# Trades and Field Service Software Onboarding: A 7-Step Guide for Getting Customers Set Up (2026) By Mantas Aleksiejevas > A 7-step guide for trades and field service software companies: how to get tradies, office staff and technicians set up, from price lists and quotes to scheduling and payments. URL: /blog/trades-field-service-software-customer-onboarding Published: 2026-09-26 Target keyword: trades and field service software customer onboarding Trades and field service software onboarding is the work of getting a new customer from sign-up to running their business in the software. For a job management software company, that means getting electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, cleaners and their office staff through price lists, quote templates, scheduling and the accounting and payments connection, before they drift back to paper and spreadsheets. This guide covers the seven steps that matter most, how to onboard customers who are not tech savvy, and how onboarding calls, help docs, product tours and AI onboarding agents compare. Obi is Cor's AI onboarding agent for B2B software companies. It works directly with customers, sees their screen in real time, and guides them through setup, integrations, implementation, and product training. ## Why trades software onboarding is hard Most trades businesses are small. The owner is often also the office, the scheduler and the person who does the invoicing at night. They set up software between call-outs, usually on a phone, and they want it working the same day. Most will never book a training call. If setup feels confusing, they stop, and the software becomes one more subscription they don't use. ## The 7 steps to onboard trades and field service customers ### 1. Get them to their first sent quote Ask what they need first. For most trades businesses it is sending a quote or an invoice. A tradie who sends a real quote from the software in the first few days has a reason to keep going. ### 2. Load their prices before anything else Price lists, services and tax settings sit under every quote and invoice. If prices are missing or wrong, everything built on them is wrong too. ### 3. Brand the quote and invoice templates early Tradies care how their paperwork looks to customers. Adding the logo, terms and payment details early makes the software feel like theirs. ### 4. Connect accounting and payments as a guided step Xero, QuickBooks and card payments are where many customers get stuck. Walk them through it on their own screen, check it works, and flag it to your team if it fails. ### 5. Add the team and the schedule together Adding technicians, their permissions and their first jobs in one sitting shows the owner the schedule working, not just an empty calendar. ### 6. Set up the forms their trade needs Job sheets, safety checks and compliance certificates differ by trade. Help each customer pick and set up the ones they actually use. ### 7. Be there after hours Trades owners do admin in the evening and on weekends. Onboarding that only runs in business hours misses the time they actually have. ## How to onboard trades customers who aren't tech savvy Talk them through it instead of sending them to read. Keep each session to one outcome, like one branded quote ready to send. Use their words ("job", "quote", "call-out") rather than feature names. And let them ask "how do I…" at the moment they are stuck, from their phone if that is what they use. ## Onboarding calls vs help docs vs product tours vs AI onboarding agents **Onboarding calls** with a person are personal and still worth it for larger multi-crew businesses. They are hard to schedule around a tradie's day and hard to scale to thousands of small accounts. **Help docs and videos** are cheap and always there. They show the standard path, but they cannot see the customer's account or answer a follow-up. **Product tours and checklists** point customers around your app. They suit simple flows, but they follow a fixed path and cannot help inside the customer's accounting or payments account. **AI onboarding agents** run the guided session itself. The customer shares their screen, the agent learns their goal, talks them through each step by voice and chat, answers questions from your docs, and hands off to your team when something needs a person. They can cover every customer at any hour, and they are only as good as the docs they learn from. Most trades software companies use a mix: people for the biggest accounts, an agent for the long tail, and docs for reference. ## Example: a plumber sends a quote from the van A plumbing business owner opens the welcome email in the evening and starts a guided session. They want to send a quote from their phone tomorrow morning. The agent sees the price list is empty and walks them through adding their common jobs and rates. Then it helps them brand the quote template and add their apprentice as a user with the right access. When the owner asks how the Xero sync handles tax, the agent answers from the help docs. The quote is ready before they go to bed. ## About the author **Mantas Aleksiejevas** Co-founder of Cor. Works on Obi, the AI agent that runs customer onboarding. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mantasaleks) ## Frequently asked questions **What is trades software onboarding?** It is the process of getting a new customer of job management or field service software set up and running: prices, quotes and invoices, the team and schedule, forms, and the accounting and payments connection. **How do you onboard tradies who aren't comfortable with software?** Talk them through it, keep sessions short, tie each one to a real outcome like a sent quote, and let them ask questions from their phone when they are stuck. **Can AI run onboarding calls for field service software customers?** Yes. An AI onboarding agent can run the guided setup session a person would run on a call: it sees the customer's screen, guides each step, answers questions and escalates to your team when needed. **When do trades customers do their setup?** Often in the evening or on weekends, after the work is done. Onboarding that is available then reaches more of them. **How do you onboard new staff at an existing customer?** Give each new office admin or technician their own short session on the parts of the product they will use, so the owner does not have to train them. **What happens when a customer needs a person?** A good onboarding agent hands off to your team with the context of the session, so the customer does not have to explain it again. **Is customer data secure with an AI onboarding agent?** Ask each vendor. With Cor, screen sharing starts only when the customer chooses, Cor is SOC 2 compliant, and it does not use customer data to train AI models. ## How Obi works Obi runs guided onboarding sessions for trades and field service software customers: live, screen-aware, grounded in your docs, with escalation and session reports built in. [See how Obi works on the product page](/product/onboarding-agent), or [read what an AI onboarding agent is](/blog/ai-onboarding-agent).