Frequently asked questions

Upload them on the site, not on the client: Clients → the client → the site → Documents. Everything you file on a site now goes out with the job, and the crew open it on the visit screen under "Designs & docs", on every visit to that site. It used to be RAMS only, so a plan filed as "Scope of works" never reached them. That’s fixed, and the upload box now tells you who will see it before you press upload. Two things to know. A priced quote stays in the office (its attachments still reach the crew through the round). And if you file something as RAMS the crew get a read-and-sign panel instead, which with RAMS sign-off on blocks clock-in until it’s signed, so file a plan as Scope of works or Other, not RAMS. Documents filed on the client rather than a site are office copies and no operative sees them. If you’d rather the crew didn’t see site paperwork at all, Settings → Features → "Crew see the site’s documents" turns it off and leaves them with the RAMS only.

Yes. Flag the spray task on the round ("prompts a spray-diary entry"). On the visit the crew see a Start spray run button; they press it as they begin, spray, then Finish. The route is recorded from their phone and appears on the visit page as a trace over aerial imagery, and the visit report to the client gets a "see the map" link for each run. The spray diary entry is still logged separately for the statutory record.

Yes. The Clients list shows each client's phone, email and billing address on the row, in A–Z sections; tap the number to call or the email to write, without opening the client. The search box above the list matches names and contacts. When adding a job, the site picker has its own search so you don't scroll the whole book, and the schedule's Add button lets you choose one-off job, recurring round, custom pattern or contract before you start.

Week and fortnight views now open on the Monday of the current week, so on a Friday you still see Monday to Sunday. Use the ‹ › arrows to move a week or fortnight at a time, or the date box to jump. It also remembers where you were for the rest of the day: open a job from last Monday and press Schedule (or ← Schedule) and you land back on that week. Press Today to reset.

Build the full list once on a round, then in the Task checklist box use "Save these tasks as…" to make it a round template. On every new round, pick that template from "Start from a saved template" and tick only the tasks that site needs; the crew's checklist shows just those. Editing the round later adds or removes tasks for that site only, the template stays as your master list. A round's price and the crew checklist are separate: a task priced at zero on a quote still appears if it's in the round's task list.

It now dates itself the day it first goes out: the first time you email it (or mark it sent) the issue date is stamped, so a draft you sat on for a week while waiting on supplier prices is dated the day the client actually received it. If you need a specific date, set "Issue date" on the quote before sending and that one is kept. The PDF, the client's quote page and Xero all use it.

Yes. Operations → Gritting: each site has a "Grit tonight" button. Press it and SwardOps books this evening's visit on the schedule and emails the client a pre-set notice with a "Cancel tonight's visit" link. On the site's Winter gritting card, "Client call-out notices" sets who decides: the office every time, the office Mon–Fri with the frost trigger doing it automatically at weekends, or automatic every day. A client can cancel from the email link or from their portal (Visits → Cancel this gritting visit); the visit is cancelled straight away and the office plus the assigned driver are notified so nobody sets off. You can set a "client cancels by" time per site — after it, their link closes and says the operative is already on the road, while the office can still cancel from the schedule. Under Settings → Notifications you can also name an inbox that gets **emailed whenever the frost trigger books a call-out on its own**, which is mostly evenings and weekends when nobody has the app open. Sites can be billed **per visit (planned)**, **per visit (reactive call-out)** or **included in contract**, so planned and called-out work stay separable. **Snow clearance** has its own card on the site, deliberately simpler: billing, price per visit and whether the service is proactive or reactive, with no client notices and no timing window. The completion report (with the proof-of-service certificate) is sent automatically when the operative completes a call-out visit.

Yes. Drag the bottom edge of a timed block to make it longer or shorter (it snaps to 15 minutes and only changes that one visit — the round's default stays as it was). Tap a block or the ✎ on a card to open the editor in place: status, team, a typed length, and "Delete visit", which removes that single visit and leaves the rest of the round alone. On a phone the editor slides up from the bottom of the screen. Visits from a repeating round carry a small repeat icon so you can tell them from one-offs.

Yes — Settings → Features → "Email invoices on completion by default". Switch it off and "I'll send it myself (pro forma before the work)" is pre-selected on every invoice's job-for-this-work box instead. It's only the default: you can still flip it on any one invoice.

Yes. On the project page under Invoicing → Take a deposit, type either a £ figure or a % — the % box works off the project value shown beside it (the sum of the element prices). Either way it raises one deposit invoice that leaves the project total alone and is credited back on the final stage invoice.

They do now. Project elements, their day-by-day visits, the projected end date and the team-gaps strip all follow your rest days from Settings → Team (Saturday and Sunday unless you've changed them). Before 7 Oct 2026 the scheduler only skipped Sundays. A project already laid out keeps its dates until you reschedule it (Project → Reschedule from a start date), which re-lays every element on working days.

Yes, on **Schedule → Crews**. Grab a card by the ⋮⋮ handle on its left: drag it **up or down** to re-time it (snaps to the nearest quarter hour), **sideways into another crew’s column** to hand the job over, into the **"any time" pool** at the top to take it off the clock, or into **Unassigned** to take it off the crew. Handing a job over swaps the crews — the new crew on, the old crew off — and leaves anybody you’d added to that visit by hand exactly where they are. The week and fortnight boards still do drag-between-days as before.

