Getting Started With Manifold

What Manifold Does

Getting started with Manifold means understanding what the product does before you configure anything. Manifold is the trade operating system for UK gas, plumbing, and heating teams. It connects properties, appliances, scheduling, mobile evidence capture, defect management, record generation, renewals, and client delivery in one workspace so a job moves from booked to compliant without spreadsheet drift.

• Hold clients, properties, and appliance registers in one place before any work is scheduled.
• Schedule gas safety checks and assign active engineers to the right jobs.
• Let engineers capture readings, defects, photos, and signatures from the mobile check flow, even offline.
• Generate Landlord Gas Safety Records (CP12) and related certificates from reviewed check data.
• Track satisfactory, due-soon, overdue, and action-required work across the whole portfolio.
• Deliver records to tenants and clients and let renewals chase themselves with automated reminders.

Create Your Account and Workspace

Before any of the setup below, you need a Manifold workspace. The first person from a company signs up, which creates the organisation (your tenant) and makes them its owner. Everyone else joins later by invitation from Settings rather than signing up again, so a company has one workspace, not one per person.

1. 1Open the sign-up page and enter your business name, whether it is just you or a team, your name, your work email, and a password of at least 8 characters. A mobile number is optional. The 30-day trial needs no card.
2. 2Click the confirmation link we email you. It signs you in, creates your organisation and owner account, and opens the setup walkthrough. You will also receive a welcome email, and the first 50 workspaces to sign up are made Founding Members with their price locked for life.
3. 3If sign-up was interrupted (a closed tab or a dropped connection), signing back in shows a short finish-setup step that completes provisioning safely. You are never left with an account but no workspace.
4. 4From the console, follow the recommended setup order below to configure identity, team, and data.
5. 5Add the rest of your team from Settings by invitation; invited office users and engineers accept an emailed invite instead of creating their own account.

The Getting-Started Walkthrough

After you confirm your email the walkthrough opens. On an empty workspace its first button, Set up your first job, runs a four-screen wizard (landlord, property, appliance, visit date) that creates all four records at once. After that the walkthrough tracks the same steps one at a time: add a client, add a property, add an appliance, record your first gas safety check. Every workspace is asked for its business details for the certificate footer; sole traders are also asked for their Gas Safe number. Until setup is finished, the dashboard shows a Finish setting up your workspace card with a Continue setup button.

• Each step links straight to the screen it describes and ticks itself off as the workspace fills in.
• You can skip the walkthrough with Skip for now. Skipping is permanent: the dashboard setup card disappears and the walkthrough does not return, so finish the identity steps first if you can.

Recommended Setup Order

1. 1Confirm organisation details, Gas Safe registration, certificate identity, timezone, billing, and notification settings.
2. 2Invite office users and engineers from Settings, or switch on sole-trader mode if you work alone.
3. 3Create or import clients, properties, and appliance registers.
4. 4Schedule the first gas safety checks and assign engineers (or let sole-trader mode auto-assign to you).
5. 5Run one check end to end: mobile capture, office review, record generation, and client delivery.
6. 6Use the Dashboard, Today, Records, and Reports to monitor the live workspace. On plans that include it, Ask Manifold answers questions from the search bar.

Find Anything Fast

• Press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on a Mac) anywhere in the console, or tap the search icon on a phone, to search properties, clients, appliances, records and defects.
• Phrase the query as a question and an Ask Manifold option appears at the top, on plans that include it.

Common First-Week Checks

• Confirm the certificate identity block (business name, address, phone, email, Gas Safe number) is correct, because it prints on every record.
• Confirm each engineer can sign in on a phone and see only their assigned checks.
• Run one test property through scheduling, mobile capture, review, record generation, and tenant delivery.
• Confirm renewal reminders and notification recipients before you rely on them for compliance.

The Manifold Operating Rhythm

• Start of day: open Today for the run, then Schedule or My week to confirm cover and clear anything marked Double-booked.
• During the day: engineers capture checks from Today’s run; the office watches submitted checks arrive under Gas safety.
• After visits: review submitted checks, generate records, and deliver to tenants and clients.
• Weekly: work the due-soon and overdue tiles so no renewal lapses.
• Monthly: review Reports and its Analytics card, then Settings for Billing & plan and Notifications.

What Good Looks Like

A healthy Manifold workspace tells a complete compliance story without anyone explaining it. An office user should be able to open a property and understand its client, appliances, last record, current status, open defects, and next renewal from the records themselves.

• Property addresses and client names read the way the landlord recognises them.
• Every property has a current appliance register, so checks test the right equipment.
• Compliance status on the dashboard matches the latest record on each property.
• Open defects carry forward, so the next engineer arrives with context.
• Records contain reviewed evidence and avoid internal scheduling or diagnostic detail.

Treat the First Job as a Rehearsal

The point of a pilot is not to prove a record can exist; it is to prove the handoff between scheduling, capture, review, generation, delivery, and renewal is reliable before real volume depends on it.

1. 1Build the smallest complete version: one client, one property, one appliance register, one check.
2. 2Run it through mobile capture, office review, record generation, tenant and client delivery, and renewal scheduling.
3. 3Use what you learn to fix certificate identity, required fields, and delivery wording.
4. 4Only then import the wider portfolio.