First steps

This guide takes you from nothing to a working company: opening an account, confirming your email, signing in, entering your workspace, and the first things worth setting up. It takes about fifteen minutes.

Before you start

There are three ways into Rutba CRM:

You start a free trial yourself, from the pricing page on https://rutbacrm.com. This is available when the platform has opened self-service sign-up; while it is closed, the pricing page offers Request a demo instead.
We create your company for you. You receive an email titled "Your … workspace is ready" with a Set your password or Open your workspace button. The set-password link works for 60 minutes; if it expires, ask us for a new one.
A colleague invites you to a company that already exists. Open the invitation link they sent you and follow "Accept an invitation" in Roles and access.

Start a free trial

On https://rutbacrm.com, select Free trial at the top of the page. The pricing page opens.
Select Start 14-day free trial under the package you want to try.
Fill in the form:

Field	What to enter
Full name	Your own name, 2 to 120 characters
Work email	The address you will sign in with. A `+` tag (like `name+crm@…`) is not accepted
Company name	Your company as your team knows it, 2 to 120 characters
Your company address	The first part of your company's own web address. 3 to 40 lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens. Some names, like `www` or `admin`, are reserved
Package	The package to try. Every feature of it is yours during the trial, with the exceptions listed below
Password and Repeat the password	At least 12 characters, with upper and lower case letters, a number and a symbol

Tick the box to accept, on behalf of your company, the Terms of service, the Privacy policy and the Data processing agreement.
Select Create my workspace.

You then see Check your inbox. We send a confirmation link to your email. The trial lasts 14 days, counting the day you sign up, and needs no card.

The company address cannot be changed later without asking us, so choose it with care. If the address is taken, the form says so and keeps your other answers.

Confirm your email

Nothing in the workspace opens until your email address is confirmed.

Open the email we sent and select the confirmation link. It works for one hour.
Signing up does not sign you in, so the link first opens the sign-in page. Sign in with the email and password you chose, and you are taken straight back to the link, which confirms your email. You do not need to open it a second time.
Your email is now confirmed. If your company has its own address, you are taken there: sign in on it once more to open your company's Home. Otherwise you land on Organizations & teams, with the message that your email address has been verified.

If the email has not arrived, check your spam folder, then sign in: you will see Verify your email address with a Resend verification link button. A sign-up that is never confirmed is closed after 7 days, and its company address becomes free for someone else.

Open the sign-in page from Sign in on https://rutbacrm.com, or open your company address directly.
Enter your Email address and Password, then select Sign in.
If you have turned on two-step sign-in, enter the code from your authenticator app on Enter your code. Lost your phone? Enter one of your recovery codes instead.

Forgot your password? Select Forgot your password? on the sign-in page, enter your email and select Request reset link. If the address has an account, a link arrives by email. Choose a new password and select Save password.

After several wrong passwords in a row, sign-in pauses for a short while. Wait a minute and try again.

Enter your company

After you sign in, Organizations & teams lists every company you belong to, with your role in each. Select Open workspace to go in. You arrive on the company's Home.

If your company has its own address, opening the company takes you to that address, where you sign in once more; the sign-in page there names your company. If it is the only company you belong to, you are taken there straight after signing in. Bookmark the address: your team signs in there, and it opens your company straight away. A session opened on one company's address works for that company only. Your plan shows the address as Company address.

The setup assistant

The first time an owner or administrator opens a new company, the Set up your company assistant opens. It asks one question at a time and shows where you are, for example Step 2 of 6:

What kind of business is this? Choose online store, clinic or medical services, real estate, or other services. Rutba CRM prepares your sales stages, fields and customer lists to match.
Do you have a website? Choose WordPress, a Shopify, Salla or Zid store, another kind of website, or Not yet.
Connect your website. For WordPress, download the plugin, make your connection code and copy it with Copy the code. For another website, make your tracking code and copy it. A status line shows when the connection works, with Check now where a live test is possible.
Do your customers write to you on WhatsApp? A button opens the channels page.
Who works with you? A button opens the invitation form.
You are ready: what is set up and what is left.

