Help

How do I sign up?

Sign up free with your brokerage's Google Workspace account, or with a Gmail address. Nothing is charged for an office you set up this way, and no card is asked for. If paid plans are added later, the office's owner hears first, and nothing is charged without their agreement. A Google account on another personal address, such as Outlook or iCloud, cannot set an office up yet.

You name the brokerage as you would write it on a commission statement, and you choose the web address your agents will use. Lower-case letters, numbers and hyphens, 3 to 23 characters, starting with a letter. That address cannot be changed later. With a Gmail address, only the people you add to the roster can sign in.

Press Create my office. When a paid plan is the only choice, the button says Continue to payment. Setting it up usually takes a minute or two, and the page checks again by itself. When it is ready, sign in once more at that address with the same Google account and claim the office. You become its broker-owner.

If your company already has an office, the page says so: ask its owner to add you to the roster, then sign in there. If this Gmail address already set an office up, the page can email you a link to it. If the page says the address is waiting for a review, leave it open. A request still waiting after 30 days is declined.

Already set one up? Sign in with the address you chose, or have a link emailed to you.

How do I set up the office?

After you claim it, Home shows Set up your office while plans, people or a first file are still missing. The steps, in order:

1. Add your commission plans. Importing your tracker brings in past closings and what they paid. It does not set up plans.
2. Add your people. Import them from a sheet or add them one at a time, then invite them to sign in.
3. Import your tracker. Open the workbook you keep today. Nothing is filed until you say so. Filing a past closing counts as your first file, and so does starting a blank file.
4. Check your time zone. Deadlines and the daily digest follow it.
5. Check email. Review the test mailbox and who will receive email before switching to Live.
6. Connect Google Drive. Optional. Each file can have its own folder in your Drive.
7. Connect your commission sheet. Optional. Choose your sheet and match its columns before starting sync.
8. Add your logo. Optional. It shows on every screen and on the sign-in page.

Each step opens the screen where you do that work. Drive, the sheet and the logo are optional. An office can run without them.

How do I invite agents?

Add each person on the Roster with the address they will sign in with: your brokerage's Google Workspace account, or a personal Gmail address written exactly as they sign in to Google. Where your office offers it, that address can be a Microsoft 365 work account, or a personal Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live or MSN address on the roster. Adding or importing people sends no email. You are asked first, and you can say not now.

On an office set up with the brokerage's Google Workspace, you can also add an agent who signs in from their own Google Workspace, at that exact address. Their row says Own domain. Only that account can sign in, and nobody else on their domain can. Invites and statements can go to that address. Folders for their files are not shared with it automatically. An office set up with a Gmail address does not do this: people sign in with a personal Gmail address on the roster or, where your office offers it, a personal Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live or MSN address on the roster.

When you want the email to go, press Send invites. You can also invite one person from their row, or invite everyone not yet invited. Each row says Not invited, Invited with the date, or Signed in. At most one invite a day goes to each person, and at most 25 people at once.

While email is in Test mode, that invite is delivered to the test mailbox, not to the person, and that day's invite is used up. After you switch to Live, send it again on a later day so it reaches them.

They sign in at deskworkapp.com/sign-in with the address you chose.

How does email work?

Every new office starts in Test mode. Until you turn email on, every message goes to a test mailbox instead of the person it names. For an office that signed itself up, that mailbox is the broker-owner's own address. The whole message arrives there, including a commission statement's figures.

The broker-owner turns email on in Office settings, on the Email card, by switching from Test mode to Live. Live is offered once the broker-owner is signed in, the office has its own name, replies go to an address of yours, and every address on the roster can be sent to. The card lists who will start getting email. If something would stop a message, Live is refused and the card says what to fix.

Switching back to Test mode is one press, at any time. Once Live, the office sends at most a set number of messages a day, and fewer in the first week. A message that limit holds back, such as a commission statement, waits and goes out on its own when the limit allows.

If other mail servers refuse or return messages to several addresses, or several people mark the office's email as spam, email goes back to Test mode by itself until the broker-owner checks the roster and switches to Live again. Statements issued during that pause wait until email is Live again. We can also hold an office's email in Test mode.

Messages are sent as your brokerage via Deskwork, from notifications@deskworkapp.com, and replies go to your brokerage. Statements and one morning summary are what most offices send. Most other email stays off until you turn it on. There is no marketing email. Every kind, and who gets it.

How do I connect the commission sheet?

