer are always two separate confirmations. Deleting a report is permanent and takes its deficiencies and photos with it. It can also run one of your business's published automations for a customer, and change your own user settings. Each comes back as a card with buttons, and nothing changes until you approve or confirm it. It can also save notes to remember for later - see [What the Assistant remembers, who sees it, and how to clear it](/administration/using-the-essential-assistant/what-the-assistant-remembers-who-sees-it-and-how-to-clear-it.md). Anything it does runs as you, with your permissions — so it can only offer what your role already allows, and it can only edit quotes and invoices while they're still drafts. Some things stay out of reach entirely: it doesn't change the answers recorded on an inspection report (those are written in the report editor), it doesn't change your business's settings apart from the pricebook, and it doesn't manage subscriptions and payments. It refers to records by name rather than internal IDs and keeps answers short. If you ask it to do something outside these abilities, it will tell you rather than pretend it acted. > **Where to find it:** Open the Essential Assistant panel from anywhere in the app; it already knows the record you're viewing. Edits and actions it proposes appear as cards in the chat that you approve, confirm, or reject. ## Related guides * [Using the Essential Assistant](/administration/using-the-essential-assistant.md) * [Asking the Assistant to do things: actions you confirm](/administration/using-the-essential-assistant/asking-the-assistant-to-do-things-actions-you-confirm.md) * [Editing a quote or invoice through the Assistant](/administration/using-the-essential-assistant/editing-a-quote-or-invoice-through-the-assistant.md) --- # Agent Instructions This documentation is published with GitBook. GitBook is the documentation platform designed so that both humans and AI agents can read, navigate, and reason over technical content effectively. 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