Use the **Narrow / Medium / Wide** buttons above the board. **Medium** is the default and shows seven crews on a normal laptop screen; **Narrow** shows eight; **Wide** is the old width, four across, with the client’s phone number and a Message button on each card. Cards shed detail as the columns get thinner rather than squashing it, and your choice sticks in that browser. The tick-boxes next to it still hide crews you don’t want on screen.

Both. Each column on **Schedule → Crews** names who is on that crew’s jobs today: plain for on the jobs, **dashed grey** for in the crew with nothing booked, and **·cover** in amber for somebody working with them today who isn’t a regular. Click a name to open that staff member. To move somebody, **drag their name into another crew’s column** — it puts them on that crew’s jobs **for that day only** and takes them off their old crew’s. It never changes who is in which crew; that stays on **Team → Crews**. You confirm first, and it warns you if the move would leave one of the old crew’s jobs with nobody on it.

It will have told you which of three things it was. **The crew has nobody in it**: a column belongs to a crew through its people, so an empty crew can’t be handed a job — put somebody in it on **Team → Crews** first. **The job already has two crews on it**: there’s no single crew to take it off, so change the team on the visit itself. **The job is finished**: completed work doesn’t drag, because re-crewing it would rewrite who did it, and the sheet the client gets is a record — fix it on the visit page instead.

Yes — **Settings → Features → Schedule opens on**. Pick Daily, Crews, Weekly, Fortnightly or Monthly and that’s where **Schedule** in the menu takes you. Whatever you were last looking at today still wins, so this only decides where you start, not where you land after you’ve been clicking about.

Yes — the **Team gaps** strip under the crew key on the week and fortnight boards. One line per crew: a chip for every working day in view with nothing booked on that team, then "next free Mon 13 Oct" (the first working day with nothing on at all, looking four months ahead) or "free today". The Crews view shows the same "next free" under each column name. It replaces scanning a wall of team calendars for an empty column.

They stay now. Up to six teams, every crew keeps its own column on the week and fortnight boards whether or not it has anything booked, so an empty column reads as "this team is free". Past six crews the board goes back to showing only the teams with work in view, because the columns get too thin to read.

Yes. The team is on the visit the moment everyone in it is ticked. The chip now shows ✓ with the team name when that's the case, and tapping it again takes the whole team off. Before 7 Oct 2026 the chip never changed, which looked like nothing had happened.

Under Timing it says "About 2h — finishes around 12:30" once there is a start time: the length is the visit's own override, else the round's default, else the task estimates added together. It's a guide, not a booking — the crew's clock-out is what the report uses.

Open the visit and use **Stop the round from this visit onwards** (next to Delete this visit). That visit and every later not-started visit go, the round's season ends the day before, and anything already done is kept — so history and invoicing are untouched. Edit round → season end → Rebuild does the same thing the long way. A round with no history at all is archived.

Team → Staff → the person → **Full name** (the first box on the right). That's the name on documents, reports and signatures. "Name on the board" underneath is the short name the schedule uses.

Yes. Clients → open the amber "clients have an email hidden on the account" panel → **Add all as contacts**. Each becomes a Quotes & invoices contact named after the client (or their contact name); updates and visit reports stay off until you tick them on the client. Imported client lists usually arrive this way.

The preview is off until you switch it on: Settings → Features → Money → **Check client emails before they go**. Once it's on, the quote builder says Save & preview and quotes/invoices say Preview & email.

Yes. Clock-in and clock-out now record where the phone was, and Settings → Clients → visit reports has **Show where the crew clocked in and out**. On, the report adds a line like "Arrived 08:02 on site (within 30 m), left 10:14 on site" — the distance is from the site's pin, widened by the phone's own accuracy so it never claims a precision it hasn't got. If the phone had no fix it says "position not available"; if it was away from the pin it says how far ("900 m from the site pin"). The office sees the same under Time on site on the visit. Off by default; visits clocked before 7 October 2026 have no position and show nothing extra.

It has them now. Every aerial map in SwardOps (site plans, the measure-the-map tool, pin picker, tree register, walk-around) draws town and road names over the imagery, so a site you don't know isn't just a green rectangle. If a name sits across something you're tracing, the **Labels on** button at the bottom-right of the map hides them, and it remembers your choice on that device. Still can't find a property? Type the address or postcode in the search box above the map and press Find.

Open the invoice: a red banner at the top shows the accounting system's own reason (e.g. "Account code 200 is not a valid code for this document" or a tax-rate or contact-name problem) and it stays there until a retry succeeds. The bell notification carries the same text. Fix the cause — usually the sales account code doesn't exist in your chart of accounts (Xero's stock code is 200; pick your own under Settings → Accounting (Xero) → Sales account), a tax rate is missing, or the contact name matches an archived contact — then press the accounting button on the invoice to send it again.

