Step-by-step guides

Getting started

The first few minutes on a new account.

1. 1Sign up and pick a plan — every plan starts with a free 14-day trial, and you can switch tiers or cancel anytime from Billing.
2. 2Connect a POS if you use one — Square, Clover, or Toast, all self-serve today — then map it to the right location from Events Hub → Locations so it can start pulling in sales automatically. No POS at all — including cash-only? Skip this and log sales manually or by text through Go instead.
3. 3Set your recurring estimates in Settings — Overhead, Equipment, Insurance, and Salaried Labor. These are optional, but the more accurate they are, the more accurate Events Hub’s rolling P&L will be.

Tip: You don’t need a POS, a filled-out Settings page, or a single receipt logged to see value on day one — Go alone (texting in a sale or expense) is enough to start building a real P&L.

1. Account settings

Your business name, login, and profile — all editable from Settings.

1. 1Update your business name from the Profile card in Settings — tap Edit, type it, and it saves instantly.
2. 2No profile photo yet? Pick a fallback color for your account icon from the same card, or upload a real photo instead.
3. 3Change your login email from the Login & security card — you’ll get a confirmation link at the new address first, and nothing changes on your account until you click it.
4. 4Change your password from the same card — you’ll need your current password, plus a confirm step, before it actually updates.

2. Backroom — know your costs

Turn a receipt into a categorized expense in seconds.

1. 1From Backroom, tap Take a photo (or upload an existing image) of a receipt.
2. 2Scanning a long receipt? The camera flow accumulates up to 3 photos of the same receipt and sends them together — no need to crop or stitch anything yourself.
3. 3VendiQ reads every line item and sorts it into COGS (cost of goods sold) or Supplies automatically. Review the split and adjust any line before it saves — nothing posts silently.
4. 4Need to fix something later? Every logged item is editable from the same list — amount, category, and date can all be changed after the fact.
5. 5Export anytime with the Export button on the Backroom list — CSV or Excel, pre-filtered to whatever search/date range you already have set. (Exports unlock once you’re on a paid plan — they’re not available during a trial.)
6. 6Bringing in historical purchase records instead of starting fresh? See "Bringing in your past data" below.

Tip: You can also text a receipt photo straight to your Go number instead of opening the app — it lands in Backroom the same way.

3. Events Hub — profitability per Setup

A Setup is one instance of you doing business — a market day, a pop-up, a single shift.

1. 1From Events Hub, use Add a Setup and give it a name (e.g. "Saturday Farmers Market") and a date.
2. 2Costs and sales logged near that date attribute to the Setup automatically — nothing extra to tag by hand in the common case. Anything that doesn’t land near an event yet still counts toward your rolling P&L, from the "Texted-in, not linked to an event" list — attach it to a Setup whenever you get to it.
3. 3If a location is mapped to a connected POS, VendiQ can auto-detect a Setup starting on its own once real sales activity begins there — reply CONFIRM to the text it sends, or ignore it and it still tracks either way.
4. 4Open any Setup’s Event Scorecard to see every expense/sale line behind its totals — edit an amount or category, or move a misattributed line to a different Setup, right from that view.
5. 5Use the separate Event Performance page to compare profitability across locations and decide which recurring markets or venues are actually worth re-booking.

Tip: No POS connected? A manual sale entry (or a quick text through Go) attributes to a Setup the same way — your P&L is never blocked on having a POS.

4. Go — text your books in

For when you’re on your feet all day and the app isn’t open.

1. 1Go is included free on Plus and Enterprise, and a $15/mo add-on on Lite. Set up your number from Settings → Go & integrations (see below).
2. 2Text a receipt photo, a voice memo, or plain text like "booth fee $50 cash" or "$612 sales today" — all three route the same way, into Backroom or Events Hub depending on what you sent.
3. 3Every text gets a real reply back confirming what was logged, or asking which event to attach it to if more than one is currently open.
4. 4Made a mistake? Reply UNDO within 10 minutes to remove your most recent logged item, or FIX to correct it in place — e.g. "fix category supplies".
5. 5Texting near an event? Anything sent from 8 hours before it starts through 4 hours after it ends attributes to that event automatically.

5. Preferences — margin and overhead

Two settings that shape how your numbers are read, not what they include.

1. 1Set a target margin percentage in Settings → Preferences — it colors your home Dashboard’s daily Net Margin green, amber, or red against that goal.
2. 2Add recurring cost estimates — Overhead, Equipment, Insurance, and Salaried labor — and they’re folded into Events Hub’s rolling P&L automatically, scaled to whichever date range you’re viewing there.
3. 3Both are optional and can be updated anytime — rough numbers are genuinely fine to start with.

