Setup and data import, in a chat

Onboarding Hub for Field Service Software

The Onboarding Hub is the page where a new Field Ascend account gets set up and its old data brought across. It is a chat with an assistant, beside a board of cards that show what is done and what is waiting on you. Drop in a spreadsheet and the assistant imports it. Ask for a setting, a price list or a new colleague and it makes the change once you have said yes. There is no setup fee.

Field Ascend is field service management software priced per user, and the Hub comes with that price. Everything happens in writing, on the card it belongs to, so you can pick it up tomorrow and see what was agreed.

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Onboarding Hub board in Field Ascend with cards for a customer import and a price list setup, each with a progress bar, and a Needed from you list above them — The board: one card per piece of work, and what is waiting on you

What you see after you sign up

Sign up and a short setup wizard asks the basics about your company. When it finishes, an Onboarding item appears in the menu. That is the Hub.

The page is a board. One chat sits at the top, where you ask for things in plain words. Below it, a list called Needed from you gathers every step that is waiting on you, so you can tell at a glance whether a delay is yours or ours. Below that, each piece of work on your account, such as importing your customers, setting up price lists or building an invoice template, is a card with its steps and a progress bar.

Cards are shared with the people in your office who can open the dashboard, except cards about payroll, which only people allowed to see staff pay can open. Chats are personal. Account masters can see everyone's, and so can anyone you give that permission to. The board is for work on your account. It is not a project plan for your business.

Watch the Onboarding Hub work

This six-minute video shows the board, the Needed from you list and the progress bar. Then the assistant adds a job status, imports a spreadsheet of customers, sites and contacts, and passes a feature request it cannot do yet to our team, all in writing. More walkthroughs are on the training videos page.

How the assistant imports a spreadsheet

Drop a CSV or Excel file into the chat. The assistant reads the columns and tells you what it found, in plain words: how many customers, how many sites, which dates look odd, which rows have no postcode. Then it asks only what it cannot work out, usually two or three things, such as which column holds the site name or what your old statuses should become here.

Next comes a plan and a preview with the numbers. Nothing is imported until you say yes to that plan. By default it then imports the first 20 rows and stops, so you can open your account and look at real records. Say "do the rest" and it carries on in the background. If you would rather skip the pause, say so when you agree.

A row it cannot place, such as a site with no address, is parked and listed on the card instead of being guessed. If some rows are already in your account, it asks whether to fill in their blanks or leave them alone. It never overwrites anything you have typed.

Onboarding assistant chat showing an import plan for a customer spreadsheet, with row counts, two questions to answer and a request to confirm the first 20 rows — The plan and preview, before a single row is imported

What it can import, and what it cannot

Customers, sites, contacts, equipment, job history and stock are the usual starting set. The assistant also takes suppliers, quotes, vehicles, tools, PPM contracts and invoice history, and one file can hold several kinds of record. Dates are read in your company's date order. A status or category it does not recognise comes back to you as a question, not as a new record it invents.

A messy file is fixed before it is imported. If the headings start on row 4, names and phone numbers share a column, or the workbook has several sheets, the assistant writes you a cleaned copy to download, tells you what it changed, and takes that copy through the same plan and preview. Your original is never touched.

It reads spreadsheets and nothing else. A PDF, or a scan of a paper register, goes to our team in writing, and they tell you what can be done with it.

Finished import on its card in the Onboarding Hub, listing the records created, the parked rows and the undo option — A finished import: what was created, what was parked, and how to undo it

Check the result, or undo it

When the last row is in, the import reads your account back and compares it with the plan you agreed. The result lands on the card: how many records were created, how many existing ones had blanks filled, which rows were parked and why. If a number does not add up, the card says so instead of reporting success.

Changed your mind? Say "undo that import". It removes the records the import created. Anything you have started using since stays, and the blank fields it filled on records you already had are left as they are. The card reports what was removed, what was kept, and how many blank fields it had filled and of which kinds.