Rounds are built from the cadence set in the contract builder (weekly, fortnightly, monthly). A line quoted purely as a count with no cadence now appears on the award page under "Counted visits" with the dates spread evenly across the term (minus any already done before SwardOps) — edit them, then award and they land on the schedule. If a contract was awarded before this existed, its Allowance tab shows "counted lines have no visits yet" with a Schedule them button that opens the same page for just the missing lines.

Yes — Settings → Quotes & invoices → "Automatic invoice wording". Six templates cover the title and lines of contract instalments, the monthly rollup and per-visit invoices, with placeholders like {month}, {month_year}, {customer}, {site}, {service}, {visit_date}, {instalment} and {po}. {service} comes from the "Service label" on the contract or round (e.g. "grounds maintenance"), falling back to its title. {month} is always the month being billed — a rollup raised on 1 September says August. Leave a box blank to keep the built-in wording; a contract can override its instalment wording on its Overview tab. There is a live preview as you type.

Once the quote is accepted with a package, the Allowance tab shows only that package's lines and says how many from the other tiers are hidden. Any line can also be removed by hand: expand "Edit allowance" under it and choose "Remove this line from the allowance". Removing a line only takes it off the countdown; a round it already created stays on the schedule.

Yes — Settings → Features → "Attach the PDF to invoice emails". Every invoice email (sent by hand, on completion, or the monthly rollup) then carries the invoice PDF alongside the view-online link. Universities, NHS trusts and councils usually insist on the PDF and a PO number, so pair it with the PO reference on the contract or job. Override for one client on their Details tab (Follow company / Always / Never).

Yes — Reports → Month review. Every completed visit in the month with date, site, round, crew, time on site, cost, revenue and margin; subtotals by client and site with the thinnest margins first; PDF, CSV and "Email to the office". It's internal only and never filed on a client. Visits with no time clocked show a blank cost (not zero) and unpriced visits a blank revenue, so the totals stay honest. Tick "Month review to the office" under Settings → Features to get last month's automatically on the 1st.

Yes. Reports → Monthly work reports: pick the month, then per client either Preview PDF, or Generate & file (saves it on the client and in their portal, and emails it if ticked). Each visit lists what was done, who was there, time on site, notes shared with the client, waste taken and photos, with totals at the top. The same button is on a client's Documents tab (all their sites) and a contract's Documents tab (that contract only). Tick "Send last month's report automatically on the 1st" on a client and it goes out every month without you. For a spreadsheet rather than a PDF, the same page has Download the whole month as a spreadsheet (every client) and a Spreadsheet button per client: one row per visit, no prices.

Contract → Price rise tab. Choose percentage, fixed amount or a new value, the date it starts and a reason; the table previews the contract value and every round's per-visit price before and after. Apply, and it takes effect on that date (today = straight away). Work done before the date still bills at the old price. The client's billing contacts get an emailed notice unless you untick it, and the contract keeps a price history you can re-send from or cancel while it's pending. For several contracts at once use Bulk price rise on the Contracts list; for a lone round use the Price rise section on the round page.

Yes. Settings → Features → "Portal date changes & invoice queries". Off hides "Need a different date?" on their visits and "Query this invoice" on their invoices, so they phone or email you instead. Everything else in the portal (visits, photos, quotes, invoices, documents, messages) stays.

Because it's already ticked on another team. By default a machine or usual vehicle belongs to one team and drops off the other teams' lists (the list shows a collapsed "N items on other teams" note). If you genuinely share kit across teams, switch "Kit & vehicles can belong to more than one team" on under Settings → Features and every team sees the whole fleet again.

Yes. Settings → Team & payroll → Leave & holidays → tick "Bank holidays come off allowance". By default a booking that runs over a bank holiday (a closed day that doesn't use allowance) isn't charged for it; with the tick it is, which suits a "28 days inclusive" allowance where staff book bank holidays from it.

It is, but for next year. Team → Leave shows allowances for one leave year at a time; use the year pills next to the Allowances heading (or above the booked-holidays list) to switch to next year and you'll see next year's bookings against next year's allowance. Days used are counted in the leave year the booking starts in (Jan–Dec unless a person has a different leave-year start on their staff record). Weekends and bank holidays are not charged unless you switch "Count weekends as leave days" or "Bank holidays come off allowance" on under Settings → Team & payroll → Leave & holidays.

Settings → Operations → Closed days: add the shutdown dates and tick "uses allowance" before saving. Each working day then books a day of annual leave for everyone (weekends never burn holiday, and bank holidays are usually added without the tick so they stay free). If a shutdown was added without the tick, add the same dates again with it ticked — the day flips to a shutdown and the leave is re-booked as annual (and the reverse works too). Only working days you actually close need adding; the bank holidays themselves can stay as ordinary closed days.

Settings → Clients → Client notifications → under "Visit reminders", open "Reminder wording". You can set the email subject, the email wording and the text-message version (the text goes instead of the email when the client has a mobile and texts are on). Use placeholders and they fill in per visit: {name} the client, {site}, {when} ("tomorrow" or "on 14 September 2026" depending on how far ahead you send it), {date}, {company}. Leave a box blank to keep the standard wording. Your logo, header and the unsubscribe line are added automatically.

