01An account in four fields
To create your account: the company name, the province, your email and a password of at least eight characters (a short phrase works well). You confirm your email — if it does not arrive, “Send the email again” resends it, at least one minute after the previous one — you save your card — nothing is charged for 14 days — and setup begins. As soon as your profile carries your postal code, it is the postal code that sets your province.
02Follow the dashboard assistant
The dashboard shows six steps: complete your profile (your name, your phone, your city, your postal code), add a vehicle, enter your customers and their properties, invite an operator, build a route and assign it, send a first contract. Each step ticks itself when the thing really exists; there is nothing to tick by hand. Only the next step is highlighted.
03The dashboard, afterwards
Once setup is done, the dashboard shows what matters: alerts first (in red, what is waiting for money or an operation; in amber, what would make the next outing fail — a route without an operator, a property to place, a contract to sign). An alert you have made your peace with is dismissed by the “×” at its end: it comes back if the situation changes — a second property to place is not the same news — and in any case after seven days. Then today’s numbers (visits, trucks on shift, routes under way), the season’s (visits, contracts signed and their amount, collected, outstanding, prospects, quotes awaiting a reply), five charts (visits over the last 14 days, collected per month of the season, contracts and quotes by status, visits per operator — all laid out in your company’s dates) and your fleet and book (customers, properties, vehicles, operators, text messages). At the bottom, “Recently”: the latest visits, contracts signed or declined, payments, invoices and operations, in your company’s time. Every tile and every line leads to its page.
04Your profile and your logo
The Company page shows what your customers and your documents see: the company name, yours, the phone, the city, the postal code and the province derived from it. “Edit information” opens the form; until setup has filled everything in, it is already open. At the bottom, your tax registration numbers — GST/HST, and QST in Quebec — which print on every invoice under the tax; until you enter them, the page says so in red, and so does the dashboard once you invoice. Above it, your logo: PNG, JPEG or WebP, 2 MB at most. Once uploaded, it prints at the top of your invoices, receipts, credit notes, contracts and proof files; “Remove the logo” asks for confirmation, and the next documents print without it.
05Why this order
A route needs properties, and a visit needs an operator on the route. A route with no operator or no stop does not count as done: nobody could drive it.
06Your plan counts vehicles
The price follows the number of active vehicles, not the number of people. Invite as many dispatchers and operators as you need. A stored vehicle no longer counts, and its history stays.
07The taxes on your subscription
Prices are shown before tax. Sales taxes are calculated by Stripe, our payment provider: on the payment page, then on every charge, from your business address — the postal code gives the province. The Subscription page shows the price before tax; Stripe’s payment page shows each tax and the total before you confirm, and the receipt Stripe emails you at every charge itemizes them line by line. On the payment page, “I’m purchasing as a business” lets you add your GST/HST or QST number: it then appears on your receipts. If you move, change the postal code on your profile: Poudra passes the new address on to Stripe, the next charge follows, and your already issued invoices do not change.
08The “?” next to a word
Some words in Poudra cover a mechanism you cannot guess: a route is not an outing, a plan counts ACTIVE vehicles, a contract billed “per event” is not billed ahead. Next to those words sits a small “?” in a circle: hover it, or tap it on a tablet, and the explanation appears right there — not in an article you would have to go and find. It also takes keyboard focus, and a screen reader announces it by the word it explains.
09Light or dark
The website, the office and the phone app each have an appearance setting: Match the system, Light or Dark. By default, the website and the office follow your device’s setting; the choice is made in the header, next to the language; on the website, on a phone, it sits at the bottom of the page, under the language. It holds for the site AND for the office: set it on the home page and the sign-in screen will already open the way you wanted. It is remembered on that device, not in your account: another computer starts from its own setting. The phone app is light by default and switches to dark in one tap, for night outings. A fourth choice, “Night”, pushes dark to high contrast — black background, larger white text, sharp borders — to read at a glance at 3 a.m. in a truck; it is chosen in the profile, and the phone remembers it.
10The menu and the top bar
In the office, the left menu is for getting around. It is laid out in sections: Operations (dispatch, routes, map, visits, de-icer log), Customers (customers, requests, messages, quotes, contracts), Money (invoicing, reports), Company (team, vehicles, import), Settings (including Subscription, for the owner: your plan, its price and taxes, the payment method, the export of your data), Help. The button at the bottom of the menu collapses it to its icons — each one is named on hover — and expands it again; your browser remembers the choice. The top bar carries what concerns you. The bell counts what came your way and opens it in one click: an operation proposed by the weather, a contract signed or declined, a payment received, a reply from support, the end of your trial, the text-message quota reached. A notification in bold has not been read yet; clicking it marks it read and opens what it is about, “Mark all as read” does the rest, and “See all” lists the history. Next to it, the appearance setting, then your menu: your initials, your name and your role. It opens My profile (your name, your phone, the language of your emails, your password — changing it signs out your other devices), Security (two-factor authentication) and Sign out. In every list, a row that has its own page opens with a click anywhere on the row, and “View”, on the right, leads to the same place; an invoice has no page, its “View” opens the PDF.
11If Poudra stops responding
If the Poudra server stops responding, the office says so over the page instead of letting every screen fail: “Poudra is temporarily unavailable”, or “Check your Internet connection” if your own device is offline. What you entered stays underneath: do not reload the page. The office checks again every 30 seconds and resumes on its own; the “Try again now” button does it right away.
12A fresh start after the trial
You tried Poudra with made-up customers and real visits, and now you want to use it for real? In the menu, “Fresh start” (owner only) shows what would go, by category and in numbers: visits (with their proof photos, findings, services rendered, de-icer entries and GPS traces), operations (with their skipped stops and messages to the truck), invoices (with their payments and credit notes), contracts (with their quotes), properties (with their zones), customers (with their service requests). Your setup stays: team, vehicles, sectors, routes, settings, subscription. Some categories require others — deleting visits requires deleting their properties — and the page ticks for you what goes together. You tick, add a note if you like, and send the request; you can cancel it as long as it has not been handled. The publisher carries it out, never you: we check the request with you, simulate it, then apply it, and you are told. Your invoice, receipt and contract numbers carry on after the reset, so that a customer never receives two different documents with the same number; if you want to start again from 1, say so in your message.