720° BIZ ASSIST Setup Guide

Before you start

Have these ready and the whole setup takes under half an hour.

• A phone number for WhatsApp.
  This becomes your assistant's WhatsApp number. We recommend a new number (a cheap prepaid SIM is enough) that is not on WhatsApp yet, so the number you use today stays exactly as it is — see the note under Connect WhatsApp.
• A Meta Business account.
  Free, at business.facebook.com. If you don't have one, you can create it during the connection step itself.
• Your business basics.
  Legal name, trading name, registration number (if any), city and province.
• A price list in your head.
  You'll enter it properly in Step 06, but knowing your services and prices up front makes that step quick.

Sign up & choose a plan

Go to app.720degreeit.co.za/signup. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial — no payment needed to begin, and there is no setup fee.

• Pick your plan and billing cycle.
  Monthly or annual (annual works out to roughly two months free). You can change plans later — see Compare plans.
• Tell us what kind of business you run.
  Swim school, dance studio, gym, fight club, tattoo studio, nails & beauty, medical, legal, or other. This decides the words the portal uses for your team — a swim school gets Instructors, a tattoo studio gets Artists. See Add your team.
• Enter your details and set a password.
  This first account is the owner login — the only role that can never be deactivated by anyone else.
• Accept the required agreements and submit.
  You're straight into your new portal — no waiting, no approval step. A small check runs in the background to keep automated sign-ups out; a real person doesn't notice it.
• Confirm your email address.
  We send a welcome email with a confirmation link. Click it. Connecting WhatsApp (step 04) stays locked until your email is confirmed, so do this first. If it hasn't arrived, check your spam folder.

Your first login

Sign in any time at app.720degreeit.co.za/admin/login with the email and password from sign-up.

You'll land on Overview — a running summary of what your assistant has been doing: recent conversations, questions it couldn't answer yet, and bookings coming up. It's quiet until you finish the setup below, which is expected.

Connect your WhatsApp number

Go to Settings → WhatsApp number → Connect WhatsApp number.

• Click Connect with Meta.
  A small Meta window opens on top of the portal. If nothing opens, allow pop-ups for app.720degreeit.co.za in your browser and press the button again. Ad blockers can also stop it, so switch them off for this page if needed.
• Sign in with your own Meta account.
  This happens in Meta's own window, not ours — we never see your Meta password.
• Choose your business and your WhatsApp account.
  Pick your existing business and WhatsApp account if you already have them, or create new ones. Then add the phone number for the assistant and enter the code Meta sends to it. If your account already has more than one number, you'll be asked which one this assistant should use — the others are left exactly as they are.
• Press Finish in Meta's window.
  This is the step people miss. Only Finish sends the result back to the portal. Wait until the portal page says Connected and takes you back to Settings. If it shows a red message instead, you can safely press the button and try again; nothing is changed until the last step finishes.
• Add a physical bank card to the WhatsApp account itself.
  In Meta, go to Billing & payments → Accounts → WhatsApp Business accounts, find your account in that list, and add the card there. It must be that list — a card on your business profile is a different thing and does not count. This is not optional; read the note below before you start.
• Done.
  Your number, its quality rating, and its connection status now show under Settings. The assistant starts answering on that number from here. We also send your standard message templates to Meta for approval automatically; reminders and other messages you start yourself wait until Meta approves them, which usually takes minutes to a few hours.

Build your knowledge base

Go to Knowledge. Your assistant only ever says what's written here — nothing else, nothing guessed.

• Click "Add something."
  Give it a title (e.g. Holiday camp dates), an optional category (pricing, hours, policies, services, about), and the content itself.
• Write it the way you'd explain it to a customer on the phone.
  Specific beats vague — vague writing produces vague answers. Never write anything here you wouldn't want repeated word for word.
• Set an importance if two entries might overlap.
  Higher number wins. Most entries can leave this at the default.

Once your assistant is live, real customer questions it couldn't answer land in Asked but unanswered on the same page — the fastest way to find real gaps, rather than guessing what to write.

