Before You Start with Paperwork

A new organisation on Paperwork starts with no tax rates, no containers, no suppliers and no document numbering. Paperwork has no setup wizard, so this section is the setup guide. Follow the steps in order and you will go from "Paperwork has just been switched on" to your first job invoiced correctly.

This page covers how Paperwork is switched on, who should do the setup, and the full checklist so you can see everything that is coming.

Before you start

You need two things before the first step:

• An Account sign-in for your organisation. If your organisation is not in Account yet, create or claim it first — see Claim your organisation.
• Paperwork switched on for your organisation. That is the first task below.

There is nothing earlier in this section to read first. The person who does the setup should be an organisation Owner, as explained under "Choose who sets Paperwork up".

Get Paperwork switched on for your organisation

Paperwork is enabled by Dsposal. You cannot buy it yourself. On the Billing page in Account (visible to organisation Owners), an organisation without Paperwork shows a Paperwork plan card marked Not enabled, with an Add Paperwork button. Clicking it only shows a Coming soon message, because self-serve upgrades are not available yet.

Ask Dsposal to enable Paperwork

Email [email protected] with your organisation's name and how many people will use Paperwork. Dsposal switches it on and sets the number of seats.

Check that the plan has appeared

Open Billing in Account. The Paperwork plan card now shows User seats, with a count of allocated and pending seats and the cap.

Each person who uses Paperwork needs a seat of their own, and pending invitations count towards the cap. You hand out seats in Account — the next step covers it.

If you open Paperwork before it is switched on, you see Paperwork isn't enabled here. If it is switched on but you have no seat, you see You need a Paperwork seat. Neither is an error — they are the next step telling you what to do.

Choose who sets Paperwork up

The person who sets Paperwork up should be an organisation Owner. Two parts of Paperwork are open to organisation Owners only: References, where you build your lists, and Settings, where you choose your numbering and rules. You cannot give that access through a role.

The Paperwork Owner role is a different thing. It is a role inside Paperwork with every Paperwork permission, but it does not open References or Settings. The organisation Owner and the Paperwork Owner are often the same person, but they do not have to be. See Members and Roles for the difference.

The person setting up also needs a Paperwork seat of their own. That is the first thing step 2 covers.

Follow the setup checklist

Do the steps in this order. Each one builds on the ones above it. Required means Paperwork blocks you, or your customers receive wrong or incomplete documents, without it. Recommended means everything works but your results are poorer without it. Optional means you can leave it until you need it.

#	Step	Level	Why it matters
1	Before you start (this page)	Required	Paperwork has to be switched on before anything else can happen
2	Set up your organisation and team	Required	Nobody can open Paperwork without a seat, and the first seat becomes the Paperwork Owner
3	Add your company profile and logo	Required	Without it, your quotes and invoices go out with blanks and the Dsposal logo
4	Choose your core settings	Required	The Sales & Job prefix blocks every sale until it is set, and your bank details and rules shape every document
5	Set up tax rates, payment terms and nominal codes	Required	Without tax rates invoices carry no VAT, and without payment terms they carry no due date
6	Set up your operations lists	Required	Every waste line needs a container and every extra needs a unit type
7	Add your vehicles and drivers	Required	A job cannot be booked in Scheduling without a driver and a vehicle
8	Add your suppliers and transport	Required	Every job needs a carrier and a disposal site, unless it is marked as no transport
9	Add your customers and sites	Required	Jobs need listed customers and sites, and these are where your VAT and payment terms start
10	Set up email	Optional	Without it, email goes from Dsposal's address instead of your own domain
11	Run your first real job	Recommended	It proves the whole chain, from quote to invoice, while the setup is fresh
12	Connect Xero, DWT and the customer portal	Optional	You only need these if you use them, and they are safer once the basics are proven

See how the steps depend on each other

The order is not arbitrary. Some lists cannot be saved until another list exists:

• A nominal code needs an account type.
• A container needs a container type.
• A vehicle needs only a registration, but picking a vehicle type fills in its CO₂ and cost per mile for you.
• Every extra on a sale needs a unit type.
• Every waste line on a sale or job needs a container.
• A job needs a listed customer, a listed site, and a carrier and disposal site from your suppliers.
• Booking a job needs a driver contact and a vehicle.
• An invoice takes its VAT from the site, then the customer, then the nominal code's default tax rate — and no VAT at all if none of them has one.
• Xero needs every nominal code and tax rate mapped, so keep those tidy before you connect it.

Step 12 comes last on purpose. Connecting Xero or Digital Waste Tracking before you have run a first job risks posting a test job to a live system.

See what Paperwork starts with, and what is empty

Ready-made:

• The national code lists, which you can browse but not change: EWC codes, recovery and disposal codes, hazardous properties, SIC codes, DWT container types and POP names, physical states, vehicle MOT and tax statuses, and weight and volume types.
• The Paperwork Owner and Viewer roles. The first Paperwork seat in an organisation gets the Owner role.
• A default sales pipeline for Opportunities, created the first time your organisation needs one.

Empty:

• Every list you maintain yourself — tax rates, payment terms, account types, nominal codes, containers and container types, unit types, departments, siting actions, extra types, vehicles and the rest. See Reference Data for the full set.
• Your Sales & Job prefix, which has no default.
• Your bank details, invoice terms and email settings.
• Customers, suppliers, contacts and sites.

Your company profile — name, address, logo and document colours — is not stored in Paperwork at all. It lives on the Company Profile page in Dashboard, which is why step 3 sends you there.

If you skip this

Skipping this page does not block anything by itself, but skipping what it describes does:

• No Paperwork switch — Paperwork shows Paperwork isn't enabled here and nobody can use it.
• No seats — people who open Paperwork see You need a Paperwork seat.
• Starting without reading the checklist — the failures are mostly silent. Invoices go out with no VAT, no due date or the Dsposal logo, and nothing tells you.

Check it worked

• Open Billing in Account. The Paperwork plan card shows User seats rather than Not enabled.
• Open Paperwork from the app switcher in Account or Dashboard. If you have a seat, you land in Paperwork. If you see You need a Paperwork seat, that is expected at this stage — step 2 fixes it.

What to do next

Step 2, Set up your organisation and team, takes your own Paperwork seat and gives your colleagues theirs. If you want an overview of how the app fits together first, read Introduction to Paperwork:

• Introduction to Paperwork
• Members and Roles
• Reference Data