Getting Started

Walk from sign-up through to a live schedule

By Xota Support

• 8 articles

Welcome to Xota

Xota is a scheduling and operations app for teams who run on bookings rather than hours. It keeps your clients, your projects, your team's diary and the work itself in one connected place — so nothing falls between the cracks. This short guide walks you through what Xota is and where everything lives. Once you're done here, the rest of the Getting Started track takes you through setting up your account end-to-end. 🎥 Watch the 3-minute video tour: Welcome to Xota The core loop Everything in Xota connects through one simple loop: Company → Project → Booking → Sign-off - A Company is your client — the business you work for. - A Project is a specific job for that client — a refurbishment, a maintenance contract, a one-off deep clean. - A Booking is the actual work happening on a day — one of your team, at the project, for a set amount of time. - Sign-off closes the loop — the operative captures photos and a client signature on their phone when the work's done. If you understand that loop, you understand Xota. The main menu Down the left side of the app you'll find everything you need day-to-day: - Dashboard — your command centre. Today's bookings, active projects, open issues, time-off requests. - Companies — your client list. - Projects — every job you're working on, grouped by Active, Not Started, and Completed. - Schedule — the calendar where the day-to-day action happens. Drag bookings around, create new ones, see everyone's week at a glance. - HR — your team members, teams, and absences. At the bottom of the menu you'll find Messages for team chat inside Xota, and Settings for everything you configure once: branding, terminology, integrations, roles. Where to get help If you hit something you're not sure about, every section of the help site has guides tied to the same four tracks: Getting Started (this one), Feature Deep Dives, Day-to-Day Workflows, and Admin & Power User. Next up Ready to start? Head to Setting up your organisation to configure your account — name, branding, terminology, and which modules you want switched on.

Last updated on Apr 22, 2026

Setting up your organisation

Settings is where you shape Xota to fit how your business actually works. It's usually the first thing the admin or owner does after creating an account — name the organisation, upload a logo, pick what to call things, and switch on the modules you need. This guide walks through each section so you know what's there and why you'd touch it. 🎥 Watch the walkthrough: Setting Up Your Organisation Getting to Settings Click Settings at the bottom of the sidebar. You'll land on People by default. Across the top you'll see six tabs — People, Organisation Setup, Work Configuration, Finance, HR, Integrations. The first three are covered here; the others each have their own dedicated guide. People People is every user on your Xota account, broken down by role: - Admins & Owners run the place — they can see and do everything. - Team Members are your operatives — they see their own bookings on a mobile-friendly view and capture sign-off. - Clients get a read-only portal showing just their own projects and bookings. The Invite User button in the top-right is how you add someone. Anyone you've invited but who hasn't accepted yet appears in the Pending Invitations section at the bottom. See the dedicated guide: Adding and inviting your first team member. Organisation Setup This tab has three sub-sections: Branding Set your organisation name and upload two logos — one for the app header, one for documents (invoices, quotes, reports) that go out to clients. A square or horizontal transparent PNG works best. Modules A single switch for the Finance module — invoicing, quotes, payroll and purchasing. Flip it off if you don't use any of those and Xota hides the whole Finance tab plus the related menu items. You can turn it back on any time. Terminology The one you'll thank yourself for. Xota uses the words Project and Booking by default, but lots of businesses call them something else — Jobs, Sites, Shifts, Tasks. Change both the singular and plural labels here, hit Save Labels, and the new words appear everywhere in the app: menus, page titles, buttons, form fields. The data underneath stays exactly the same — you're just changing what it's called on screen. You can also pick how booking durations are displayed (minutes vs hours) and turn photo labels on or off for sign-off images. Work Configuration Two features live here: - Custom Fields let you add extra information that shows up on every project — a PO number, a site code, a colour scheme, whatever you need to track alongside the defaults. You choose the field type (text, number, date, dropdown) and whether it's required. - Email Templates are pre-written emails for common scenarios — a booking confirmation, a sign-off notification — so you're not rewriting the same message over and over. Each template has a name, subject, and body. HR, Integrations and Finance These tabs each have their own dedicated guide in the help site: - HR — holiday entitlements, working week, bank holidays. - Integrations — connecting Xota to Outlook, Google Calendar, and your email provider. - Finance — settings that appear only when the Finance module is switched on. Next up Head to Adding and inviting your first team member to get your operatives into the account.

