How to Set Up Jobber in a Weekend

By the Kore Komfort Editorial Team | Last Updated: May 25, 2026 | ~11 min read

The contractors who get the most out of Jobber are not the ones who spent the most time setting it up. They’re the ones who set it up in the right order. The platform is intuitive enough that most people can figure it out eventually, but “eventually” usually means three months of using it half-configured while the features that would have saved you the most time sit unused in settings you never opened.

This guide gives you the right order. Work through these steps in sequence and you’ll have a fully functional Jobber setup by the end of the weekend. Not a half-configured system you’re still tweaking six months later — a working operation where quotes go out professionally, jobs get scheduled, invoices go out automatically, and the follow-up runs without you thinking about it.

If you’re still evaluating whether Jobber is the right platform, read our full Jobber review first. If you’ve already decided and you have your trial or subscription active, start here.

Before You Start: What to Gather

Thirty minutes of preparation before you open Jobber saves two hours of interruptions during setup. Have these ready before you begin:

Your company logo. A PNG file with a transparent background works best. At minimum, a clean JPG at least 400 pixels wide. This goes on every customer-facing document Jobber produces — quotes, invoices, booking confirmations, the Client Hub. If your logo file is buried on a hard drive from three years ago, find it now.

Your pricing list. Write down your ten most common job types and what you charge for each. If you charge by the hour, your labor rates. If you charge flat rates, the price per service. This becomes the foundation of your products and services library and it’s what makes quote creation fast. Don’t try to build this from memory during setup — pull your last ten invoices and use those numbers as the starting point.

Your existing client list. If you have client names, addresses, phone numbers, and emails in a spreadsheet, Google Contacts, or even a paper list, have it accessible. Jobber can import clients from a CSV file which is faster than entering them one by one. Export whatever you have into a spreadsheet before you start.

Your QuickBooks Online login. If you use QuickBooks Online and want to connect it to Jobber, have your login credentials ready. You’ll set up the integration near the end of the process after your client list is clean.

Your standard terms and conditions. Any language you put on quotes and invoices — payment terms, warranty language, scope exclusions — have it written out. You’ll add it to your default quote and invoice footer during setup so it appears automatically on every document without retyping it.

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Step 1: Account Setup and Branding

Time: 20 to 30 minutes.

Start in Settings. Work through every section in the left navigation of the Settings menu before you touch anything else in the platform. Most contractors skip this and spend weeks wondering why their invoices look generic or their email notifications come from a Jobber address instead of their own.

Company details. Your legal business name, address, phone number, and website. This populates automatically on every customer document. Get it right once here and you never have to think about it again.

Branding. Upload your logo and set your primary brand color. The color appears on buttons and accents throughout the Client Hub and on customer-facing documents. Use your exact hex code if you have one. This is the single fastest setup task with the highest visible impact on how professional your business looks to customers.

Payment settings. If you want to accept online payments — and you should — set up Jobber Payments here. You’ll need your business bank account information. Enabling online payments is what makes the “pay now” button appear on invoices and in the Client Hub. Without it, customers have to mail a check or call in a card number, both of which delay payment.

Email and notification settings. Review which automated emails Jobber sends to customers and when. The defaults are reasonable but spend five minutes confirming that the content and timing match how you want your business to communicate. On the Grow plan, you can customize the email copy. On lower plans you can toggle notifications on and off.

User accounts. If you have employees or technicians who will use Jobber, set up their accounts now. Assign the appropriate permission level for each person — field staff typically get the technician role, which limits what they can see and edit without restricting their daily workflow.

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Step 2: Build Your Products and Services Library

Time: 30 to 60 minutes.

This is the highest-leverage setup task in Jobber and the one most contractors rush through or skip entirely. Your products and services library is the searchable catalog you pull from every time you build a quote. Build it well once and every quote you send for the next five years is faster and more consistent.

Go to the Products and Services section and add every service you regularly quote. For each entry:

Name it clearly. “HVAC tune-up, single unit, gas furnace” is a better name than “tune-up.” When you’re building a quote in a customer’s driveway on your phone, you need to find the right item fast. Specific names search faster and leave less room for error.

Write a complete description. The description appears on the customer-facing quote line item. Write it as if a customer who doesn’t know the trade will read it: what is included, what the scope covers, what it does not cover. A well-written description reduces “what exactly am I paying for?” calls significantly.

Set your standard price. Enter your typical price for this service. You can adjust it when you create a quote if the specific job warrants a different number, but having the standard price pre-loaded means you’re editing rather than calculating from scratch under pressure.

Add your labor rates separately. If you charge labor by the hour, add a “Labor” line item with your hourly rate. Having it in the library means you can add labor hours to any quote without retyping the rate every time.

Build your library for at least your ten most common job types before you move on. You can add to it anytime, but having the core services in place is what makes the rest of the setup pay off quickly. For more on using the library effectively when building quotes, see our guide on how to create quotes in Jobber.

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Step 3: Add Your Clients

Time: 20 to 60 minutes depending on your existing client list size.