Tip: Casual, day-of help you pay in cash belongs logged as an expense on that event through Go — not folded into Salaried labor here, which is for regular, ongoing pay.

6. Go & integrations — technical setup

Everything needed to make Go and your POS actually work: phone numbers and payment connections.

1. 1Add a phone number from Settings → Go & integrations, with a label if more than one person will text in from a booth or shift — you’ll need to check a consent box before it’s active.
2. 2Connect Square or Clover with one click — you’ll sign into your real account on their own page, and VendiQ never sees your password.
3. 3Toast works differently: generate your own API credentials in your Toast back office (requires RMS Essentials or higher) and paste them into VendiQ’s Toast form yourself — no one-click sign-in, but still entirely self-serve.
4. 4Only one connected POS is used for syncing sales at a time.

Tip: Stuck generating Toast credentials on their side? Contact Support — we’re happy to walk through it with you.

7. Settings & billing

Everything about your account and your plan lives in one place.

1. 1Track your usage anytime from your account icon (top right) — receipts, texts, photos/voice messages, and Setups, all against your plan’s monthly caps, right there in the dropdown.
2. 2Change or cancel your plan anytime from Billing — no phone call or support ticket required. Upgrading takes effect immediately, with a real preview of what you’ll be charged today before you confirm; downgrading or canceling keeps your current plan active through the end of the billing cycle first.
3. 3Have a promo code? Apply it from Billing — it’s reflected immediately, and you can remove it later if it’s a removable type.
4. 4Your monthly invoice is generated and billed by Stripe — Billing shows a summary and your payment history in-app, with a link out to Stripe for full invoice detail. Need to update your card? Contact Support — there’s no self-serve control for that yet.

8. Refer a friend — earn free months or bill credit

Bring other vendors onto VendiQ and get rewarded once they become a paying subscriber.

1. 1Your personal referral code and link unlock once your own trial converts to a paid plan — find them under Settings → Referrals & data.
2. 2Share your link, or have them enter your code at checkout under "Have a promo or referral code?" when they pick a plan.
3. 3They get a 30-day free trial instead of the standard 14 for using your code.
4. 4Once their trial ends and their first real payment goes through, you're rewarded automatically — a full free month if you're on Lite, or a credit up to $35 toward your next bill if you're on Plus or Enterprise.
5. 5Track signups, conversions, and dollars earned right on the same Settings card — Copy referral link makes sharing a single tap.

Tip: No limit on how many vendors you can refer — every one who converts pays out again.

9. Bringing in your past data

Switching from QuickBooks or a spreadsheet? Bring your history with you instead of starting from zero.

1. 1From Settings → Import your data, upload a QuickBooks export or your own spreadsheet (CSV, XLS, or XLSX, up to 10MB).
2. 2VendiQ reads every tab in the file and automatically sorts each one into Expenses, Sales, Inventory purchases, or Setups/events — you don’t need to have already split anything out by type.
3. 3Nothing saves yet: review each detected sheet first, fix or fill in a row inline (date, amount, category, and so on), delete a row that doesn’t belong, or use "Not right?" to reclassify an entire sheet if it landed under the wrong type.
4. 4The review screen shows exactly how many rows are ready to save and how many would be skipped (a missing date or amount) — fix those first if you want everything included.
5. 5Import each sheet with its own button whenever you’re satisfied with it — sheets save independently, and you can upload another file right after.

Tip: A single import handles a whole year or more of typical QuickBooks history in one pass — for a much larger export, splitting it into a few smaller files works just as well.

10. Feedback & support

Two different things, reached two different ways.

1. 1Click your account icon (top right) and choose Feedback for a bug report or an idea — it goes straight into our internal tracking, not a live chat.
2. 2Need an actual reply from a person? Use Support, in the main navigation or the site footer — that’s a real contact form, separate from Feedback.

Tip: Check the FAQ first — the answer might already be there.

Data & security

Your data is yours — and it’s protected even from VendiQ itself.

1. 1Export Backroom or Events Hub data anytime from either list’s Export button (CSV or Excel, tax-prep-formatted).
2. 2Request a full account data export from Settings — useful ahead of tax season or just to keep your own copy.
3. 3Delete your account from Settings, under Danger Zone. Deletion is scheduled, not immediate, so you have a window to change your mind first.
4. 4Payments are processed by Stripe — VendiQ never sees or stores your full card number — and row-level security means only you can ever access your own account’s data, even at the database level.