Can it pull customers from your accounting package?

Yes, if your books are in Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage Accounting, Zoho Books or FreeAgent. Connect the package first under Setup, Accounts Integrations. Then ask the assistant to bring your data across. It tells you how many customers, parts and past invoices it found and how many are already linked, and it waits for your yes. FreeAgent brings customers only.

It only reads. Nothing is written back to your accounting package. A customer that matches exactly is linked, one that is not in Field Ascend yet is created, and similar names are left for you to decide on the import page. QuickBooks locations come in as sites under their customer. Past invoices arrive as read-only history. The pull works through them a year at a time and shows its progress on its own card. Sage 200 and Sage 50 cannot be read this way, so use a file for those. Once you are live, the day-to-day side is on the accounting integrations page.

What else will it set up for you?

Ask it to add a job status, switch a setting on, add a custom field, invite a colleague, change a price list or reword an email, or to start from a ready-made starter pack. It always works in the same order. It reads your account, tells you what it would change, waits for your yes, makes the change, and reads it back to you. Ask why something behaves the way it does and it looks up which setting, or which person's permission, controls it.

Documents work the same way on a card of their own. Say "make our invoice like this" and attach your old PDF, a photo or a description, and a designer builds the template. The card shows a printed version, you ask for changes in the chat, and the template only goes live when you approve it.

New colleagues get the usual email to choose their own password. Nobody types a password into the chat, and the assistant never asks for one. A few things stay yours to do: connecting an accounting package or Stripe, buying text message credits, accepting terms, creating API keys, and adding paid extras or users. When one of those comes up, the assistant tells you which page and which button.

What does onboarding cost?

Whatever field service management software you are comparing, check three things about onboarding before you sign: whether it costs extra, who migrates your data and how many files that covers, and whether the help is live and billed by the hour or written down.

Field Ascend has no setup fee. The assistant does the import, and everything is in writing. The Hub is included in the standard price of £10 per user per month, with a three-user minimum, a 30-day free trial and no annual contract.

No fee does not mean no effort. You still export the data from your old system, and you still answer the assistant's questions about what your columns mean. What you do not need is a separate onboarding invoice or a slot in someone's diary. A larger rollout that needs tailored onboarding is what the Custom plan on the pricing page is for. If you are still working out what you need, what field service management software is is a good place to start.

Questions we get before anyone imports a file

Is there a fee for onboarding?

No setup fee. The Onboarding Hub is part of the standard per-user price, £10 per user per month with a three-user minimum. Larger organisations that want tailored onboarding or rollout planning can ask about the Custom plan on the pricing page.

What kinds of file can the assistant import?

CSV and Excel spreadsheets. A messy file is cleaned into a copy first, and your original is left alone. PDFs and scans cannot be imported, so those go to our team in writing.

Will an import overwrite what is already in my account?

No. If a row matches a record you already have, the assistant asks whether to fill in its blanks or leave it exactly as it is. Nothing you have typed is overwritten either way, and the card reports how many existing records had blanks filled.

Can I undo an import?

Yes. Say "undo that import" and it removes the records the import created. Anything you have started using since stays, and blank fields it filled on existing records are left as they are. The card reports what was removed, what was kept and how many blanks it had filled.

Is onboarding done on calls, or in writing?

In writing. You work in the Hub chat and on the cards, so there is a record of what was agreed and changed. The training videos cover the product itself, and a question the assistant cannot answer goes to our team, who reply in the same thread.

What if the assistant cannot do what I need?

It says so and passes the request to our team from the same chat. A bug is checked by our team, and a confirmed one gets a card you can follow. A feature request gets a card too, with our answer, the reason, and a workaround where there is one.

Start with one file

Sign up, finish the wizard, then drop your customer list into the Hub chat and look at the plan before anything is imported. From £10 per user per month, three users minimum, 30-day trial, no setup fee.

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