What to have ready before you open the setup screens

This setup pass is best done by the business owner, estimator, office manager or whoever controls pricing and customer communication. Gather the commercial information first so you can save clean defaults in one session instead of changing them halfway through your first quote.

• Your trading name, billing address, ABN or ACN, and the phone or email details you want shown on client-facing records.
• Your logo and the colours you want clients to see in proposals and the public project portal.
• Your normal deposit expectation, whether you use a progress claim stage, your final payment expectation, and your standard quote validity period.
• Your bank transfer details and a decision on whether you want online card payments through Stripe.
• Your current supplier list, common stock items, preferred fence recipes, and labour allowances for hard digging, access issues, removals and similar site conditions.
• The client email wording you want for quotes, follow-ups, invoices and project updates.

Once those pieces are ready, work through Configuration first, then build out the catalogue and communication settings around it.

Set the business identity your client will recognise

Start in Configuration with the business step. This is where Fencify stores the business identity that flows into previews, invoices, quote outputs and public-facing areas. Enter the business name, address, suburb, state, phone number and ABN or ACN exactly as you want them presented.

Add your logo at the same time. The screen shows a live client-facing preview, including the logo treatment and the public portal header and accent colours. Use that preview to make sure the branding looks professional before any customer receives a proposal or project portal invitation.

1. Save the business name and billing identity first.
2. Upload the logo you want on client-facing outputs.
3. Set the public portal header and accent colours so the proposal and portal styling suit your brand.
4. Review the preview card to confirm the name, ABN or ACN and logo all present clearly.

Lock in the quote and invoice defaults before you start pricing

The next job is to set the financial defaults that sit behind your first quote. Fencify stores a default payment structure, GST behaviour, quote validity period, invoice terms and invoice notes in Configuration. Those defaults feed the quote and invoice previews and become the starting point for live work.

The payment structure matters most. Fencify supports a deposit percentage, an optional progress claim stage, and a final payment percentage. The totals need to add up cleanly, because that same structure is used later when accepted work is carried into project payment stages.

• Set the default deposit you usually require on fencing jobs.
• Decide whether you want a middle progress claim enabled by default.
• Set the final payment percentage so the full structure totals 100%.
• Choose whether GST is shown by default on quotes and invoices.
• Set a realistic quote validity period so stale quotes are easy to spot.
• Add invoice terms and any standard invoice note your office relies on, such as how you want customers to reference bank transfers.

Use the built-in quote and invoice preview panels as a sense check. You are looking for sensible staged amounts, the right GST display, and clean wording that can be reused without editing every new job.

Choose how clients will pay you

Before your first proposal goes out, decide which payment methods you want to support from day one. Fencify lets you store bank transfer details in Configuration and, if you want card payments, connect Stripe for online processing.

Bank transfer details appear on invoices and payment prompts, so enter the exact account name, BSB and account number you want customers to use. If those details are blank, the quote and invoice workflow still works, but the office may need to send payment instructions manually after the quote has already been accepted.

Stripe is optional. If you plan to take card deposits or online project payments, connect it before live quoting and check the status shown in the setup area. If you are not ready for card payments yet, leave it for later and rely on bank transfer first.

• Use bank transfer as the minimum setup so your first invoices and deposit prompts have clear payment instructions.
• Connect Stripe only when you are ready to accept online card payments through the available connection flow.
• For accounting connections such as Xero or QuickBooks, treat them as optional at this stage and check the connection status before relying on synced data.

This gives you a practical rule: set up at least one payment path now, and add the optional connected services only when you are ready to trust them in a live process.

Make your lead intake match the work you actually quote

If you plan to collect enquiries from your website, use the Configuration setup to make the public lead form look like your business and reflect the fence types you actually want to receive. The form supports button colours, button text colour, typography, button shape and the success behaviour shown after a visitor submits.

Just as important, review the lead fence types available in your account. These become the practical starting options for incoming enquiries and for staff capturing leads manually. Keep the list relevant to your real work mix so the office is not sorting through vague or duplicated service labels.

1. Trim the lead fence types down to the services you truly offer.
2. Style the lead form so it matches your brand rather than looking like a generic embed.
3. Choose whether the form shows an inline success message or refreshes after submission.
4. Copy the website embed code only after the form wording and service choices look right.

