Getting started

OrderDen is for small businesses that quote, sell, ship and invoice: clients, a catalog, quotes, orders with shipments, invoices with payments, and purchasing, in one place.

This page is the first ten minutes, from an empty account to an invoice you've sent.

Your records are backed up every hour, and you can download all of them whenever you want; Your data says how. Bugs, ideas and questions go to Support; see Support.

Try the demo on the home page opens a read-only workspace full of sample records: a candle maker who sells wholesale, and a two-printer shop that 3D-prints parts for businesses. The workspace switcher at the bottom of the sidebar moves between them. The demo opens on its own address, so trying it never signs you out of your own workspace. A demo visit ends when you close the browser or after two hours, and Leave the demo ends it sooner.

Create your account

1. Go to Sign up. One form asks for your name, your company name, your currency (OrderDen is for US businesses, so the country is the United States), your email and a password, typed twice so a typo can't lock you out. Tick the box accepting the terms. If a partner sent you with a referral code, their link fills the box in, or click Have a referral code? and type it; see Plans & billing.

   Sign in with Google, where it's offered, skips the password and asks for the company details on the next page.

2. Your workspace is created with it. New documents are priced in your currency. Everything you make belongs to this workspace, kept apart from every other company using OrderDen.

3. Confirm your email address. On most OrderDen servers you land on a page saying a link has been sent, with the address it went to. Follow the link and you're signed in, on your dashboard.

Confirming your address

The confirmation page shows the address you typed. Check it. If it's wrong, type the right one under Wrong address? Change it and press Change address. A new link goes to the corrected address, and the one sent to the wrong address stops working. This works from the browser you signed up in, for an hour after signing up. After that, or from another device, the page offers Sign up again instead.

No link after a minute? Check your spam folder, then press Send the link again on that page. Signing in before you've confirmed brings you back to it. A link works for 24 hours.

A link older than 24 hours opens a page saying That link has expired. Put in your address there and press Send the link again. A link to an address you changed afterward says That link no longer works: use the link in the newest email, or sign in if you've already confirmed.

If the link came back undelivered, the page says That address bounced instead. The address doesn't take mail, so change it to the right one there.

An account that's never confirmed is deleted after 7 days, with its workspace, as long as nothing has been added to the workspace and nobody else has joined it.

Some OrderDen servers can't send email at all, such as a local install or one with no mailer set up. There's nothing to confirm on those, and signing up takes you straight to the dashboard.

Straight into the app

There's no setup wizard. An empty workspace works, and the checklist on the dashboard (below) walks you through the few things worth doing first.

Signing in afterward

You sign in with the email address you signed up with; there are no usernames. Forgotten the password? Forgot your password? on the sign-in page emails you a link to set a new one. See Passwords & signing in.

The setup checklist

The dashboard shows a checklist until it's finished or you dismiss it. 8 steps, in the order they matter:

1. Your name, address and logo: what prints at the top of every document.
2. Set your tax rate: one is enough to start; add state, county and city later in Taxes.
3. Add your first item or material: what you sell and what it's made of, with what each costs.
4. Add your first client: a name and an email is enough. Saving takes you on to a new quote with them picked.
5. Raise your first quote or invoice.
6. Get paid online: connect Stripe and every invoice has a Pay button.
7. Add a deposit term: your workspace starts with two, so this one is usually ticked already.
8. Invite someone: shown only on plans with more than one seat.

Most steps tick themselves from your data: add a client and the step ticks; delete your only client and it comes back. Every unfinished step has Not for me, and the ✕ in the corner puts the card away for good.

Opening balances: where you start from

Nobody starts a business on the day they start using an app. Two screens bring in where you are now:

• Opening stock (Inventory → Opening stock): count what's on the shelf and what it cost. Every valuation, cost of goods figure and low-stock alert after that is right.
• Unpaid invoices from before (Invoices → Add unpaid historical invoice): a client, an amount and two dates, no lines. It ages on the AR aging report and takes payments like any invoice, but it's kept out of your revenue and never counts against the free 50 invoices, because the sale happened before OrderDen.

