How CLEO thinks about your business
Facts, stated rules and your confirmation: the ideas behind every screen.
Every screen in CLEO follows the same few ideas. Once you know them, CLEO becomes predictable: you can tell why something is shown, what it is asking of you, and what will make it go away.
It starts from what was recorded
Everything CLEO tells you comes from something recorded in your business: a request logged, an appointment booked, a payment received. CLEO doesn't fill gaps with estimates. Where nothing has been recorded, it says so.
Money shows this most clearly. A customer's payments are described as Payments you recorded, including any tax, minus refunds. Nothing is estimated.
If there are none, CLEO says no payments are recorded — never $0, because $0 would be a claim about money CLEO has no record of.
It points things out by rules it states
When CLEO notices something, it says what it noticed and the rule it used, right beside the fact. A customer who usually comes back every few weeks, and hasn't, is pointed out with a sentence like CLEO points this out after one and a half typical gaps — a rule, not a prediction.
A rule you can read is a rule you can judge. CLEO doesn't guess what a customer intends; it tells you what the records show and leaves the meaning to you.
It separates what needs you from what is worth knowing
Some things are yours to do: a lead waiting for a reply, a follow-up that is due, a request past its date. CLEO calls these Needs you.
Other things are worth understanding, such as work with no next step. CLEO calls these CLEO noticed. They are not tasks, and there is nothing to tick off: each one clears on its own when its record changes.
Needs you, CLEO noticed, Focus and Attention explains how the two appear on Home.
It prepares; you confirm
CLEO can do more than read. Ask it to make a change and it prepares one, then waits for you. At the foot of Ask CLEO, one line says it plainly: CLEO can read your business, and change only what you approve.
Asking CLEO to do something walks through how that works.
It keeps history
CLEO preserves your business history. Archiving keeps the record: a customer, a piece of work or a kind of work you no longer use keeps its history and can be brought back. A payment entered by mistake is corrected or voided, and the original entry stays visible. Each record's History shows what changed, and when.
When you tell CLEO that two records are the same person and merge them, it keeps their history together on the record you already had.
It never contacts your customers on its own
A follow-up is a promise you make to yourself. A Needs you item is a reminder for you. CLEO doesn't turn either into a message to a customer.
CLEO sends a customer an email only when you do something that sends one:
- You reply on a request. A reply, as opposed to an internal note, is emailed to them when you have their email address.
- You give them a portal sign-in. Convert to client, Add client with portal and Send a new activation link each email an invitation to activate their portal.
Nothing else is sent on your behalf: not follow-ups, not appointment confirmations for online bookings, not anything Ask CLEO prepares. (A client who has a portal can ask for a password-reset email themselves; that one they send to themselves.)
With these ideas in place, the rest of CLEO is mostly a matter of where things live — starting with the records CLEO keeps.