Yes. On the visit page tap "Recommend work → Suggest": say what needs doing, add a note and up to three photos, and tick "worth quoting for" if it should be priced. It goes to the office as a crew suggestion on the client's Recommendations tab (Clients → the client → Recommendations, and the office is notified). Nothing reaches the client until someone in the office taps "Send to client" — that emails it, contractor-branded with the photos, and puts it in their portal where they can request a quote. The office can also dismiss it. Works offline like the rest of the crew app. Don't want crew suggesting work? Switch "Crew can recommend work" off under Settings → Features.

Yes. A request now costs working days only (Monday to Friday), so a Friday-to-Monday request is 2 days, not 4. The request form shows the working-day count as it is typed and anyone can still overtype the exact number. If your team works weekends and a Saturday off should count, tick "Count weekends as leave days" in Settings → Team & payroll → Leave & holidays and the count goes back to calendar days.

Yes, two ways. The person who made it can change the dates, length or reason from the crew app while it is still pending ("Change dates" under the request). Once it has been decided, the office (or their manager) amends it from Team → Leave: open "Amend dates / length" on the request, change the type, dates, half-day or day count, add a short reason, and save. The requester is notified of exactly what changed, an approved request whose dates move is re-swept off the rota, and the request keeps a note of what it was before.

From the crew app, open the visit and tap "Waste taken off site → Log a load". Pick the waste type (green waste, soil & turf, wood, hardcore, mixed — the six-digit EWC code is filled in for you), enter how much (bags, or a weight in kg / tonnes / cubic metres), how it is carried (loose, bags, bulk bag, skip), and the van registration (pre-filled from the crew's usual vehicle). Then hand the phone to the site contact: they sign on screen, type their name and tick the waste-hierarchy confirmation. Tap "Log this load". It works offline and syncs when signal returns. If everything the law needs is present the note is issued straight away — PDF filed on the client, emailed to them, and shown in their client portal under Documents. Otherwise it waits in Team → Waste notes under "Needs the office".

Two things. (1) Settings → Features → "Waste transfer notes": your waste carrier registration number and tier (upper tier if you carry your clients' waste — that is nearly every contractor; lower tier is free but only covers waste you produced yourself), its expiry date, your SIC code, and your usual tip or transfer station picked from Suppliers (put its permit number in the supplier's notes, e.g. "Permit EPR/AB1234CD", and it prints on the note). Saving mirrors the registration into Compliance so the expiry is chased. (2) On each client's record (Documents section) add the client's SIC code — by law the SIC code on a transfer note is the transferor's, and when you remove a client's waste the client is the transferor. Without it a crew-raised note waits for the office instead of going out automatically.

Because one or more items regulation 35 requires is missing, and SwardOps will not issue a non-compliant note on its own. Open Team → Waste notes, tap the note and the missing items are listed — most often the client's SIC code, a signature, or the place of transfer. Fix them (Edit) and tap "Issue & email client". If you must issue anyway you can, but the PDF is marked not yet confirmed.

No — set up a season ticket. Team → Waste notes → "+ Season ticket": pick the client (and site, or leave it for all their sites), the waste type and dates up to 12 months. From then on every load the crew log on that site goes on the ticket's transfer schedule (date, time, quantity, place, vehicle, who signed) instead of raising a new note. One PDF covers the year and prints the schedule. A season ticket is only valid while the client, the waste type and the place stay the same; if any change, start a new one.

Two years from the transfer (three in Scotland — SwardOps works this out from your postcode and stamps a "retain until" date on each note); for a season ticket it is two years after the last load on its schedule. An issued note is a legal record, so it cannot be deleted — you can Void it with a reason and it stays on file marked void. Drafts that were never issued can be deleted.

Defra's Digital Waste Tracking service replaces paper transfer notes with a central record of every waste movement. Waste receiving sites must use it from October 2026; carriers, brokers and dealers — that includes grounds contractors carrying clients' waste — from October 2027. Nothing to do yet: SwardOps notes already hold every field the service asks for (EWC code, weight and unit with an estimated flag, container type and count, physical form, recovery/disposal code, carrier and vehicle registration, receiving site and permit), so when Defra opens the carrier API your records will map straight across.

Pick the site and the repeat pattern on the New round form and the "Best fit" panel under the date ranks the options for you: for a one-off, the three dates in the next fortnight that add the fewest extra road miles to what is already booked (and which existing visits they sit next to); for a repeating round, the best weekdays over the next four weeks. Tap a suggestion and it fills in the start date — nothing else changes. It needs the site pinned on the map, and your yard address in Settings for door-to-door mileage.

On the accepted quote, use "Or make a round from a single line". Each line becomes its own round: a line with a quantity of 2 or more becomes a repeating round at the cadence you pick, priced per visit from that line and ending exactly on the last one; a single-quantity line becomes a one-off. Choose "Invoice each visit automatically" and every completed visit raises an invoice for just that one visit, labelled "3 of 18". The quote and the round both show progress — done, invoiced and to go — so you can see the programme burn down. "Invoice this job" on that round only ever bills its own line, never the whole quote.