Last updated on Apr 22, 2026

Adding and inviting your first team member

Bringing someone new onto your team in Xota is a two-step job: 1. Add them as a team member record so you can put them on the schedule. 2. Invite them as a user so they can log into the mobile app and see what they're working on. You can do both in a couple of minutes. 🎥 Watch the walkthrough: Adding and Inviting Your First Team Member Why it's two steps A team member is the person — their name, job title, employment details, holiday entitlement, who they report to. This is the record you schedule work against. A user is the login — the email and password they use to sign into Xota on their phone or on the web. One person can sit on the rota without ever logging in (common for subcontractors), and every user is tied to a team member, contact, or admin record. Keeping the two separate means you can put someone on the schedule on day one and decide later whether to give them app access. Step 1 — Add the team member record From the sidebar, click HR. You'll land on Team Members. Hit Add Team Member in the top-right. The only fields you need to get someone onto the schedule are: - First Name (required) - Surname - Email — needed if you want to invite them as a user - Job Title — what shows under their name on the schedule (e.g. Operative, Plumber, Site Manager) Holiday Tracking Type defaults to Hours, which is the right choice for most teams. Everything else — phone, address, date of birth, National Insurance number, employment dates, paid breaks, which teams they're in — can be filled in later. You can come back any time and edit. Hit Create Team Member and they're on the rota. Step 2 — Invite them as a user Adding them to HR gets them on the schedule, but they can't log in yet. To fix that: 1. Go to Settings → People. 2. Click the Team Members tab — this tells the invite flow you're adding a Team Member specifically. 3. Hit Invite User. 4. Pick the team member from the dropdown. Their email flows through automatically, and the role is pre-set to Team Member. 5. Hit Send Invitation. They'll receive an email with a link, set their own password, download the mobile app, and they're in. The three roles When you invite someone, you're picking one of three roles: | Role | What they see | | -------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Admin (or Owner) | Everything — all clients, projects, bookings, the whole schedule, settings. | | Team Member | Their own bookings only — a mobile-friendly view of today and the next 7 days, with the ability to mark bookings complete and capture sign-off. | | Client | Their own projects and bookings only, as a read-only portal. | Pick the right role up front and Xota handles the rest. Managing pending invitations Anyone you've invited but who hasn't accepted yet appears in the Pending Invitations section underneath the users table. - To cancel an invitation — maybe you invited the wrong person, or they're not starting after all — hit Cancel in the Actions column. - To resend, cancel the old invitation and send a fresh one. - Pending invitations expire automatically after a set period. Next up Head to Adding your first company to add the client you're working for.