When this is done properly, the first real enquiry enters the pipeline with clearer expectations around fence type, and the public form looks like part of your business rather than a bolt-on.

Build the catalogue that your first quote depends on

Your quote builder is only as good as the products, fence models and labour inputs behind it. Set up these areas in the same order your estimator thinks about a job: suppliers first, then products, then fence models, then model ingredients.

Start with suppliers so products and models can reference the names your team already buys from. Supplier records support the basics your office needs to track: name, contact details, address, colour tag and lead time. Once that list is ready, move into Inventory and make sure your common items have the right sell price, cost price, category and unit.

Use the individual product screen for the technical details that affect quoting. Depending on the product category, you can store height, length or width, profile details and gate-related attributes. That matters because fence models pull from real products, not from vague material labels.

Then move to Fence Models. Each model needs a clear name, a fence type, a post spacing value and, if you want it, a default supplier label. You can also manage fence type capabilities such as available heights, whether a type supports colours, and whether matching gates are allowed.

Finally, open the ingredients for each model and attach the products that make up that recipe. Components can be charged by per post, per bay, per metre or per run. That logic is what turns a measured run into structured quote items later.

• Use global templates as a starting point where they save time, then copy them into your own account before changing ingredients.
• Check that each model has the right bay size and a sensible component count before quoting from it.
• Make sure the products attached to a model reflect what you really install, not just what happened to be imported first.
• Review colours, gate support and height options for fence types that need more than one variation in the field.

Set labour rates for the site conditions that change your margin

After the catalogue is in place, review labour rates so your first quote does not miss the ugly site conditions that usually erode profit. Fencify seeds common labour adjustments such as hard digging in rock or concrete, clay drilling, tight access, stair access and fence removal and disposal.

Each labour rate can be charged per metre, per post or as a fixed amount. That gives you a consistent way to price conditions that show up during a site visit without rebuilding the maths from scratch on every quote.

1. Review the default labour lines and change the prices to suit your market and crew costs.
2. Add any custom labour lines your team regularly uses, such as machinery allowances or special access handling.
3. Keep the system key sensible so the office can recognise the rate later.
4. Restore deleted defaults if the account has been cleaned up too aggressively.

This is one of the most important setup steps for quoting accuracy. A polished proposal still loses money if the labour assumptions underneath it are soft.

Prepare the client communication layer around the quote

Before live quoting, set the email wording your clients will actually receive. Fencify includes default templates for quote emails, follow-ups, neighbour communication, project updates, invoice emails, invoice reminders, payment receipts, variation requests and handover sign-off. Save the standard versions first, then create custom templates where your team needs a different tone or a more specialised message.

Focus on the quote and invoice templates first. Those are the messages most likely to reach a customer during your first live job. Make sure the subject lines read clearly, the body text matches your business voice, and the placeholders produce sensible output once real client and project data is inserted.

Sender identity also matters. Where sender identity settings are available in your account, confirm the default sender and reply-to details used for client-facing purposes such as quote send, quote follow-up, proposal, invoice and project emails. The best template in the world still causes confusion if replies go to the wrong mailbox.

Finish by opening the Integrations area and deciding whether accounting sync should be connected now or later. If you use Xero or QuickBooks, connect the right account only when you are ready to monitor the connection state and handle sync follow-up properly.

Run one safe dry run before using live customer data

Once the setup is complete, do a controlled rehearsal. Create a sample lead, build a sample quote, review the proposal, and make sure the branding, staged payments, GST display, bank details and email wording all look right. This is the fastest way to find a missing product, a bad labour rate or an awkward invoice note before it reaches a paying client.

• Use a sample lead and quote first, rather than testing against a live customer.
• Check that the quote totals make sense and the payment structure looks commercial.
• Review the proposal presentation and any client-facing branding one last time.
• Confirm the first supplier-backed model produces the products and quantities you expect.
• Open the email template you expect to use first and read it as if you were the client.

When that dry run is clean, your next move inside Fencify is to create your first real lead and prepare it for quoting. That gives you a proper first job through a setup that is already commercially and operationally sound.