Yes. Settings → Business details → Email signature sets the organisation signature that signs off every email the business sends. Each office user adds their own under My details (an admin can also set it on their staff page) and it goes on the quotes, invoices, follow-ups and messages they send. Default is stacked — the person's signature then the organisation's underneath; there is a switch to use the person's only. Automated emails (reminders, receipts, reports) have nobody sending them, so they use the organisation signature. If you'd rather they read as a person, tick **Automatic emails are signed by the department they come from** in the same place: then pick the person for each department under "Replies go to" — an invoice reminder signs off as your Accounts person, a visit report as your Visits & maintenance one. Their signature comes from their own staff page, so they need one saved there. Leave a department as "the organisation" and its emails are signed the old way. It's text — your logo is already at the top of every email.

Yes. Settings → Team & payroll → Unpaid breaks: tick "Deduct an unpaid break automatically", set the break length (e.g. 30 minutes) and the minimum day length it applies to (e.g. 6 hours), and save. From then on every worked day at or over that length has the break taken off on the Timesheets page, each person's timesheet, the crew's own timesheet view and the payroll export. Half days under the threshold are left alone, a day with two clock-ins only loses the break once, and nobody's actual clock times are changed — it's a deduction on top, so you can turn it off again and the hours return.

No. If the phone said it was saved, it was. Either you had no signal and it's queued ("Saved on this phone, not on the server yet") — it goes up by itself when you're back in range — or the page just hadn't refreshed; pull down to refresh. Doing it again won't create a duplicate (a second check from you on the same machine within two minutes keeps the first), but there's no need. Taking the kit out a few minutes after checking it is fine too — the check still counts. Only if the machine goes out again hours later will SwardOps ask for a fresh one that evening.

It used to wait for everything the check sets off — the fault card, the email to whoever fixes the machines, the office notification — before letting you go. Now it saves the check and takes you back to the Yard straight away; the rest happens in the background a moment later. If it's still slow for you, it's almost certainly signal, and the check is being saved on the phone to go up when you're back in range.

Turn on Pre-use vehicle checks in Settings → Features. Then in the morning briefing a van or trailer that hasn't been checked today shows "Check & take" — tapping it opens a short walkaround (lights, tyres, brakes, coupling, load). A clean pass takes the vehicle for the day; a safety item marked Not OK keeps it in the yard, raises an urgent fault for the office, and the crew pick another vehicle. Vehicles added through the Add-vehicle wizard get a tailored list; older vehicles get a sensible default for their type.

Yes. Turn on "Crews have their own vehicles" in Settings → Features, then set each crew's Usual vehicle under Team → Crews. It's tagged and shown first on that crew's morning list, and vans and trailers can be added to rounds like other kit. Leave the setting off for a shared pool where crews take whichever vehicle they need that day.

Yes, both. On any upcoming visit in their portal there is "Need a different date?" — they pick a preferred date and time of day and it lands in your Portal requests as a date change; the visit stays where it is until you press "Move visit & notify", which moves it, tells the crew and emails the client the confirmed date. On their Invoices page each invoice has "Query this invoice" which opens Messages with the invoice number filled in, so the question arrives in your Inbox thread already saying which invoice it is about.

Yes. Business → Reputation has an Embed snippet: paste that HTML into your website and it shows a live wall of the reviews you have collected through SwardOps (the same page also gives you the public link). It updates itself as new reviews come in, and you can pull it from your site any time by removing the snippet.

Yes. When you add or edit a site, if the address lookup cannot place it (rural lanes, fields, Irish addresses without an Eircode match), use "Drop a pin on the map" under the address and put the pin exactly where the gate is. That saves the latitude and longitude on the site, and everything downstream (schedule, travel times, live map, geofences, weather at the site) uses the pin, not the postcode. You can move the pin later from the same place.

Sign out, then on the sign-in screen enter your email and tap "Forgot password". You get an email link that lets you set a new one. Crew who sign in with a PIN have their passcode reset by the office from their staff page (Reset crew passcode).

Invoices and quotes print the client’s Billing / registered address (Clients → the client → Billing / registered address). It doesn’t have to be one of their sites: use a head office, a registered office or a managing agent’s c/o line. Underneath it the document names the site the work is for. If that box is empty, nothing prints, so fill it in and download the invoice again. A managing agent can also set a per-site billing address on the site itself, for sites billed to a different company.

Open the visit from the office side (Schedule or the client’s site → the visit) and look under Time on site. Each clock-in has "Edit logged time": set the real clock-out (or clock-in) and save. The visit’s cost-to-serve and the round’s profitability recalculate straight away. Visits the phone closed automatically the next morning are flagged "auto clock-out" so you can spot them. The per-task job timers are edited separately, on the visit’s Task times tab — see “Can I edit the time logged against a task?”

Schedule → **+ Add** → **Book someone in**. One panel, three ways in, and the day you were looking at is already filled in. **Existing client**: type any part of the client or site name, give the job a name, done. **New client**: take their name, phone, email and address right there — the address box finds it from a few words and drops the pin — and SwardOps creates the client, the site and the job in one go. **Enquiry**: they’re asking, not booking, so there’s no date and no job — just their details and what they’re after, and it lands in Leads to quote and convert later. Every one records who took it, which defaults to you and can be changed if you’re booking on somebody else’s behalf.