You have two options for getting clients into Jobber: import via CSV or enter them manually. For any list larger than ten clients, use the import.

CSV import. Go to Clients, then Import Clients. Jobber provides a template CSV file that shows the required column structure. Copy your existing client data into that format — name, address, phone, email — and upload. Jobber matches the columns and creates the client records. For most contractors, this takes 20 to 30 minutes including formatting the spreadsheet.

Manual entry. For new businesses with few existing clients, or for adding clients one at a time going forward, use the New Client button. Enter name, service address, billing address if different, phone, and email. The service address is important — it’s what populates the scheduling map and the GPS dispatch view.

Clean your list before you import. Duplicate client records in Jobber create problems, and they create especially painful problems if you later connect QuickBooks and the sync creates duplicate customers in your accounting software too. Before you import, scan your list for duplicate entries, outdated addresses, and missing contact information. Ten minutes of cleaning now prevents a messy reconciliation later.

Add equipment records for relevant clients. If you’re in HVAC, plumbing, appliance repair, or any trade where you service specific equipment at a property, Jobber lets you attach equipment records to a client. Make or model, serial number, installation date, service notes. Add this for your existing maintenance contract clients while you’re in their records. Your technicians will thank you on the next service call.

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Step 4: Configure Your Quote and Invoice Settings

Time: 20 to 30 minutes.

Go back to Settings and find the Quote and Invoice configuration sections. A few decisions here have an outsized effect on how professional your documents look and how smoothly the approval and payment process works.

Quote expiration default. Set a default expiration period for new quotes. Fourteen to thirty days is standard for most home service work. This appears automatically on every quote you create and creates urgency without you having to think about it each time.

Default quote footer text. This is where your standard terms go — payment terms, warranty language, scope exclusions, cancellation policy. Write it once here and it appears at the bottom of every quote automatically. Include your payment due date expectation (net 14, net 30, or due on receipt are all common), any deposit requirement, and any standard limitation of liability language your business uses.

Invoice payment terms. Set your default payment terms — how many days after invoice the payment is due. This number appears on every invoice and feeds into the automated follow-up sequence. If you want to be paid on receipt, set it to zero. If you give customers two weeks, set it to fourteen.

Default invoice footer text. Similar to the quote footer, add any standard language that appears on every invoice. A thank you note, instructions for payment methods you accept, or contact information for billing questions are all appropriate here.

Deposit settings. If you require deposits on larger jobs, configure the deposit options on the Connect plan and above. You can set a default deposit percentage or dollar amount that appears as an option when you send quotes. Customers pay the deposit when they approve, which confirms the booking without requiring a separate follow-up.

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Step 5: Set Up Your Automation Sequences

Time: 20 to 30 minutes.

This is the most commonly skipped step in Jobber setup and the one that delivers the most ongoing value. Most contractors open Jobber, figure out how to schedule a job and send an invoice, and call it done. They never touch the automation settings. Six months later they’re still manually following up on quotes and chasing invoices by hand while the platform sits there capable of doing both automatically.

Go to the Automations section in Settings and configure each of the following:

Appointment reminders. Set Jobber to automatically send a reminder to the customer 24 hours before their appointment and again 1 to 2 hours before. This eliminates a significant portion of no-shows and “is someone still coming today?” calls. Configure both email and text if you have the customer’s mobile number.

Quote follow-up. Set an automatic follow-up message to go out three to five days after a quote is sent if it hasn’t been approved. The message can be simple: a reminder that the quote is waiting for their review with a direct link back to it. This alone improves quote close rates for most contractors who implement it because quotes stop dying silently in inboxes.

Invoice follow-up. Configure an automatic reminder to go out three days after an invoice is sent if it remains unpaid, and a second reminder at seven days. Each reminder includes the Client Hub payment link so the customer can pay immediately from the message. This sequence eliminates most of the manual invoice chasing that eats time and strains client relationships. Our guide on how to stop chasing unpaid invoices covers this in detail.

Job follow-up and review requests. On the Connect plan and above, Jobber can automatically send a follow-up message after a job is completed asking how the work went. You can include a link to your Google review page. This is passive review generation that runs every time a job closes without any manual work on your part.

Past client re-engagement. Configure a message to go out to clients who haven’t booked in a certain number of months. Seasonal businesses especially benefit from this — a spring tune-up reminder sent to every HVAC client from the previous season fills the schedule before the busy season without a single outbound call.

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Step 6: Connect QuickBooks Online

Time: 30 to 45 minutes (Connect plan and above only).

If you use QuickBooks Online and you’re on the Connect plan or above, connect it now — after your client list is clean and in Jobber, not before. The order matters because the sync will attempt to match Jobber clients to QuickBooks customers. A messy Jobber client list before the sync creates a messy QuickBooks customer list that’s harder to fix after the fact.

Go to Apps in Jobber and find the QuickBooks Online integration. Click Connect and follow the OAuth prompts to authorize the connection. Once connected, Jobber will guide you through mapping your products and services to QuickBooks income accounts. This mapping step is where most sync problems originate — take the time to do it carefully rather than accepting all the defaults.