Last updated on Apr 22, 2026

Adding your first company

Every project, booking and invoice in Xota eventually traces back to a company — your word for a client. It's the first thing you'll want to set up after inviting your team, because nothing else can exist without one. 🎥 Watch the walkthrough: Your First Client Where companies live From the sidebar, click Companies. You'll see two tabs at the top: - Live — clients you're actively working with. - Archived — past clients you want to keep for history but out of the day-to-day view. Both are empty to start with. The Add Company button in the top-right is how you create a new one. Adding a company Click Add Company. The form has a few fields — only Name is required, everything else is optional: - Client Name — what shows up on the schedule, in reports and on invoices. - Email and Phone — the main contact details for the company. These flow through to bookings and documents later, so it's worth getting them in up front. - Industry — a dropdown with common categories. This is handy for filtering and reporting. Pick "Other" if nothing fits and enter your own. - Website - Address — where the team is heading when they're booked onto a job for this client. - Notes — anywhere-else-to-put-it information. Hit Add Company at the bottom of the form and the new client appears in your Live list straight away. What happens after you create them Click the row to open the client's page. You'll find: - A header showing the details you entered — email, phone, website, industry, address — plus a status pill (Live or Archived) next to the name, and a slot to upload a company logo. - Three tabs underneath: - Contacts — the named people you deal with at the client (site manager, office contact, finance person). See Adding contacts to a company. - Documents — anywhere-to-store-it files you want to keep against the client. - Projects — every job you're doing for this client. A single company can have many projects running in parallel. Archiving — not deleting When you stop working with a client, you don't delete them — you archive them. That way you keep the full history (every project, booking, and invoice they were involved in) but they drop out of your Live list. To archive: 1. Open the client's page. 2. Click Edit Company in the top-right. 3. Change Status from Live to Archived. 4. Update Company. They'll now show up in the Archived tab. To bring them back, edit again and switch Status back to Live. There's no hard delete by design — your audit trail stays intact. Next up Head to Adding contacts to a company to add the people you actually deal with at this client.

Last updated on Apr 22, 2026

Adding contacts to a company

Every company you work for has people — the site manager, the office contact, the finance person who pays the invoices. In Xota these are contacts, and they live inside each company record. 🎥 Watch the walkthrough: Your First Contacts Contact vs team member Worth getting the distinction straight: - A team member is one of your own people — someone you schedule work for. - A contact is one of your client's people — someone at the company you're doing the work for. Both can have user logins if you want them to, but they show up in completely different places in the app. Where contacts live From the sidebar, click Companies, then click into the client you want to add contacts to. Contacts is the first tab on the company page and is empty to start with. Hit Add Contact in the top-right. Adding a contact Only Contact Name is required — everything else is optional: - Contact Name - Email — needed if you plan to give them a client portal login. - Phone - Job Title — what they do at the client (e.g. Site Manager, Office Manager, Finance Director). Shows alongside their name wherever contacts appear. - App Access — a toggle. Off by default. See below. - Notes — anywhere-else-to-put-it information. Hit Create Contact and they're saved. You can add as many contacts to a company as you need. Most organisations end up with three or four per client. The App Access toggle Flip App Access on and the contact gets their own login to Xota — a client portal where they can see their own projects and bookings, track progress, and download documents. When you toggle it on you'll be prompted to set a password for them. When to use it: - Your client wants visibility on their own jobs without having to email you for updates. - You're doing recurring work and the client team wants to see what's booked in for the week. When to leave it off: - You'd rather keep communication over email or phone. - The contact is a technical person who doesn't need a portal. You can turn it on any time — just edit the contact and flip the switch. The client portal experience has its own dedicated guide once you've got projects and bookings to show them. Editing and deleting Click any contact in the list to open the same form in edit mode. You can update details, reset their password if they have app access, or delete them entirely. Unlike companies, contacts can be hard-deleted — a Delete Contact button sits inside the edit dialog. Useful if: - You added the wrong person. - The contact has left the company. Deleting a contact also removes their user account if they had one. If the person is still at the client but has changed role, edit their details rather than deleting them. Next up Head to Creating your first project to create the first piece of work you're doing for this client.