Set your services & prices

Go to Services & prices. This is what your assistant quotes from and what bookings are made against.

• Add each service.
  Name, description, category, price, and duration in minutes.
• Choose how it's charged:
  Monthly (a membership), Per session (pay per class), Once off (a single purchase like a piercing or a consultation), or Free.
• Say how many sessions the price covers, if it does.
  Fill in Sessions included when one price buys a fixed number of sessions, for example a price of 500 with 5 sessions is shown and quoted as R500 for 5 sessions. Leave it empty when the price isn't tied to a number, and the assistant quotes it as per month, per session or once off.
• Set a minimum age, if relevant.
  Useful for anything children can't book themselves into.

Change a price any time — new quotes use the new price immediately; nothing already booked or invoiced changes retroactively.

Add your team

Go to the team page — its name and the role list already match your industry.

Whatever's offered, Other — type your own is always there — a tattoo studio's piercer or a gym's physio doesn't have to be forced into the nearest-sounding wrong word.

• Add first name, and anything else you have.
  Last name, display name (how they show up in the calendar — e.g. "Coach Sarah"), phone, email, and role are all optional except first name.
• Tick "bookable" if they should appear when scheduling a class or appointment.
  On by default. Turn it off for someone who doesn't take bookings — e.g. a receptionist.
• Optionally, set their working hours.
  For your own reference — not yet used to decide who the assistant offers for a time.

Invite people to your portal

Go to Settings → Who can sign in. Owners and managers can add anyone who needs their own login — a manager, a bookkeeper, or someone you've hired just to watch WhatsApp replies.

• Enter their email and pick a role — Manager, Staff, Instructor, Read-only, or Owner.
• Copy the setup link that appears and send it to them yourself.
  Nothing is emailed automatically — send it however you already reach that person: WhatsApp, SMS, or email. It works once and expires after 7 days.
• They open it, set their own name and password, and they're in.
  You never see or choose their password.

You can revoke an invite that hasn't been used yet, and deactivate anyone's access later without deleting their history — both from the same page. You can't deactivate your own access.

Locations

Run more than one branch? Go to Locations. Every plan starts with the one branch signup created; Growth allows up to 2, Professional up to 5.

• Add a branch — name, address, and phone.
  Opening hours, appointment length and how many people fit in a slot are set separately, per branch, under Calendar settings — each branch keeps its own.
• Pick which one is the default.
  Used whenever nothing else says otherwise — a customer messaging your original number, for instance.
• Connect a second WhatsApp number and assign it to a branch, under Settings.
  This is how the assistant knows which branch a customer means: from the number they messaged, not by asking every time. A number left unassigned falls back to the default branch.

A branch is never deleted outright — a class or team member still pointing at it would be left in an odd state. Deactivate it instead; reactivate any time.

Calendar & bookings

Once services and team are set up, Calendar shows every session for the week — who's booked, who's teaching it, and how full it is. Your assistant books directly into this calendar from WhatsApp; anything it books, you'll see here immediately, and anything you add here, it can offer to customers.

The calendar shows booked slots only, so what you see is who is coming and when, not a grid of empty times.

Contacts is the customer list this all feeds — everyone who has ever messaged your number, searchable by name, phone, or email, with what stage of the customer journey they're at.

Contracts

Go to Contracts. Upload a membership agreement, waiver, indemnity, or consent form you already use, and customers sign it over WhatsApp — no printing, no scanning.

• Upload your document (Word or PDF, under 8MB) and give it a name and type.
  It's read automatically and any fill-in fields (name, phone, signature date, and anything custom to your document) are found for you.
• Check the detected fields, then publish it.
  A template can't be sent to anyone until it's published.
• Send it to a customer from their contact record.
  They get a WhatsApp message with a link, open it, read it, and sign with a tap. You'll see it here the moment they do — the link works for 14 days.

Debit order tools

Go to Billing collections. These tools help you run recurring membership fees through your own payment gateway: set up the debit order, prepare it each month for your approval, and follow up anything that fails automatically.