Yes. Open their staff record and tick **Can clock in from anywhere**. The yard perimeter stops applying to that one person; everybody else is unaffected, so you don’t have to switch the perimeter off for the crews who are out working. Use it for anyone who doesn’t start at the yard — working away, office-only, or a subcontractor going straight to site. Their position is still recorded if you have location tracking on: it means “not blocked”, not “not seen”. The perimeter itself is Settings → Yard, and leaving its radius empty turns it off for everyone.

Yes — Settings → Operations & compliance → **“Crew can see their own hours”**. On by default, so nothing changes unless you turn it off. Off, the Hours tab disappears from the crew app and the page says the office has the figures. It has never shown pay either way — only the hours and the normal/overtime split. One thing to weigh before you switch it off: the Hours tab is also where a crew member flags a day that looks wrong (a missed clock-out, say), so corrections then have to start with a conversation instead of a tap. The office can still fix any day from the visit or the timesheet, and you keep the full record regardless.

Yes, once it’s switched on — Settings → Operations & compliance → **“Take card payments over the phone”**, which is off to begin with because Stripe has to approve your account for it first (see the end of this answer). With it on: open the invoice, and under the payments section there’s **Card over the phone**. Put in the amount, press Enter their card, and read the long number, expiry and security code into the boxes as they give them to you. The boxes belong to Stripe, not to us — the card number goes straight to Stripe and never touches SwardOps, which is what keeps your card-security paperwork to the simplest kind. The payment lands against the invoice the same as a payment link. Two things to know: a phone payment has no “approve it in your banking app” step, so if it’s later disputed the chargeback is yours rather than the bank’s — the usual trade for taking a number over the phone. And Stripe has to enable phone payments (MOTO) on your account first; if they haven’t, the panel says so and you can ask Stripe support to turn it on.

There is now. Converting a lead to a project or a contract creates the client and then stops on **Confirm the site**, with the lead’s address already in the search box — pick the right suggestion and it carries straight on into the wizard with the site ready to choose. It asks rather than guessing because same-named roads exist across most towns, and a silently geocoded address once sent a crew to the wrong one. If the client already has a site on file it skips the step entirely. While you’re on the quote-visit screen you can also tap **Check their details** to fix a wrong number, add a surname or add an email before any of it becomes a client record.

Yes, once you switch it on — Settings → Operations & compliance → **Before & after photos**. Off by default, because plenty of firms just want their lads to snap the finished work and an extra question on every photo is a step for nothing. With it on, the camera screen gets a **Before / After** choice and the button tells you which pile the next photo is going in, so there’s nothing to remember afterwards. The client’s report then shows them under **Before** and **After** headings instead of one block. Photos taken before you turned it on aren’t lost or mislabelled — they keep appearing under “Other photos”, and that heading disappears once there are none left on a job.

No. One person can put the whole crew on, and you choose who. Out of the box it’s the job’s team leader — Settings → Operations & compliance → **“Team leaders clock the crew in”**. If whoever has a charged phone changes through the day, also switch on **“Anyone on the job can clock the crew on”** and then any operative assigned to that job can do it. It stays limited to the people on *that* job — never the whole company. Whoever presses it still clocks themselves in as normal, an unsigned RAMS is never skipped, and every entry records who pressed it and tells the person, so a hour logged for someone else can never pass as their own tap.

Yes. Settings → Operations & compliance → **Per-task timers on the crew app**, switched off. The crew then just tick each task as it’s done and the Start/Pause buttons disappear. Your hours still come from clocking on and off the job itself, which is what the timesheet and the client’s report have always used — the per-task timers were only ever an optional extra on top. The one thing to know: job costing then works from the overall time on site rather than from time per task, so you lose the per-task breakdown in reporting. Most firms don’t miss it.

Yes. Open the visit, go to the **Task times** tab, and either tap "Edit time" next to a task or scroll to "Edit the logged times". Every timer that ran is listed — a task often has more than one, because each start and stop is its own run — and opening one lets you set its start and end, add a reason, or remove it. There is also "+ Add a job-time entry" for work where nobody started a timer, and a Clear button for a timer started by accident, which needs no approval. By default your change is sent to the crew member to approve from their Today screen, because it is their record of their day; if you would rather the office just fix it, switch on Settings → Operations & compliance → "Office can correct job times directly" and changes take effect at once with the crew member told it happened. Either way the visit keeps a change history naming who made it.

Timers only run once you’ve clocked into your day (the morning briefing). If you skipped it, tap Clock in from Today first, then the timers on the visit work. To put hours in after the event, use Catch up a past day from the Yard page: pick the day, the visits and the hours, and they’re logged against the right jobs.

Yes. On the round, Repeats includes Custom (every N days), Custom (every N months) and Twice a month (the same two dates each month, e.g. 1st & 16th, which unlike fortnightly never drifts). Rounds have no end date by default: visits keep rolling forward every night, so an annual contract never needs re-generating. Set a season if it should pause over winter.

