Sign up and send your first quote in 5 minutes

Karven is built so the first quote you ever send is also the first thing you do in the app. No three-day setup, no consultant, no "data migration" phase. The cold path looks like this: open the site, pick a trade, answer a few onboarding questions, fill the calculator, hit send.

This article walks the whole loop end to end. It assumes you've got nothing, no logo, no ABN keyed in, no template, and gets you to a customer-shaped PDF in about five minutes.

Step 1: Start free

From the home page, hit Start free. You create an account with just an email, no card required, and you're straight into a one-week free trial. There's nothing to cancel and nothing charged unless you decide to pick a plan at the end of the week.

During the trial you can send as many quotes as you like, and everything you build stays put. After day 7 you pick a plan to keep sending quotes. Karven never auto-charges, so you choose us rather than getting defaulted into us.

Step 2: Pick your trade

On the first signed-in screen Karven asks one question: what do you do? The list is short on purpose, decking, concreting, garage doors, entry doors, fencing, landscaping, painting, and a few others. Pick the one closest to your main job. You can add a second trade later.

This choice loads a calculator template tuned to your work. Decking knows about joist spacing and screw counts. Concreting knows about pump hire and saw cuts. Garage doors knows about panel widths and motor models. The maths is in the template, not in your head.

Step 3: Universal onboarding

Karven asks a handful of "applies to everything" questions next, your business name, your ABN, your state, your usual GST treatment. These get stamped onto every quote you send, so you only key them once.

A few are worth pausing on:

• State. Karven uses this for licence checks, surcharging rules (federal reforms whose timing is still being confirmed), and the BAS workflow. Get it right.
• GST registered? If you turn over more than $75k you must be registered. Karven defaults to "Yes" because almost every working tradie is over the threshold.
• Bank details. Optional. You only need these if you're going to take direct deposits, Stripe handles cards separately.

Step 4: Trade-specific onboarding

Each trade has its own short list of "tell me about your shop" questions. Decking asks what species you usually quote (Merbau, Spotted Gum, composite). Garage doors ask which brand of motor you fit by default. The answers seed the calculator with sensible defaults so you're not re-picking a brand on every quote.

You can change any answer later in Settings → Calculator.

Step 5: Build the quote

Hit New quote from the bench. The calculator opens with your defaults loaded. Fill in the job dimensions, width, length, number of openings, whatever your trade calls for, and Karven prices it as you type. The line items break out materials, labour, markup, GST, and any disposal/access add-ons.

If something looks wrong, open the breakdown. Every figure traces back to either a template line or one of your onboarding answers. There's no hidden multiplier.

Step 6: Add the customer

Click Send. Karven asks for the customer's name, mobile, and email. If they came in via a request form (/request/<your-handle>), this is already pre-filled.

Step 7: Send it

You've got three send options: Email, SMS with link, or Both. The PDF generates server-side, lands in their inbox with your logo on it, and Karven starts tracking opens. If you've turned on auto-chase (see automations), the chase reminder is already queued for day three.

That's it. Five minutes, one quote, no spreadsheet open in another tab.

What's next

If this is your first time, the highest-impact next thing to do is one of these:

• Add your logo and terms. Settings → Business profile. Takes 90 seconds and immediately makes quotes look like your business and not Karven's.
• Connect Stripe. Settings → Payments. So you can take deposits the moment a customer signs.
• Import your existing customers. See importing customers. Faster than re-typing them as they come up.