Each step shows only when your plan includes it, and Not yet skips the connect step. Click Back and Next to move between steps, or I will finish this later to go to your home page. The assistant then stops opening by itself; open it again with Setup assistant on the Getting started card of your home page.

Describe your business, or ask us to set it up

In the assistant's first step, when AI is available for your company, you can write one sentence about your business instead of choosing, for example a perfume shop in Riyadh that sells online and on WhatsApp. Click Suggest a setup: you see the business type, the sales stages, up to four useful fields and a WhatsApp welcome message, then Use this setup applies them. It uses your AI credits. Or choose your business type yourself.

Set it up for me, at the bottom of the assistant and on the Connections page, sends a request to our team: choose what you need help with and add a few words. We contact you within one working day. To let us work inside your company, give us temporary support access from the Team page.

Try it with sample data

On an empty Contacts or Tasks page, owners and administrators see Try it with sample data. It adds five contacts marked (Example), with their deals, notes and tasks, so you can open them and see how the company will look. A banner then stays at the top of your pages; click Remove sample data in it when you are ready to start. Everything sample goes, with its history. A sample contact you have since used in real work, an appointment or a quote for example, is archived instead, so nothing real is lost. Sample data is offered only while the company has fewer than three contacts.

Help on every page

Each page has Help with this page at the top, which opens its own guide in a new tab, in Arabic or English. An empty page also says what it is for, shows an example of what it will hold, and gives the button to start.

Reminders in the first week

On the first, third and seventh day after a new company is created, its owners and administrators get one alert with the next step still to do, for example Connect your store. Opening it takes you to your home page. The reminders stop once you finish the setup assistant, or when every step is done.

Work through the setup checklist

Owners and administrators see Getting started on Home and on Today: a short list of steps, each with Open. A step ticks itself once the work is done, and the whole box disappears when every step is complete.

Step	What it does	Shown when
Choose your business template	Adds pipeline stages, fields and segments for an Online store, Clinic, Real estate or General business	Always
Add your first contact	Opens the form for a new contact	Always
Invite your team	Opens Team, where you create invitation links	Always
Connect your store	Opens the store connections	Your plan includes Store connections
Add tracking to your site	Opens Tracking	Your plan includes Tracking and customer journey
Create a customer segment	Opens the segments	Your plan includes Customer segments

Hide puts the checklist away until you next sign in.

Choosing a template

On Business templates, select Use this template under the one that fits. A template is applied once per company. It adds to your workspace and changes nothing already there, and anything your plan does not include, such as custom fields, is left out. Afterwards the page shows which template the workspace started from.

The first things to connect

Once the basics are in place, bring your customers and their messages in:

A WordPress site. The quickest way is the WordPress plugin: install it, paste one code, and it brings in your WooCommerce orders and your form enquiries, and adds the tracking, all at once. See WordPress plugin.
Your store. Connect WooCommerce so customers and orders arrive by themselves. See WooCommerce.
WhatsApp and other channels. Answer customers from one inbox. See WhatsApp and Inbox.
Your website forms. Turn enquiries into contacts. See Website forms.
Tracking. See which visits and campaigns bring buyers. See Tracking.
Existing customers. Import them from a spreadsheet. See Import and duplicates.

Good to know

During a self-service trial, a few things are held back until you pay: API access, Company sign-in and WhatsApp broadcasts are off, campaign emails are capped at 200 a month and AI credits at 100 a month. See Plans and billing.
Your account belongs to you, not to one company. The same email and password open every company you are a member of.
To change your name, email or password, or to turn on two-step sign-in, select your name at the bottom of the sidebar to open My account. Changing your password signs you out on every other device.

Troubleshooting

"This address is already taken. Try another." Another company uses that address. Choose a different one.
"Use your main email address, without a + tag." Remove the +… part of your email.
"This form was already sent." The form was submitted twice. Open the sign-up page again if you still need to.
I signed up but no email came. If the email already had an account, no new company is made: instead, that address receives a message saying someone tried to sign up with it. Sign in with the existing account, or reset its password.