Complete guided business onboarding
Guided onboarding collects the information Essential needs to prepare a new business. Your setup is submitted to the Essential team for review before data onboarding is complete.
Set your password and business profile
Open the secure setup link provided by Essential. The password page shows the email address associated with the account before you choose a password. After the password is saved, Essential signs you in and opens guided onboarding.
Review the business name, contact information, address, hours, timezone, logo, and brand color before continuing.
Add existing data or start fresh
Upload spreadsheets, exports, PDFs, scans, plain-text, Markdown, HTML, or XML notes and exports, archives, or folders that can help Essential prepare:
Customers: the companies or people you serve.
Properties: the locations where work is performed.
Contacts: the people associated with customers and properties.
Assets: the systems and equipment you service.
Recurring services: the ongoing inspections and services you track.
Invoices, quotes, jobs, and inspection records are useful sources for service dates and other details. Essential uses that evidence when preparing your data, but does not recreate those historical transactions as live invoices, quotes, or jobs.
Import from a connected platform
The Pull your data directly (optional) card above the file drop zone lists the platforms Essential can import from. You can import from an available provider and still add ordinary files or import from a different provider in the same onboarding.
For InspectPoint, select Connect, enter the tenant and API key, and then select Connect and import. Essential shows the import and file-processing status on the InspectPoint card. Closing or reloading the page does not cancel an import that is already running.
For Joyfill, select Connect, enter the Joyfill username and password you use to sign in to Joyfill Manager, and — only if the account has more than one group — the group IDs to import, separated by commas. Essential signs in to Joyfill fresh for each import, keeps the session only in memory, and only reads from Joyfill (groups, forms, submissions, and their customer and customer-group details); it never changes anything in your Joyfill account and does not generate PDFs there — drag and drop any PDFs you want included into the files area instead. If Joyfill asks for a verification code or security check for that account, complete it in Joyfill first and then try again.
For Service Fusion, select Connect, enter the API Client ID and Client Secret from Service Fusion (My Office → Developer Settings → API Credentials; Service Fusion makes its API available on the Pro plan), and then select Connect and import. Essential exchanges the credentials for a short-lived access token in memory for each import and only reads from Service Fusion — customers with their contacts, service and billing locations, and custom fields; equipment; the full job history with billed products and services, visits, and payments; invoices; and the job status, job category, payment type, source, and technician lists. It never changes anything in your Service Fusion account. Equipment kept in Service Fusion is added to your assets with its service history taken from completed jobs (or, when a job is not linked to equipment, from completed jobs at the same customer and service address). Equipment is read from one account-wide list. A large account can still take a while to import, and the card shows progress as records arrive.
For QuickBooks Online, select Connect and then Continue with QuickBooks Online. Essential uses your business's existing QuickBooks Online authorization when one is available. Otherwise, QuickBooks opens so you can authorize the company for onboarding. This does not enable Essential's Accounting feature.
The QuickBooks authorization is shared with Essential's Accounting feature — QuickBooks issues one authorization per company, and both features use it. It stays in place after the import, so a later onboarding can import from the same company again without authorizing QuickBooks a second time.
Every connected platform can be disconnected from the onboarding: open the provider's card (or Manage after an import) and select Disconnect. For Joyfill, InspectPoint, and Service Fusion this deletes the username, password, API key, or client credentials you entered; Essential keeps nothing.
For QuickBooks, selecting Disconnect from onboarding (available on the QuickBooks card before an import, and under Manage after one) removes the QuickBooks Online company from the onboarding connector. If Accounting is enabled, QuickBooks access is kept for Accounting and nothing else changes; otherwise Essential releases its QuickBooks access, and a future import will ask you to authorize QuickBooks again. Disconnecting QuickBooks from Accounting also removes it from the onboarding connector, because they share the same authorization.
A QuickBooks import brings in customers, products and services, five years of invoices, and the files attached in QuickBooks: inspection reports, service reports, and other documents attached to invoices and estimates are downloaded and added to your onboarding files (newest first, up to a cap), while the attachment list itself — including receipts on purchases and bills — is imported as data. If you also drag and drop the same report files, Essential recognizes identical files and keeps one copy.