Make your documents yours

Before the first invoice goes out, spend two minutes in Company Settings → Profile:

• Upload your logo, as a PNG or JPEG. It prints at the top of every quote, order and invoice, in the emailed PDF and on shared portal pages.
• Fill in your address, phone, email and website, and tax registration (your EIN). They print in the document header, and the email is where replies go when OrderDen sends your documents.

Email works from the start: documents and invitations are sent by OrderDen as "Your Company via OrderDen". To send from your own address, press Connect Gmail or Connect Microsoft 365 in Company Settings → Email. See Settings.

Invite your team

On Unlimited, invite people in Account & Billing → Members & invitations. Free has 1 seat, so an invitation is refused until you move to Unlimited.

• Send invite creates the invitation and emails the link. They join with their own login and the access you gave the invitation. If the email can't be sent, the invitation still exists: copy its link, or send it again from the pending list.
• Pick a role: admin, member, accountant (read-only, with costs, reports and exports) or viewer (read-only, costs hidden), and adjust the permissions for members and viewers. Every role uses a seat. The workspace has one owner; Make owner hands that on.
• Resend or cancel invitations, change access, and remove members.

Someone who packs and ships doesn't need to see what a jar costs you. See Roles, permissions, two-factor and sessions.

Everyone sees the same clients, documents and settings, less whatever their access hides. Your dashboard layout, list columns and two-factor setup are yours; the app's colors are saved in each browser.

To rename the workspace, change Company name in Company Settings → Profile.

Plans

Both plans are the whole app, including the public REST API.

• Free: your first 50 invoices, counted over the life of the workspace, on 1 seat, with 60 API requests a minute per key. Every workspace starts here, with no card and no trial clock.
• Unlimited: $19 a month for the first person and $5 for each one after, with unlimited invoices and 300 API requests a minute per key.

Nothing else is counted. Quotes, orders, credit notes, purchases, expenses, clients, items, stock, projects, time and attachments are unlimited on either plan, and invoices you import as history never count against the free 50.

The owner buys, switches or cancels in Account & Billing, monthly or yearly (about 17% off). See Plans & billing.

Finding your way around

The sidebar reaches every area. On a phone it is a bar along the bottom with Dashboard, Clients, Quotes, Orders, Invoices and More, which opens the rest. Dashboard is at the top and Reports at the bottom, with four groups between:

Three of those open on a strip of tabs:

• Payments & credits: Payments, the money that came in, and Credit notes, the money handed back.
• Spending: Everything, then Purchases (what a supplier billed you) and Expenses (everything else).
• Inventory: On the shelf, Movements and Stocktakes. See Inventory & stock. The catalog itself is under Items.

The bottom of the sidebar has your workspace name and email, a workspace picker if you're in more than one, the settings areas (Personal Settings, and for owners and admins Company Settings and Account & Billing), What's new, Support, and Sign out. See Settings.

Two more things:

• The search bar at the top finds things by name or number. See Search & lists.
• A common flow is quote → order → shipment → invoice → payment, each step one click from the last, but only the ones you need. A quote can go straight to an invoice, or become a project billed for hours and materials over several invoices; the order is for something to make and ship. Start with Clients and Items, then make your first Quote.

What's new

When something worth knowing about changes, it's written up as a short update. The first time you open OrderDen after one goes out, it appears once in a pop-up. Close it however you like (Got it, the X, or clicking outside) and it won't come back. If several went out while you were away, you see only the newest.

Every update stays on the What's new page, a row at the bottom of the sidebar (or in the menu strip on a phone), newest first. Updates from before you signed up are there too; they don't pop up for you. Seeing an update is per person, so if you're in more than one workspace you see it once.

Put it on your phone

OrderDen installs onto a home screen without an app store: a card on your dashboard offers it on Android, and on an iPhone it's Share → Add to Home Screen. It opens without an address bar and has its own icon.

Attachments, item photos and receipts can go straight to the camera, and photos are shrunk before they're sent. See OrderDen on your phone.

Bringing your data with you

Coming from a spreadsheet or a webstore export? Don't retype it. Import on the Clients, Items, Materials, Vendors and Expenses lists reads a CSV, maps its columns, shows you the rows before writing anything, and can undo the whole run. See Importing your spreadsheet.