Last updated on Apr 22, 2026

Creating your first project

Every job you do for a client in Xota is a project. It's the folder where your bookings, tasks, issues, documents, and the client brief all live side by side. A single company can have many projects running in parallel — a refurb, a maintenance contract, a one-off deep clean — each with its own dates, its own bookings, and its own audit trail. 🎥 Watch the walkthrough: Your First Project Where projects live From the sidebar, click Projects. Three tabs organise your work: - Active — jobs in flight right now. - Not Started — jobs booked for the future that haven't kicked off yet. - Completed — jobs that have finished. Xota decides which bucket a project goes in automatically, based on its start and end dates — there's no Mark Complete button. More on that below. Adding a project Hit Add Project in the top-right. The form is short: - Client (required) — the company this project is for. Pick from your existing Companies. - Project Name (required) — a short, scannable label (e.g. "Bristol HQ Refurbishment"). - Description — what the team is walking into when they see this project on their phone. - Start Date (required) — defaults to today. For future jobs, pick the day it kicks off. - End Date — optional. Toggle Set if you've got a fixed delivery, or leave it as Open-ended if the finish date is flexible. - Brief — the long-form notes. Access times, site contact, materials you've promised, quirks of the building. Whoever opens the project later sees this at a glance. If you've configured any custom fields under Settings → Work Configuration, they'll appear on this form automatically — PO numbers, site codes, colour schemes, whatever you need to track on every project. Hit Create Project. Uploading brief images Right after creating the project, Xota offers a photo upload for brief images — handy for floor plans, site snaps, colour references, or anything visual the team should see before turning up. Skip this step if you don't need it and hit Done. You can add or remove images from the Brief tab at any point later. Inside a project Click the project row to open its detail page. You'll find: - A header with the details you entered and a status pill (Not Started / Active / Completed). - A row of tabs: - Bookings — the actual scheduled work. This is where most of the action happens. - Draft Bookings — bookings you've staged but not yet committed to a date. - Booking Templates — reusable checklists of work (e.g. a weekly office clean routine) that you can apply to any project. Covered in the Task Templates guide. - Issues — problems the team has hit on site. - Emails — a record of emails sent about this project. - Documents — files stored against the project. - Brief — the brief text and images you set up earlier. Every tab has an action button in the top-right to create a new item of that type. Click Booking from the Bookings tab and you drop straight into the booking form with the client and project pre-filled. Marking a project complete Xota doesn't have a Mark Complete button — status is derived from the dates: - No start date set → Not Started. - Today is before the start date → Not Started. - Today is after the end date → Completed. - Otherwise → Active. If you want to close a project early, hit Edit and set the end date to yesterday. To reopen a project that's been auto-completed, push the end date forward. That's it. Next up Head to Creating your first booking to schedule the first chunk of real work against this project.

Last updated on Apr 22, 2026

Creating your first booking

A booking is a real chunk of work — one of your team, heading to one of your projects, on a specific day. It's the unit the whole schedule is built on. There are two natural places to create a booking — inside the project itself, or directly from the Calendar. The form is the same either way; only what's pre-filled differs. 🎥 Watch the walkthrough: Your First Booking The quickest route 1. Open the project from Projects in the sidebar. 2. Click the Booking button in the top-right of the Bookings tab. 3. Fill in the form. 4. Hit Create Booking. Because you opened the form from inside a project, Xota's already filled in the client and project for you — nice shortcut. The booking form Draft toggle Top-right of the form you'll see a Draft toggle. Flip it on to stage a booking when you know work's coming but don't have a firm date yet — useful for speculative or pencilled-in jobs. Draft bookings don't need a date and don't show up on the live calendar until you commit them. Leave it off for normal scheduling. Name and description - Name — something scannable on the calendar, e.g. "Strip out ground floor". - Description — the detail. What's being done, any specifics the operative needs to know when they show up on site. Date Defaults to today. For anything scheduled ahead, pick the day it's happening. Timed vs untimed A key decision. Every booking needs a duration, but how you specify it is up to you: - Untimed (the default) — just set a Time (minutes) value and the booking flexes through the day. - Timed — flip the toggle and set a specific Start Time and End Time. Use this when the team has to be on site at a particular hour, when the job has a hard finish time, or when you want the operative to clock in and out. Untimed is the right default for most field work; switch to Timed when precision matters. Team member(s) Pick who's doing the work. You can select more than one, and Xota will create a separate booking for each — handy when you're sending a two-person crew. Create Hit Create Booking and the card lands on the project's Bookings tab and on the Calendar at the same time. Creating from the Calendar instead Open Schedule from the sidebar. Hover any empty cell and an Add button appears — click it to open the same flow with the date and team member pre-filled from the cell you clicked. Same form, same result, just a different entry point. The booking lifecycle Every booking moves through four statuses: | Status | What it means | | -------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Draft | Staged but not on the live calendar yet. Optional starting point. | | Active | Scheduled and ready — the default when you create a booking. | | Complete | The operative has marked it done from their phone after finishing on site. | | Signed off | You or the client are happy with the job — closed out, filed away. | Sign-off is also where photos of the finished work and a client signature get captured. The operative does that from the mobile view, and it all hangs off the booking so you've got a full audit trail. The operative and client experiences each have their own dedicated guides. Three views, one booking The same booking data lives in three places: - On the project's Bookings tab — filtered to just that project. - On the All Bookings list under Schedule — every booking in your account, in one table you can sort and search. - On the Calendar — the visual week-at-a-glance view that most schedulers use day-to-day. Same booking, three different ways to look at it. Next up Head to Using the schedule to see how to manage bookings at scale once you've got a few of them running.

