Docs

Quick start

Set it up once, then approve. These steps get Bos working alongside you.

1. Connect your inbox. Open Settings, then Integrations, and connect Gmail or Microsoft 365. Its calendar comes with it. Or set up email on your own domain instead.
2. Give it context. Bos reads your recent history and fills in your contacts and companies. Add the files it should know to Files: your terms, your rates, your standard scope of work.
3. Invite your team. Open Settings, then Team.
4. Set your branding. Open Settings, then Organisation. Your logo and colours appear on anything a client sees, including proposals.
5. Let it run. You approve. Bos drafts, triages and chases. Nothing is sent, and no invite goes out, until you approve it.

A good first thing to try: ask Bos to "add Acme as a customer, then draft a proposal for 10 days of consultancy". It creates the record and the proposal and shows you what it did.

Your inbox

BusinessOS connects to Gmail and Microsoft 365 (Outlook) over OAuth. Each account brings its calendar with it.

1. Open Settings, then Integrations. Under Email, choose Gmail for Google Workspace or Outlook for Microsoft 365.
2. Click Connect, sign in with that account and approve the permissions. The same connection covers mail and calendar.
3. The first sync starts straight away and can take a few minutes on a large mailbox. After that, mail syncs in the background.

Reading and replying

Every thread carries a summary, and threads are grouped by contact, company and meeting. Mail from your contacts arrives with a draft reply ready to edit. On any other thread, click Bos: draft reply and Bos writes one in place, using what it knows about the sender.

If you ask Bos to write a message for you ("reply to Acme and say Friday works"), it waits in the Review column on the Tasks board. Approve sends it; Reject discards it and nothing goes out. A reply always goes from the address the conversation came in on.

Remote images stay blocked until you click Load images, because loading them tells the sender you opened the email.

Disconnect an account at any time from the same tab. Mail already synced stays in BusinessOS; nothing new arrives after that.

Email on your own domain

Instead of connecting an outside account, mail to [email protected] can arrive straight in BusinessOS, with no Google or Microsoft account in the middle. We can register a domain for you, or bring one you already own.

1. Open Settings, then Integrations, and click Set up under Email on your own domain. Owners and admins can do this.
2. Choose Find me a domain or I already own one, and enter the Address to use: hello gives you hello@yourdomain.
   • Find me a domain: pick one of the names offered, each shown with its price. We register it and set everything up, and email usually works within minutes.
   • I already own one: enter the domain, click Set up email, and set the two nameservers we show you at whoever you bought it from. This moves all of the domain's DNS to us, not only its email, so talk to us first if your website runs on it. It can take up to 48 hours, and we finish on our own.
3. Setup ends by sending a test message and waiting for it to arrive, so Receiving and sending means mail genuinely works. If it stops, Try again picks up where it left off.
4. Add as many further addresses as you like with Add address, for example accounts@ for invoices. These are immediate. Each sends under its own name, and a reply goes out from the address the conversation came in on.

Contacts and companies

Every person and company you deal with, kept current from email signatures, calendar invites and meeting transcripts. Emails and meetings are attached to the right record, so the history is already there.

1. Open Contacts and click New record. Choose Person or Company, fill in the name and click Create record. Or ask Bos: "add Sarah Chen at Acme as a contact".
2. Link a person to their company with the Company field. The company record then lists its people, and anything filed against either shows in both timelines.
3. Give each contact and company a status (Lead, Active, Overdue or Churned) and a relationship, Customer or Supplier. Use Filter to narrow the list by either.
4. Open a record's Files tab to attach documents from Files, and its Work tab to see every proposal raised for it.

When mail arrives from someone new, Bos proposes them as a contact with details from their signature, and the card waits for your approval. Bos remembers each contact and company and uses that memory when it drafts.

Calendar

Your Gmail or Microsoft 365 calendar, a week at a time. Bos proposes meetings; you approve them before any invite goes out.

1. Ask Bos for a meeting, for example "put a 30 minute call with Sarah in the diary for Thursday afternoon". It tells you which date it picked so you can correct it.
2. Bos drafts the invite and adds a Google Meet or Teams link.
3. The invite waits in the Review column on the Tasks board, showing the time, the guests and the location. Approve puts it in your calendar and sends the invites; Reject discards it and nobody is contacted.