One-off work: raise a quote (or go straight to a job from a lead) and give it a date, or use Projects for anything with several elements. Repeating work is a round: weekly, fortnightly, four-weekly, monthly, every N weeks, or Yearly (same date each year) — pick Yearly for an annual hedge cut or a once-a-year renovation and it comes round on its own.

Yes, completely. Each business’s data is isolated at the database level (row-level security). No other SwardOps business can ever see your clients, sites, jobs or financials. Even the SwardOps platform owner is blocked from seeing your client and financial data. It’s enforced in the database, not just the app.

Only their own jobs for the day. Crew get a focused mobile day-view. They cannot see your other clients, your pricing, your financials, or the office console. Roles control this: only Admin/Office accounts get the back-office.

Connect your Stripe account (Settings/Billing) and clients can pay invoices by card directly from the invoice page. The money goes straight to your Stripe account, SwardOps never holds your funds.

Yes. Crew use the mobile day-view on their phones. The office console works best on a laptop/desktop but is usable on mobile too.

Yes, Clients → Clients has a CSV import so you can bring your existing client list across rather than typing it all in.

You can see your plan and trial status under Business → Billing. Founding beta members are on a free-for-life arrangement using a promo code at checkout. You won’t be charged.

No, set up a recurring contract and SwardOps raises the instalment invoices as drafts automatically when they’re due. You just review and send.

Add expiry/due dates under Team → Compliance and Equipment → Machines. SwardOps notifies your office before anything expires (LOLER/PUWER/MOT, spraying certs, licences) and flags anything overdue.

Yes, for approved leave, your office is reminded 4 weeks, 2 weeks and 1 week before it starts, so you can arrange cover.

No. It’s opt-in per company, only captured while a crew member is on shift, and the history is deleted after 90 days. It’s there for lone-worker safety and dispatch.

Yes, Xero and QuickBooks both sync invoices and import your products & services into the price book, and GoCardless collects by Direct Debit. Each connects with your own account in a couple of clicks under Settings.

Yes, once the client is on a GoCardless mandate. Set the round to invoice on completion, then switch on Settings → Operations & compliance → "Collect auto-invoices by Direct Debit". When the visit is signed off the invoice raises itself, goes to the client, and SwardOps asks GoCardless to collect it; the money lands a few working days later and the invoice marks itself paid on its own. Clients without a mandate are invoiced as normal, and anything held for review is never collected until you send it yourself.

Yes, from the office. Open the visit and look under Task times: each task shows Completed, Carried to next visit, or Not completed, and you can mark one done, untick it, or remove it even after the job is closed. A task the crew added on site can be removed even when a timer ran against it — the confirm says how much time goes with it — but a task off the job’s own schedule with hours logged can’t be, because that time is the evidence of the work: untick it, or edit the time off it under Task times first. Marking one done asks WHO did it, and only offers the people who actually clocked onto that visit — a completion with nobody’s name against it is worth nothing to a client. It happens because running a task timer is enough to finish a job by default; if you would rather the crew had to tick each task off before they can close the job, switch on Settings → Operations & compliance → "Every task must be ticked off".

Yes. When an email is parked for checking, the preview page has an "Edit the wording" button. You can change the subject and type straight into the message, then Save. Saving doesn’t send it — you still get the preview and the Send button, and what you saved is exactly what the client gets. Works the same for statements, quotes, invoices and reminders.

Team → Crews. Click into the crew’s name, type the new one and press Rename. The colour, the lead, the members and every job tagged to that crew stay exactly as they are — you don’t need to delete it and build it again.

On Clients → Invoices, tick the ones you want and press "Delete selected". Paid and part-paid invoices are never deleted whatever you tick, because they’re your audit trail — the page tells you how many it kept. To clear a single sent invoice that shouldn’t exist, open it and use Delete there.

Yes. Settings → Leave & working week has "Holiday allowance (days)" and "Holiday year starts". The allowance is what a new starter gets and what’s used for anyone with no figure of their own; leave it blank for the statutory 28. The holiday year defaults to 1 January. Anyone with their own allowance or their own renewal date on their staff record keeps it — a company default never overwrites a person.

Your board is grouped by service rather than by crew. At the top of the Schedule there are two tabs, By crew and By service — tap By crew and the columns become your teams, with their names as the headers and the key to match. To make it the default, turn off Settings → "Colour the schedule by service".

On the Schedule, open "Month at a glance". You get the whole month with a dot on each day: no dot means nothing booked, a light dot is quiet, a dark one is full. Click any day to jump the board to it, and use the arrows for the months either side. Closed days are shaded.

Yes. Open the job, go to Designs & docs and upload it there alongside any plans or drawings. When the team leader opens that job on their phone the video plays right on the screen — no download, no leaving the app. Keep it to a minute or two at 1080p: the limit is 200MB and a few minutes of 4K goes well past that, so set your camera to 1080p or trim it to the part that matters. It tells you the size before you upload and says so if it’s too big.

Yes, Team → Subcontractors. Invite a subbie by email (they get a free account locked to working with you. They never see your clients or prices) or link a firm that already uses SwardOps with their subbie code. Offer them jobs, ask for prices, and settle their invoices in-app.