After connecting, run a test by creating a dummy invoice in Jobber and confirming it appears correctly in QuickBooks within a few minutes. If the test invoice syncs cleanly, your configuration is correct. If something looks wrong, fix it before you run a month of real invoices through the system.

For the complete setup walkthrough including the most common configuration mistakes and how to avoid them, see our dedicated Jobber QuickBooks integration guide.

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Step 7: Set Up the Mobile App and Test the Field Workflow

Time: 30 to 45 minutes.

Download the Jobber app on your phone and on any technician phones that will use it. Log in with each user’s credentials and confirm the permissions are correct — technicians should be able to see their schedule, check in and out of jobs, add photos and notes, and view client information. They should not be able to see pricing, financial data, or other clients’ information unless your business model requires it.

Run the full field workflow end to end as a test before you go live with a real customer:

Create a test client. Use your own name and contact information so the test notifications go to you rather than a real customer.

Send a test quote. Build a quote from your products and services library, add an optional add-on, and send it to yourself. Open the Client Hub link from the email or text. Approve the quote as if you were the customer. Confirm that Jobber creates the job automatically.

Schedule the test job. Assign it to yourself or a technician from the scheduling calendar. Confirm the appointment reminder goes out as expected.

Complete the job from the mobile app. Check in, add a photo, add a note, and mark the job complete. Confirm the job updates in the desktop view.

Send the test invoice. Generate the invoice from the completed job, send it to yourself, and pay it through the Client Hub link. Confirm the payment posts to Jobber and, if QuickBooks is connected, that the payment syncs to QuickBooks correctly.

If every step of that test runs cleanly, your setup is complete and you’re ready for real customers. If something breaks or looks wrong, fix it on the test record before it happens on a live job.

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What to Do in Week One

Setup is done. Now you need to build the habit of running everything through Jobber rather than reverting to old patterns under pressure.

Quote every job through Jobber, no exceptions. Even if it feels faster to text a number to a customer, send the quote through Jobber. The habit builds quickly and the Client Hub approval experience is worth more than the thirty seconds you save on the first few jobs.

Add every new client to Jobber before you schedule their job. Not after. The client record is what ties together the quote, the job, the invoice, and the payment history. A job scheduled without a client record is a loose thread.

Mark jobs complete in the app the same day they’re done. This is the trigger for invoice generation. A job that sits at “in progress” in Jobber doesn’t generate an invoice, which means it doesn’t get paid. Build the habit of marking complete before you leave the job site.

Send invoices within 24 hours of job completion. Jobber makes this a one-click process from the completed job record. The faster the invoice goes out, the faster it gets paid and the more connected the customer feels between the work that was done and the payment request.

Do a quick review at the end of each week. Check for open quotes older than your expiration window, invoices unpaid past your payment terms, and any jobs that were completed but not invoiced. Five minutes on Friday afternoon keeps your pipeline clean and your cash flow predictable.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to set up Jobber?

Most home service contractors can complete a full Jobber setup in four to six hours of focused time. The variables are how many clients you’re importing, how many products and services you need to add to your library, and whether you’re connecting QuickBooks. A solo operator starting fresh with no existing client list can be fully operational in under three hours. A business with 200 existing clients and an active QuickBooks file is looking at six to eight hours including the QuickBooks sync setup and testing.

Can I set up Jobber during the free trial?

Yes, and you should. The 14-day free trial includes full access to the Grow plan, which means every feature covered in this guide is available to set up and test before you pay for anything. Use the trial to complete the full setup, run a few real jobs through the system, and confirm that the platform fits your workflow before you choose a plan. Our guide on what to test during your Jobber free trial helps you get the most out of those two weeks.

What is the most important thing to set up first in Jobber?

Your products and services library. Everything else in Jobber — quotes, invoices, job records — gets built from that library. A well-built library makes every downstream task faster and more consistent. Contractors who rush through this step spend months creating quotes manually instead of pulling from a clean, searchable catalog. Spend the time here first and the rest of the setup pays off faster.

Should I connect QuickBooks before or after adding my clients?

After. Add and clean your Jobber client list first, then connect QuickBooks. The sync will attempt to match Jobber clients to QuickBooks customers. If your Jobber client list has duplicates or incomplete records when the sync runs, those problems carry over into QuickBooks and are harder to fix after the fact. A clean Jobber client list going into the QuickBooks connection produces a clean sync. See our Jobber QuickBooks integration guide for the complete setup process.

What Jobber plan should I start on?

For most home service businesses, the Connect plan at $119/month is the right starting point. It includes QuickBooks Online integration, automated follow-up sequences, and deposit collection at quote approval — three features that deliver meaningful ROI for any business doing consistent volume. The Core plan at $39/month works for solo operators who don’t need QuickBooks sync and are comfortable without automation. The Grow plan adds quote conversion optimization tools and additional reporting. Our Jobber pricing breakdown covers every feature at every tier so you can make that call with the full picture.