You can also click New event and set it up yourself. Tick Add Google Meet video link or Add Microsoft Teams video link for a call link. Attendees are invited as soon as you create the event. To move or cancel a meeting, open it and edit or delete it; attendees see the update.

Meeting invites from people you do not know arrive in Review as approve or decline cards. Both answers go to the organiser: Approve accepts, Reject declines.

Tasks

A kanban board with five columns: Needs approval, Backlog, In progress, Review and Done. Drag a card between columns to change its status.

1. Click New task, or the + at the top of a column. A title is all it needs; assignee, due date, tags, a linked contact and a linked file are optional. The assignee can be a colleague or Bos.
2. Check Needs approval. Follow-up tasks Bos creates from emails, meetings and proposals wait here. Drag a card into Backlog or In progress to accept it, or delete it.
3. Check Review. Emails and meeting invites Bos has prepared wait here. Only Approve sends them; dragging a card does not.
4. Click Have Bos triage. Bos goes through your open tasks and suggests priorities, owners and dates for you to accept, and points out what looks stale. It does not rearrange the board for you.

A task assigned to Bos waits until you open it and click Have Bos do this. Home also shows daily suggestions: leads gone quiet, overdue tasks, and threads waiting on you for more than 48 hours.

Proposals

The quotes you send a client: line items, an optional discount and an optional expiry date. Share a link, and the client opens and accepts it online.

1. Click New proposal and pick the Company, and the Contact if there is one.
2. Click Use a template, or add line items yourself. Templates carry merge fields such as {{entity.name}} and {{contact.name}}, filled in from whoever the proposal is for. Set Valid until to show an expiry date.
3. Click Mark as Sent. A Share link appears; copy it and send it to your client, or ask Bos to draft the covering email.
4. Your client opens the link, with no sign in, and accepts or rejects it online. The status updates on its own. The first time it is opened you get a notification in the app and by email.
5. When the money arrives, mark it Paid.

Connect FreeAgent under Settings, Integrations, Accounting, and an accepted proposal creates a draft invoice in FreeAgent. To make a template, open a proposal and click Save as template. Only drafts can be deleted; mark a dead proposal Rejected instead.

Files

Documents, uploads and saved web pages in one library, and the material Bos draws on when it drafts. Search looks inside every document, not just at the names.

1. Open Files and click New. Choose Document to write in BusinessOS, Website to save a page from a URL, or Upload for a file from your computer.
2. Put it in a folder with New folder, and add tags if you like. Uploads and web pages take a moment to process before they are searchable.
3. Search with the box at the top. Exact matches appear straight away; matches by meaning follow a moment later, so "what did we agree about payment terms" finds the right paragraph.
4. To say who a file is about, attach it from the contact or company's Files tab.

Working with Bos

Bos is built into every screen. Open it with Ask the agent on Home, from the assistant panel, or press Ctrl+K (⌘K on a Mac) and start typing.

1. Ask for several things in one conversation: draft an email, set up a meeting, file a task.
2. Be specific. "Draft a follow-up to Sarah at Acme about the proposal we sent last week" beats "write an email". Bos uses its memory of your clients, your business and past conversations.
3. Approve what it prepares. Anything that would leave BusinessOS waits in Review, and Bos can offer Approve and Reject buttons in the chat as well.
4. Correct what it knows under Settings, Memory. Facts Bos wants to add to company memory wait for someone to approve them.

Every action Bos takes is recorded in the activity log, and shows in Recent activity on Home. A morning briefing and new-lead emails are on by default; change them under Settings, Notifications.

Bos on WhatsApp

The same Bos, with the same context, from the app you already have open. Link your phone once. Bos only ever replies to you: it never starts a conversation.

1. Open Settings, then Profile, and click Connect WhatsApp. A short code appears.
2. From the phone you want to use, send that code to the BusinessOS WhatsApp number. Open WhatsApp does it for you with the message filled in. The code expires in 15 minutes and works once.
3. The screen updates when the message arrives, and Bos replies to confirm.
4. Message Bos as you would anyone: ask what is on today, chase a quote, add a task.
5. Approve or reject what Bos prepares straight from the chat, with what it wrote shown above the buttons.

Disconnect on the same tab stops messages from that number being recognised straight away. If you belong to more than one organisation, WhatsApp works with the one the Profile tab names.

The app for your phone

A free companion to your BusinessOS account, for iPhone and Android. It covers what needs you today, Bos, your inbox and your tasks. Contacts, proposals, files and your calendar stay on the web, where there is room to work on them properly.

