Step 0 — Have a customer account ready
An appointment is always run against a customer account, so the customer needs to exist first. If you haven't created one yet, walk through Adding a customer account — that article covers the Internal ID, customer type, people, and addresses you'll attach to the account.
For your first appointment, it's worth using a test customer rather than a real one so you can experiment without worrying about the contract that will get generated.
Step 1 — Start the appointment
Once a customer account exists, there are several ways to start an appointment for it:
- Right after creating the account. Bidvio asks if you want to start an appointment immediately. Accept and you're in the appointment workspace.
- From the customer table on macOS. Select the customer row, then either press ⌘ + Enter, double-click the row, or open Actions at the top of the screen and choose Start New Appointment.
- From the customer table on iPadOS. Select the customer row, then double-tap the row or open Actions and choose Start New Appointment.
If the customer already has an existing appointment, these actions open the Appointments table for that customer instead, so you can decide whether to start a new one or continue an existing one.
Screenshot coming soonMac — Starting a new appointment from the customer table/screenshots/support-getting-started-your-first-appointment-01-mac.png
Screenshot coming sooniPad — Starting a new appointment from the customer table/screenshots/support-getting-started-your-first-appointment-01-ipad.png
Step 2 — Information
The Information tab is the cover sheet of the job: who the customer is, where the work is, and what they want done. The fields you fill in here flow through to the contract and to the production team's job-information page.
Information has two sub-tabs:
- Customer Information. This is the verification step — confirm with the customer that the email, phone number, and address Bidvio has on file are still right. If anything's off, tap the Pencil in the top right to open the customer account form and edit it. From here you also have quick actions to change who's signing this contract and whether each address on file is included in this contract; you can have multiple addresses on a single contract when that's what the situation calls for.
- Appointment Information. This is where you gather context for this project. The tab opens with the meeting plan you've configured (see Setting up meeting-plan templates) — walk through it with the customer, ticking items as you go. After the meeting plan, the customer interview questions are next (see Setting up customer interview questions) — answer each one with the customer.
Everything Information captures lands on the contract and on the job-information sheet the install crew reads. Thoughtful questions and complete answers up front save phone calls later — both to you and from your crew.
Screenshot coming soonMac — Information tab — Customer Information and Appointment Information/screenshots/support-getting-started-your-first-appointment-02-mac.png
Screenshot coming sooniPad — Information tab — Customer Information and Appointment Information/screenshots/support-getting-started-your-first-appointment-02-ipad.png
Step 3 — Details
The Details tab is where you describe the work itself: the specifications that scope it, the customer wills (what the customer needs to do for the job to happen — leave access available, mark utilities, stow animals), and the contractor wills (what your company is promising in return — maintain a safe work environment, clean up after install). All three end up on the contract. For depth on each, the Details overview walks them through one at a time.
Step 4 — Drawing
Open Drawing — the tab whose icon is a pencil with a ruler. The drawing canvas is where you sketch the work area, attach products to drawn layers, and communicate visually with the customer and the install crew. The Drawing overview covers the toolbar, layers, and the dual role of every shape (annotation vs. product representation).
The main takeaway for your first appointment: draw as much as is useful for communication, and remember that the drawing is illustrative. Measurements that drive pricing are entered separately on each layer, not computed from the canvas geometry. The drawing's job is to make the contract and job-information sheet readable; the measurement inputs do the math.
Screenshot coming soonMac — Drawing canvas/screenshots/support-getting-started-your-first-appointment-03-mac.png
Screenshot coming sooniPad — Drawing canvas/screenshots/support-getting-started-your-first-appointment-03-ipad.png
Step 5 — Options
Options is where the appointment becomes a price. Add products to the drawing layers (or directly to the option), apply discounts and financing where they fit, and create alternate options for the customer to compare. Bidvio lets you build as many options as you want but compares only two at a time on purpose: the goal is for the customer to walk away thinking yes or no, not this, or that, or maybe? Two options on screen at once narrows the choice down to a clean winner without overloading the decision; the rep can swap the losing option for a different alternative on the fly if the conversation calls for it.
The Options overview walks through option creation; the related articles cover the option card and breakdown tree, discounts, financing, and minimum overrides.
Screenshot coming soonMac — Options tab with multiple options/screenshots/support-getting-started-your-first-appointment-04-mac.png
Screenshot coming sooniPad — Options tab with multiple options/screenshots/support-getting-started-your-first-appointment-04-ipad.png
Step 6 — Summary and close
Open Summary, review the contract preview, and confirm the totals and wills read the way you want them to in front of the customer. If they're ready to sign, capture the signature and tap Close appointment. Closing the appointment generates the contract PDF and updates the customer account.
The Closing the appointment article covers what gets locked at close and how to back out if the customer pulls the signature, and Generating the contract PDF covers what controls the PDF that lands in the customer's inbox.
Screenshot coming soonMac — Summary tab with contract preview/screenshots/support-getting-started-your-first-appointment-05-mac.png
Screenshot coming sooniPad — Summary tab with contract preview/screenshots/support-getting-started-your-first-appointment-05-ipad.png
What's next
- Generating the contract PDF covers what controls the PDF that lands in the customer's inbox.
- Set up your catalog before your real first appointment by creating products.
- Adding a customer account covers the account-side form in depth, if you skipped it in Step 0.