Complete Onboarding Guide

Onboarding takes about 1–2 minutes if you run a shop, market stall, food stand, salon or repair business, or 5–10 minutes for every other business type. The very first question — what kind of business you run — is what decides which of two tracks you get:

• The POS track — gets your till running today, with a 30-day free trial.
• The Business Intelligence track — covers your sector, export markets and connected data, ending in a Business Pulse score and Daily Brief.

This guide walks through both, plus what to do if you get stuck partway through.

Tap the one option that best fits. The full list: Market stall, Restaurant / Food stand, Shop / Kiosk, Salon / Barbershop, Repair Shop, Courier / Delivery, Ecommerce, Services, Distributor, Manufacturer, Importer, Exporter.

The first five — Market stall, Restaurant/Food stand, Shop/Kiosk, Salon/Barbershop, Repair Shop — are the POS track: pick one of these if you take payments day-to-day and need a till. Everything else is the Business Intelligence track.

If nothing fits cleanly, pick the closest match — you can add more detail from Account Settings later — or tap Ask on WhatsApp right on that screen to ask us directly before choosing.

AskBiz detects your country automatically — from the phone number you signed up with, or your device location if you signed up by email — and shows it back as one confirm card. Tap Yes, that's right, or Change if it guessed wrong. This sets your currency: AskBiz has dedicated currency support across 147 countries, with particular depth across East, West, Central, North and Southern Africa as well as Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. There's no separate currency-only step — it's set from your country automatically.

Pick one of these five and onboarding ends right after Step 2 — no business-name typing, no sector picker, no data-connection step. You land on a "Nice work" screen with one big button: Start free — up to 5 staff, no card required, full POS access for 30 days. Tap it and AskBiz creates a 4-digit till PIN for you on the spot — it's shown once, so note it down. Either button on this screen takes you straight to your real POS dashboard — there's no separate setup wizard to work through first. The first time you land there, a short guided tour walks you through adding your first staff member: their name, a phone number or email, and a 4-digit PIN they'll use to log in at the till. Skip tour is always available if you'd rather do that later. Prefer to hold off on starting the trial clock? The secondary button, Set up my till, skips the trial claim — you'll land on the same "Start free" screen instead, since the dashboard only unlocks once a trial or paid plan is active.

Courier, Ecommerce, Services, Distributor, Manufacturer, Importer and Exporter get the fuller flow:

• Business Sector — shown only to Ecommerce, Distributor, Manufacturer, Importer and Exporter. Choose your product category (Fashion & Apparel, Beauty & Personal Care, Health & Wellness, Food & Beverage, Home & Garden, Electronics & Tech, Sports & Outdoor, Luxury & Premium, Kids & Toys, Pet Products, Arts & Crafts, or B2B/Industrial).
• Factory Type — shown only to Manufacturers, right after Business Sector. Pick which of AskBiz's 12 factory-type categories matches what you produce (or Other). Skippable, and changeable any time from Settings → Localisation → Factory Settings — see Choosing Your Factory Type.
• Export Markets — shown only to Exporters, Ecommerce and Importers. Pick your active markets, or Not yet — show me opportunities for recommendations instead.
• Connect Your Data — a quick-start version of the full /sources page, with five one-tap options (QuickBooks, Stripe, Amazon FBA, Google Sheets, TikTok Shop). Skippable — the full connector list on /sources is much larger.

Once at least one source is connected, AskBiz runs your first analysis and shows your Business Pulse score, any anomaly alerts, and your first Daily Brief.

Every screen has a small speaker icon (bottom right) that reads the current step aloud — useful if you'd rather listen than read. On the business-type screen specifically, tap Ask on WhatsApp if none of the options feel right. On the final screen of the POS track, there's a Join WhatsApp group card for anything that comes up after you're in. Stuck somewhere else, or on the Business Intelligence track? Email our support team.