Set each subbie’s CIS rate (0/20/30%) and every invoice they send shows gross − deduction = what you pay, on both sides. If your subcontract work sits outside the Construction Industry Scheme (common for pure grounds work) untick the company CIS switch and invoices simply show the gross.

Yes, the work board on Team → Subcontractors. Set how far from your yard you’ll travel and you’re notified when another SwardOps firm posts work within that radius. Register interest and they get your subbie code to link you in one step.

Yes. Untick “VAT registered” in Settings → Quotes & branding. New quotes and invoices default to 0% and clients see no VAT line anywhere, pages, PDFs or emails. Tick it again any time you register.

Yes, switch on the public request form (and optionally full online booking) under Settings. Booking only offers days you actually have room, from your weekday and capacity settings, and you can keep an approve-first step. There’s an embed snippet for your website too.

Yes, enable the client portal per client and they sign in with a secure email link to see visits, photos, quotes, invoices and messages (only their own). Use Portal preview to see exactly what they’d see before switching it on.

Yes, Clients → Campaigns. Pick a segment (all / active contracts / lapsed 60+ days), add photos or a video, and send branded. Opt-outs and unsubscribe links are handled automatically, which keeps you on the right side of the marketing rules.

Yes, Settings → Quotes & branding has editable covering-email text for quotes and invoices, with placeholders like {name}, {number} and {total}. You can also add a one-off personal message per quote, and link a quote to the site it refers to.

The gritting pack is a switch in Settings. Crews run GPS-traced grit runs so every visit has a coverage map (your slip-and-fall evidence) and completed runs invoice per visit or roll into contracts, with salt stock tracked automatically.

SMS and WhatsApp share a monthly text allowance included with your plan (see the SMS pack in Settings). A dedicated business text number is about £1/month, and missed-call text-back uses the same allowance.

Start typing in the client box. It filters as you type (names that start with what you typed come first), arrow keys and Enter pick one. Every client on your account is in there, however many you have.

No. Save a site with an address or postcode and it is pinned automatically; imported sites without a pin get pinned overnight. Only drop a pin by hand when the postal address is not where the crew should arrive, e.g. a gate on a big development. A hand-placed pin is never overwritten.

Settings → Operations → Closed days. Enter the shutdown as a from/to range, tick "Staff use holiday allowance for these days" and add it. Working days in the range are booked as annual leave for everyone and come off their balance; weekends are skipped and anyone already on leave is left alone. Add bank holidays first (the gov.uk button) so 25 and 26 December stay free days. Each person's holiday year runs from the date on their staff profile, 1 January by default.

When you set up a round the Repeats list covers one-off, weekly (one day or several), fortnightly, every 4/6/8 weeks, monthly (same date or same weekday), quarterly, twice a year and yearly, plus a custom "every N weeks" if you need something else. Pick the first date and the schedule fills in the rest.

Yes. Settings → Team & payroll → Team kit: turn on "Automatically add each team's kit to their rounds", then tick the machines that belong to each team. From then on, any round you give that team carries its kit without you picking it each time. Anything you add on the round itself still comes along, and spare kit you leave unticked stays yours to allocate by hand.

Yes. Open the quote or invoice and check the Activity panel: it shows when you emailed it and to whom, and whether the client has opened their online link, with the first and last time and how many times. A chip tells you at a glance whether it's been opened yet, so you know if a quiet quote has actually been seen. Opening it yourself from Preview doesn't count — only the client's opens are logged (repeat opens within half an hour count once).

Yes — Reports → Sales & targets. Assign each lead an owner on the Requests board, and the Sales report then shows, per person: leads in, quotes sent, win rate, the value they've won, and progress against target, for the month, quarter or year. Set each person's monthly target at the bottom of that page (quarter and year views add the months up). A quote counts for the owner of the lead it came from, or whoever created it if there's no lead.

Yes, this is rolling out now. Settings → What each role can do → Custom permission sets: create a named set (e.g. "Scheduler"), tick what it can see and do, and assign your office people to it. Someone with no set keeps full Office access, and Admins/Owners always have everything. Two controls are live now: "Reports & KPIs" (turn it off and those people can't open the Reports hub) and "Money & margins" (turn it off and they don't see financial reports, profitability, debtors or the dashboard money tiles — it works alongside the company-wide "Office staff see money" setting). "Client contact details" is live too — turn it off and that person sees who a client's contacts are but not their phone or email, and can't add or edit them. "Contract values" is live as well — off means they can work with a contract's sites, schedule and documents but don't see what it's worth, the per-visit money split, charge rates or renewal pricing. "Other people's timesheets & pay" is live too — off means Timesheets shows only their own row and other people's profiles hide the hours/pay card and Pay tab (their own always show). All five "can see" controls and all six "can do" controls are live. "Can do" covers creating/editing clients and sites, invoicing and refunds, dispatching the schedule, managing contracts, staff & HR, and the Settings area. These are enforced on the server when the action runs, not just by hiding buttons, so if someone tries something their set doesn't allow they're returned to the dashboard with a note saying which permission they're missing. Admins and Owners are never restricted.

Email support@swardops.com. As a founding beta member your feedback shapes the product, so do tell us what’s confusing, broken or missing.