A new shop in STrOp — sign up and set up in one sitting

Sunday night. I sign up. A new shop in STrOp is a two-step wizard, a welcome, a thirty-second tour, and a checklist — that's the whole first evening. The wizard asks only for what ends up on your paper: the shop's name, the trade, the CSLB classifications you hold, your license and DIR numbers. Everything after that is a checklist that fills itself in as the real work happens, so there's nothing to mark done by hand. Here's how I set up Kestrel.

Set up your company

1. Sign in with your beta invite and the wizard opens. Step 1 is Organization, step 2 is Your Profile. Enter the Organization Name the way it reads on your license — it prints on bid sheets and proposals.
2. Pick your Primary Trade from the list.
3. Under CSLB Classifications, type in Search classifications… and tick every classification you hold — C-9 for a drywall shop. More than one is fine; what matters is that they match the license.
4. Enter your CSLB License Number and DIR Registration Number. Both ride onto certified payroll and compliance forms later, so put them in now. Spec sections you bid is optional — the CSI prefixes you price, which drives the per-project bid-coverage checklist. Refine it any time in Settings.
5. Tick I agree to the EULA and Privacy Policy and Continue →. The click-wrap is the contract — recorded once, versioned, against your account. No paper.

Your name, then the tour

1. Step 2 asks for one thing: your Full Name, as it should appear on documents and task assignments. Get started →.
2. Welcome to STrOp opens. Take the 30-second tour, or Skip for now — the tour is replayable from Help & support whenever you want it.
3. The tour is five coachmarks over the shell: where the work lives (the navigation follows the ten stages a job travels), the menu everything sits behind, the getting-started checklist, the How-to button that opens the articles for the screen you're on, and Help — where a person answers. Next through them, Done at the end, Skip tour if you've seen enough.

The checklist that ticks itself

Getting started (/getting-started, also in the sidebar with a count of what's left) is the map of your first week. An admin gets two tracks: Set up your shop — company profile, labor rates, crew, invite your team — and Win your first job — pursuit, estimate, proposal, award. Each step completes on its own when the real thing exists: add your workers and Add your crew ticks. Steps that depend on an earlier one stay gated with a hint until it's true. Dismiss the list when it's noise; restore it from Help & support. Rates, crew, first pursuit. Monday.

Common mistakes

• A nickname for the organization name. It's the header on every proposal and pay app you'll send. Use the name on the license; the nickname can live on the profile.
• Leaving the license and DIR numbers blank. The wizard lets you, and you'll forget. The first certified payroll on a public job wants both, and that's a worse moment to go looking.
• Reading the checklist as a to-do list. It's a readout. Don't hunt for a checkbox — go do the thing (set the rates, add a worker) and come back to find it done.

See also

• E2 · My people, my rates
• E4 · Who sees what
• DIR registration and renewal