Walk through the setup guide

The setup guide is a full-screen walkthrough of nine short steps that appears on your first visit to the dashboard. Every step is optional, nearly everything it does can be changed later from Settings or the sidebar, and closing the guide keeps every step you have already saved.

The welcome screen

It greets you by your dive center's name and lists What we'll cover: the nine steps with a short line each. Press Start the setup guide to begin, or I'll finish later to close it. The guide only opens by itself while no step has been saved or marked as not needed, and after you close it, it stays closed in that browser until you sign out. Open steps you have permission for stay reachable from the dashboard.

Moving through the steps

The steps run in this order: Essentials, Invoices and payments, Fleet, Dive sites, Equipment, Team, Waivers, Guest onboarding, Branding. Steps you do not have permission for are left out.

At the top, a row of chips shows where you are. Click a chip to jump to that step. Saved steps and steps marked as not needed leave the row, and there is no back button in the footer. The footer has three buttons:

• Save & continue performs the step's real work, marks it done and moves on. On the last open step it reads Finish setup. If a form on the Fleet, Dive sites or Team step is filled in but was not added to the list, it refuses with "You filled in the form but did not add it to the list. Press Add first, or empty the form."
• Later moves on without saving. The step stays To do on the dashboard checklist, and the guide does not walk back into it during this run; its chip stays in the row if you want to return to it.
• Not needed asks you to confirm, then takes the step off the setup list.

Note: A step marked as not needed leaves the setup list for good and cannot be brought back. You can still set the same thing up any time under its settings; the guide just stops reminding you.

A few steps save parts of their work immediately, before you press the footer button: the logo upload in Branding, the online booking mode cards in Guest onboarding, and a custom waiver you add in Waiver templates. Connect Stripe now in Invoices and payments saves the step first, then closes the guide and opens Online payments in Settings.

The Invoices and payments step

The second step asks only what your first invoice and payment need: your company's legal name and address, the tax details where your country asks for them, the payment methods you take at the counter, a fun dive price and a full equipment day price, and whether guests should pay online. The dive center's country decides which parts show. Everything is saved to the same settings you find later under Business & tax, Payment methods, Price list and Deposits & cancellations, and a closing note links every related settings tab. The step needs the permission to change business details; a part you may not change in Settings shows read-only, with "Someone with access to Price list sets this." naming its tab. Each field is described in The setup guide step by step.

When setup counts as complete

Setup is complete once no step is open, whether each one was saved or marked as not needed. The Invoices and payments step only counts as done once your dive center is ready for invoices, see below. DivePilot then shows the toast "Setup complete - your dive centre is ready to go!" and removes the checklist from the dashboard.

Picking it up later

While steps are still open, the dashboard shows a Finish setting up card with the number of open steps. Every step is listed with a line on why it matters and a To do, Done or Not needed badge, and open steps you have permission for carry a Set up button that opens the guide for that one step. Its footer then has Not needed, Later and a plain Save.

Progress is stored with your dive center, not in the browser, so every colleague sees the same checklist on the dashboard.

Ready for invoices

On the checklist, the Invoices and payments step is called Ready for invoices. While something is missing, the row lists it after "Still missing:": Company name, Address, Tax ID (only when you are registered where your country asks), A payment method and Fun dive price. Each is a link straight to the field in Settings; the Business & tax ones land on the field itself and put the cursor in it.

The row counts as done once the company name, the address (street and city), the tax ID when you are registered, and at least one payment method at the counter are there. The fun dive price does not hold it open: when only that is missing, the row says "Only the fun dive price is open: add it when you charge per dive."

This status is read live from your dive center's data, not from the guide. Filling in the details under Settings completes the row as well, and removing them opens it again. Once setup is complete, the card comes back with only the Ready for invoices row whenever something is missing again. A dive center that finished setup before this step existed sees the card in the same way, with only that row, until the details are there or the step is marked as not needed; the welcome guide does not open again for it.

Where each step lives afterwards

Certification agencies and course templates are not a step: DivePilot creates the standard catalogue, and the course templates of the agency you signed up with, the moment your dive center is created. They live under Certifications and Course templates in the sidebar.

The Default customer language from the Essentials step is also on the Dive centre tab under Settings, where you can change it later.