Initial administrator setup — the order to do things in

Branding, then telecom, then A2P, then calendars, then people. The order matters because each step is blocked by the one before it, and A2P takes days of external review you can't rush.

Who this is for

The agency owner or admin. Agents don't do this.

Before you begin

  • Your legal business name, EIN, and business address exactly as they appear on your IRS records — not your trading name.
  • A website with a visible privacy policy. Carriers check this during A2P review; a site without one gets rejected.
  • A card for your telecom provider (Twilio, Telnyx or SignalHouse). Numbers and messages are billed by them, on their account, not by us.
  • Decide your setup shape first — see 'Which setup is right for me?'.

Steps

  1. Brand the CRM: agency name, logo and colour. Do this first because it's baked into prospect-facing email the moment you start sending.
  2. Connect your telecom provider. Nothing calls or texts until this is done.
  3. Buy or import your phone numbers. Credentials alone are not enough — with no number there's no 'from' address for outbound and nothing for inbound to resolve against.
  4. Submit your A2P 10DLC registration. START THIS EARLY. It's reviewed by outside parties and takes days; everything else can be done while you wait.
  5. Connect calendars — yours, and every agent who takes appointments.
  6. Add your agents and set their roles and permissions.
  7. Import leads, set up campaigns, and run the go-live test before you point real volume at it.

The single most common mistake is doing this in the order the screens appear rather than the order the dependencies run. A2P is the long pole: it's the only step where you're waiting on someone outside your company, so submit it on day one even if nothing else is ready.

How to check it worked

  • Open the Getting Started portal. Required steps show as complete only when the underlying thing actually exists — it reads real state, not checkboxes.
  • Send one real text to your own phone and make one real call to it. That is the only proof that matters.
  • Book a test appointment through the AI and confirm it lands on the right agent's Google Calendar.

Common mistakes

  • Treating 'credentials saved' as 'phone set up'. Saving an API key with no number bought gets you a green-looking config that cannot send a single message.
  • Leaving A2P until last. It's the one step with a multi-day external review — start it first.
  • Registering A2P with a trading name instead of the exact legal name on the EIN. This is the single biggest cause of failed brand verification.
  • Onboarding agents before the shared setup works. You'll get the same support question ten times instead of once.

Related

Where this lives in the app

This is documentation for Virtual Closer. Book a walkthrough or sign in.