Your first 30 days

Your first month with CLEO has three parts, and only the first takes more than a minute or two. None of them is compulsory, and nothing you skip is lost — every answer can be given later, somewhere else.

1. Setting up

When you first open CLEO on an empty workspace, Home offers Set up CLEO with Begin — A few minutes: what the business does, what it offers, when it operates and who works in it. CLEO reads your week from that.

If you start and stop partway, Home shows Finish setting up CLEO with Continue, and picks up on the first screen you haven't answered.

It opens with a welcome that sets the tone: The next few minutes give CLEO enough to read your week for you. Nothing here is a form to finish; it is CLEO getting to know the business.

Then five short screens. Each answer can be changed later, and the link beside it says where.

1. Tell CLEO about your business. — The business is called, what it does, where it is, Who it serves and How people usually reach you. Later: Your business details.
2. What does your business offer? — Two to four things people come to you for, in your words. Each becomes a kind of work, and — if people book it — a kind of appointment with its usual length. Later: Kinds of work and Appointment types.
3. When does your business normally operate? — a usual week, suggested for you to change. Later: Hours and booking rules.
4. Tell CLEO about your team. — who works with you, and what they do. Nobody needs a sign-in for this. Later: Your team.
5. Your CLEO workspace is ready. — nothing to answer; it shows you what CLEO now knows.

Every screen has a Not now. Skipping one screen only skips that screen.

If you'd rather not

The welcome screen also offers Not now — open my workspace, which sets the whole of setup aside. CLEO confirms: Setup is set aside. Your workspace is yours as it is, and everything setup would have asked is in Settings.

It won't ask again, and the setup screens aren't offered a second time. Everything they would have asked lives in Settings — the table above says where. If your workspace is still empty afterwards, Home shows Getting started instead, with Confirm your business details and Add your first lead among the first steps.

2. What's happening right now

Straight after setup, CLEO asks What is happening right now? — three optional questions about the business as it stands today:

• What is your next appointment?
• Is anyone waiting to hear from you?
• What are you delivering right now?

Three questions, each optional. Say it as you would to a colleague; CLEO reads it back as a record, you correct anything, and nothing is written until you confirm.

Type a sentence — "Priya Raman, consultation, Thursday at 2" — and press Read this. CLEO shows you what it understood, field by field, each one open to correct. Confirm records it; Read it again with these details rereads your corrections; Not this drops it.

3. Bringing in what is already live

If your business was already running before CLEO, you have appointments in a diary, people you're in the middle of talking to, and jobs under way. For your first two weeks, Home offers Bring in what is live — one list at a time, spread across the fortnight rather than all at once:

• Appointments already booked — for the next two weeks. Offered first.
• Customers you expect to talk to this month — from your second day.
• Work under way now — from your fourth.

Each offer has Bring them in, and a way to say there's nothing to bring. Either answer is final; CLEO doesn't ask about that list again.

This can feel backwards at first. It's deliberate: a month of real, current records is worth more to CLEO than a year of half-remembered ones.

What the rest of the month looks like

• Quick answers start appearing on Home as appointments pass and requests arrive — the one-tap questions that turn what happened into facts. Quick answers explains them.
• CLEO noticed fills in as there's enough recorded for a rule to read.
• Home becomes the place you start. What to look at each morning is the five-minute habit worth building in week one.

Once you're set up, the next thing worth five minutes is learning where everything lives — on a computer and on your phone.