Last updated on Apr 22, 2026

Using the schedule

If you're a scheduler, the Calendar is where your day happens. It's the single place you can see every team member's week, move bookings around, spot gaps, and react when something changes. This guide walks through the layout, how to navigate, and the two moves that make Xota fast to work in: drag-and-drop and create-from-cell. 🎥 Watch the walkthrough: The Schedule in Xota — Drag, Drop, Done Opening the Calendar From the sidebar, click Schedule. You land on the Calendar view by default. Reading the week The layout is a grid: - Team members run down the left. Under each name you'll see the number of shifts and total hours for the week — a quick sanity check on workload. - Days of the week run across the top. Today is highlighted. - Weekends are greyed out by default but you can still book into them. - The Unassigned row at the top is a useful parking spot for work that's been planned but not yet allocated to a person. Anything here needs picking up. Every coloured block inside the grid is a booking. The colour tells you the status at a glance — Active, Complete, Signed off. Navigating between weeks Up top you'll find: - Previous / Next arrows — move one week at a time. - Current Week button — jumps you straight back to the week containing today, wherever you've wandered to. Move forward to plan ahead, back to review what just happened. Filtering the view Top-right is the Filter dropdown. You can narrow the calendar down to just what you're focused on — by team, by client, by status, or by project. Handy when you run multiple crews or want to check one client's workload without the noise of the rest. Filters have their own dedicated guide, and you can save filters for one-click switching between views. Drag-and-drop — the killer feature Any booking on the calendar can be dragged to a different day, a different team member, or both in the same move. - Grab a booking. - Drop it on the destination cell. That's it. No forms, no confirmations. Xota updates the booking, everyone's totals at the top of their row adjust, and the operative's phone picks up the change next time it syncs. This is the single biggest time-saver in Xota. Real-world schedules change constantly — someone calls in sick, a job slips, the client moves a date — and being able to resolve it with one drag instead of re-opening a form is the difference between ten minutes of admin and ten seconds. Creating a booking from an empty cell Hovering over any empty cell reveals an Add button. Click it and Xota asks what kind of thing you want to add — a booking, travel time, a holiday, or a sick day. Pick Booking and you drop straight into the booking form with the date and team member pre-filled from the cell you clicked. Fill in the rest (project, name, duration), hit Create, and the card lands on the schedule immediately. Same modal as the one you see from inside a project — just a different entry point. Tips - Zoom in on one person's week — use the filter to pick just their team or select them as a team member filter. - Spot gaps at a glance — the blue "cell is empty" dashed outline makes it obvious where you've got unassigned time. - The Unassigned row is your inbox — park work there when you know it needs doing but haven't decided who's doing it. What's next That's Getting Started done — you've set up your account, added a client, created a project, scheduled work, and learned your way around the Calendar. From here, the Feature Deep Dives track covers individual areas in more detail — task templates, absences, schedule filters, the operative's mobile view, the client portal, and more. Browse them in any order based on what your team actually uses.

Last updated on Apr 22, 2026