• Set up a debit order for a customer from their contact record — amount, collection day, and optionally the signed contract it's authorised by.
• They confirm their bank details on a secure page — sent as a link, never typed into WhatsApp itself, since a chat history is the wrong place for a bank account number.
• Each month, review the batch before it's submitted.
  Nothing is ever collected without a person here clicking approve — it's built into the system, not just a habit.
• Anything that fails gets followed up automatically — a polite WhatsApp message, then an escalating nudge, until it's resolved or flagged for a human call.

An invoice is issued automatically the moment a debit order succeeds — nothing further to do.

Assistant settings

Go to Settings for how your assistant sounds and when it's allowed to message people.

• Opening line and handoff message.
  What it says first, and what it says when it needs to pass someone to you.
• Anything it should always do, or never do.
  Plain instructions — e.g. "never quote for next year," "always ask the child's age before recommending a class."
• Quiet hours and a monthly message budget.
  Reminders and announcements pause during quiet hours (20:00–07:00 by default) — someone messaging you directly always still gets an answer. Leave the budget blank for no cap.
• What we need to book someone in.
  List anything you require from a customer before an appointment is confirmed — a date of birth, an ID number, allergies, whatever this business actually needs. The assistant will not complete a booking until every item on this list has been asked for and answered; nothing beyond name and phone is required by default.
• Messages per person per hour.
  A limit on how many replies one customer can trigger in an hour, to stop a runaway conversation. It starts at 20. Change it per business to suit you.
• Taking over a chat.
  In Inbox, press Take over to reply yourself; the assistant stays quiet while you do. If you forget to hand it back, it returns by itself after you go quiet for the number of minutes you set under Assistant returns after you go quiet (5 by default, 0 means never), and it answers the customer's last message. You can also press Hand back to the assistant any time. The inbox refreshes by itself, so you don't need to reload it.
• Calendar settings.
  Opening hours, slot length, how many people fit in a slot, age rules and reminder timing all live on their own page — see Calendar settings next.

Calendar settings

Go to Settings → Calendar settings. This is what the assistant reads before it offers anyone a time.

Running more than one branch? A switcher appears at the top so you can set each one's hours separately — the assistant checks the branch the customer is actually messaging.

• Operating hours.
  Tick the days you're open and set opening and closing times for each. Leave a day unticked to keep it closed. Nothing outside these hours is ever offered.
• Default appointment length.
  In minutes. A service with its own length set under Services & prices always wins — this only fills the gap for services that don't.
• People per slot.
  How many customers may book the same time. A tattoo artist working alone leaves it at 1; a swim school teaching four children at once sets 4. Once a slot is full the assistant stops offering it and moves to the next free time. The Places box on Add a class starts from this number too.
• Who may book when (age rules).
  Optional, and empty by default — leave it alone and anyone may book any open time. Add a rule like ages 7 to 10, Monday and Wednesday, 15:00–17:00 and the assistant will ask how old the person attending is, then only ever offer and book times that match their age. Add as many rules as you need; a day can appear in several.
• Reminders to your customers.
  Switch WhatsApp reminders on or off, and choose how many hours before the appointment they go out — 24 hours is the usual first one. You can add a second, closer nudge (say 2 hours before) by filling in the second box; leave it blank for one reminder only.
• Reminders to your team.
  Tick who should hear about upcoming bookings and how long before. Their own sends someone the sessions they're assigned to on the calendar; Everything sends every booked session, for an owner or manager who wants the whole day. Only sessions someone has actually booked are ever sent — never the empty slots the assistant keeps open. Anyone you want to notify needs a phone number on their record under your team page.

Reports

Go to Reports for how the assistant is doing and what it's costing you: messages per day, bookings made, your customer numbers, and — most useful for closing gaps — everything it couldn't answer.

Compare plans

Every plan includes the assistant, the portal, and a 14-day free trial. Upgrade or downgrade any time from Settings — nothing here is a one-way door.

Getting help

Stuck on a step, or something doesn't look right? We'd rather hear about it than have you work around it.