1. Create your account on the web if you do not have one. The app signs you in; it does not sign you up.
2. Download BusinessOS once it is in the App Store and Google Play. It is free with your account, and there is nothing to buy inside it. More about the app.
3. Sign in with your email and password, or with Google or Microsoft, exactly as you do on the web.
4. The app opens on the same briefing as the web: what Bos thinks needs you today, your open proposals and anything overdue.
5. Use the bar along the bottom to move between Home, Bos, Inbox, Tasks and your notifications. Search covers your contacts, tasks, proposals and files.
6. Approve or reject what Bos has prepared from the Tasks tab, with the full text shown above the buttons. Nothing is sent until you say so.

Switch organisation, or sign out, from the settings icon in the top right.

Connect Claude or ChatGPT

Bring your own assistant. Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP assistant can work in BusinessOS with exactly your access, in one organisation per connection.

1. In your assistant's connector or MCP settings, add a connector pointing at the server URL below.
2. Sign in when it sends you to BusinessOS, so your assistant never sees your password.
3. Review the permissions it asks for, choose the organisation, and click Connect. If you belong to several organisations, connect each one separately.
4. Manage or disconnect it any time in Settings, Connections. Disconnecting takes effect on its very next request.

Your team

Bring colleagues into your workspace so you share the same contacts, inbox context and files. Everyone gets their own sign in.

1. Open Settings, then Team, to see everyone in the organisation and any pending invitations.
2. Enter their email, pick the role they should have, and send the invitation.
3. They get an email with a link to join. Invitations expire after 7 days.
4. Resend or revoke a pending invitation, or remove a member, from the same screen.

Each extra person with a seat is £19 a month. See Billing.

Roles

There are three roles. You set one when you invite someone.

• Owner: everything, including billing and everyone's roles. Only owners change roles, require two-factor for the whole team, and close the account.
• Admin: manages members and invitations, billing, and email on your own domain.
• Member: uses the full app, without team or billing settings.

An owner changes someone's role from the dropdown next to their name in Settings, Team.

Security and privacy

Each workspace is isolated per organisation and encrypted at rest. Your data is not used to train shared models.

• Nothing is sent, and no invite goes out, without your approval.
• Connect and disconnect Gmail, Microsoft 365 and FreeAgent at any time from Settings, Integrations.
• Owners and admins can see who connected or disconnected an account, changed two-factor or changed the plan under Settings, Security, Security activity.
• Export your data as CSV at any time from Settings, Organisation.
• Owners can close the account and have the data erased.

Read the Privacy Policy for how we handle data, and report a security issue to [email protected].

Two-factor authentication

A second step at sign in, from an authenticator app, so a stolen password is not enough to reach your workspace.

1. Open Settings, then Security, and find Two-factor authentication.
2. Scan the QR code with an authenticator app such as 1Password, Google Authenticator or Authy.
3. Enter the 6-digit code to verify and turn it on.
4. Save your Recovery codes somewhere safe. They get you back in if you lose the device.

Under Organisation policy, an owner can Require two-factor for everyone. Your team gets a short grace period to set it up before it is enforced. If someone loses their device and their recovery codes, an owner can reset their two-factor from Settings, Team.

Billing

£54 a month for everything, including your first user: BusinessOS at £39, with email and calendar, and your website's hosting at £15. Each extra user is £19 a month. Without a website, BusinessOS is £39; email and calendar on their own are £15 a person; a website on its own is £49 once and £15 a month, set up by emailing [email protected]. Pay annually and every monthly charge is 20% off. The 14-day trial needs no card to start. See Pricing for the full breakdown.

1. Open Settings, then Billing. Owners and admins manage billing.
2. Pick monthly or annual, then Start monthly subscription or Start annual subscription. You enter payment details with Stripe. Annual covers everything in your workspace, your website included.
3. The owner moves between BusinessOS and just email and calendar from Change plan on the same tab.
4. Use Manage in Stripe to change the card or to download receipts.
5. To stop, click Cancel subscription. You keep access to the end of the period you have paid for.

Your website's £49 build and the first year of its domain are paid when you order it from Website. The domain then renews yearly, charged separately.

If the status shows Payment failed, open Manage in Stripe and update the card; Stripe retries. Access is restricted while a payment is outstanding.