A successful provider import is a fixed snapshot for this onboarding. To back one out — for example after importing the wrong account — select Manage, then Disconnect: a confirmation explains that the records and documents imported from that platform are removed from this onboarding (other onboardings keep theirs, and an active Accounting integration is not affected). You can then connect and import again at any time. If the provider is slow or temporarily unavailable, the card shows Import started — we'll finish it with whatever has been brought in so far: your authorization stays in place and Essential completes the import for you in the background, so you can simply continue. To run it again yourself, select Manage and then Retry import. Only an authorization problem (for example, QuickBooks asking to be authorized again) shows Needs re-authorization and needs action from you. Provider cards marked Coming soon are visible but cannot be connected yet.
If your business has no existing records, you can continue without adding anything: the data questions below the upload area are optional until you add files or import from a connected platform, and you can configure the business manually in the remaining steps.
You can import your pricebook on the Pricebook step below, and add or update items later from Settings.
Review the remaining setup
Continue through the remaining screens to review custom fields, your pricebook, your rate sheets, users, asset hierarchy, recurring services, and inspection report choices.
On Custom fields, Essential suggests custom field definitions from your lists: business facts the standard customer, property, asset group, contact, or invoice record does not already hold, such as an account number, a customer segment, or a tax-exempt flag. Every suggestion is editable: change the name, the record it belongs to, the value type, the options for a choice field, and whether it is unique or required; remove any suggestion or add your own. Custom fields the business already has are listed above the suggestions and are not changed here. A suggestion Essential could not place is listed under Left out so you can add it yourself. Select Refresh suggestions to propose again from the current lists; only the unsaved suggestions are replaced. Select Continue to save the fields to your business so the data onboarding can fill them in. Saved fields start as back-office only, not editable by technicians, and not shown on documents; change any of that later under Settings (see Create and manage custom fields).
On Pricebook, choose the uploaded spreadsheet that holds your price list, or select Upload a spreadsheet to add one now (.xlsx, .xls, or .csv). Essential matches its columns to the pricebook item fields and proposes one item per row with the code, name, description, type, category, price, taxable flag, and cost it read. Every row is editable: change any value, choose Service or Physical Item where the type could not be read, and untick any row you do not want. Rows with a problem (a missing code or name, a name shared with another row, a code already in your pricebook) are listed with the reason and are not imported until fixed. A row with no price imports at $0.00, so enter a price first if that is not what you want. Select Import to add the accepted rows to your pricebook; items already in your pricebook are never changed. Select Change file to pick a different spreadsheet, Refresh to read the same file again, or Skip to continue without importing — you can add items later in Settings → Items.
On Rate sheets, choose the spreadsheet that holds your contract or customer prices — one sheet per tab, one column per customer, or one row per customer and item — or select Upload a spreadsheet to add one now (.xlsx, .xls, or .csv). Essential reads each tab, proposes one rate sheet per customer, contract, or price list it finds, and matches every row to an item in your pricebook (import your pricebook first). Each proposed sheet shows its name, description, active switch, and items with the book price and the sheet's price; every value is editable, and you can untick a sheet or an item. A row Essential could not match shows what the file called it — select Pick item to choose the pricebook item it means. Items that still have a problem (no matching item, no price, the same item twice) are left out when the sheet is created, and a sheet with a problem (no name, a name already used, no items) is not created until fixed. Select Import to create the accepted sheets; rate sheets already on your business are never changed. Attach the sheets to customers and properties after your customers are imported (see Create a rate sheet to price many items at once). Select Change file, Refresh, or Skip as on the Pricebook step.
If existing data was uploaded, review what Essential found before configuring the asset hierarchy. If you upload more files or the suggestions are out of date, select Refresh suggestions on the Assets step and confirm. Essential reviews the current files again and replaces only the editable suggestions; asset groups already saved to Essential do not change.
On Inspection reports, choose a ready-to-use Essential catalog report, select no report, or open the additional options when an existing report should be used as an example.
Submit the onboarding
Select Submit for review on the Inspection reports step, then confirm the submission. You cannot return to this guided flow to make changes after submitting. The Essential team reviews the setup, begins processing the data, and follows up if anything needs clarification.
The confirmation page says Onboarding submitted because data onboarding is not complete yet. Select Go to Essential to open Business Settings while the review continues.
Where to find it: Open the secure onboarding link provided by Essential
Review property warnings before adding prepared data
When prepared data is reviewed for addition to Essential, property warnings may identify matching names and addresses under different accounts. Compare the account and site relationship: a property manager, contractor, and direct customer can refer to the same address without being the same customer.
A repeated label such as “Public Works” with no street address does not establish a duplicate site. Confirm the missing location details. These warnings are advisory; they do not by themselves decide whether a record will merge or be skipped. Essential checks source identity and existing records when the data is added.
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