On Sync, connecting the commission sheet lets a new filled-in row start a file and an edited row update that file. Your working sheet is not changed until you switch to it.

The broker-owner or office manager follows Turn on two-way sync:

1. Check the Google account. Sign in with the Google account sync should use, then press Connect Google for sheet sync.
2. Choose the sheet. Press Choose a Google Sheet and select your commission sheet.
3. Save tabs and columns. Choose which tabs to include, which person each tab belongs to, and which field each column holds. Press Save mapping. Saving does not create files or change the sheet. Then open Check the Google account and press Confirm this sheet with my Google connection.
4. Trial with real Deskwork files. Press Start trial with real files. The controls on Sync also say Start trial. Then press Start writing to try writes on the copy.
5. Compare with the working sheet. Press Compare with your sheet and review what would change. Nothing is applied. Compare again if the sheet or Deskwork changes afterward.
6. Go live with two-way sync. Press Switch to your sheet and confirm.

What sync changes

The trial copies your sheet into Sheet trial copies, in the Drive of the Google account connected for sheet sync, and reads that copy. This connection is separate from the office's Drive connection for file folders. Edits in the copy update your office's real files, and a new filled-in row there can start a real file. Edits on your working sheet wait until you switch. Check your real work there rather than enter test files.

Start writing tries writes on the copy. A handed-in file can add a row. Dates, prices, closing figures, paid dates and status can go back to the columns you named. Deskwork never deletes a row, clears a cell or writes into a formula. Check the copy's rows, figures and Deskwork log tab. A differing typed value is held for a choice on Sync. On a paid file, Deskwork's figures stay the record.

Every five minutes, and when you press Sync now, Deskwork reads the tabs you included: the trial copy during the trial, and your working sheet after you switch. A new filled-in row starts a file on the office's queue, with its address, agent, price and dates. An edited row updates those on its file. Rows already on the sheet when you started are not filed. Bring closed files in through Tracker, where you see them before anything is created.

Reading never changes the sheet. A blank cell never clears anything in Deskwork. Commission is entered on Closing, not taken from the sheet. If the same detail changed in Deskwork and on the sheet, neither side is applied. Both values stay listed on Sync until you choose one. On a closed or paid file, nothing is changed from the sheet; an edit there is listed instead. Forgetting the mapping stops syncing.

Writing stays as it was on the trial. If it was on, Deskwork writes to your sheet from the first pass after you switch. If it was off, press Start writing on Sync to turn it on. Before that first write, Deskwork saves a full copy in Sheet backups, in the sheet sync account's Google Drive. If that backup fails, nothing is written. Every write is recorded in the sheet's Deskwork log. Deskwork checks just before and after writing. If someone edits the same row at that moment, syncing and writing pause and Sync says which row to check. Check and correct that row before restarting. The trial copy stays in Drive after the switch. It is not the backup.

How do I stop sync or back out?

Stop writing stops changes to the sheet and still allows reads into Deskwork. Pause syncing stops both. A request already sent can finish after you press Pause syncing, so let any pass finish before restoring anything.

There is no one-click undo after switching. If Deskwork has written to your sheet, keep a separate copy of its current contents if you need later edits, then restore from the pre-write copy in Sheet backups using Google Sheets. Restoring loses later sheet edits. It does not undo files or changes already saved in Deskwork. If writing was never turned on, Deskwork has made no changes to your sheet and has no pre-write backup. Pausing does not switch back to the trial copy. Keep syncing paused until you have checked both places.

Where do documents go?

In your brokerage's own Google Drive. The broker-owner connects Drive once, from Office settings. Each file can have its own folder, and a document you add goes into it. A document the office already keeps in Drive can be attached instead of added again. Deskwork keeps the checklist and the file name, not a second copy of the document, and nothing in Deskwork deletes a file from Drive. If you choose a JPEG or PNG document as the file's photo, Deskwork keeps a copy of that picture with its metadata removed. The original stays in Drive.

A document can be a PDF, a photo or scan, or a Word document, up to 25 MB. Who can open it in Drive follows the folder's sharing. What Drive is used for is in the privacy policy.

What does Deskwork store?

Your office's records: its people, commission plans, files, dates, checklist names and pay figures, along with property photos you add or choose from Drive. Documents you add stay in your Google Drive. Signing in uses Google or, where your office offers it, a Microsoft account: a Microsoft 365 work account, or a personal Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live or MSN address on the roster. Deskwork keeps the name and email address from that sign-in, and the profile photo from Google. Signing in does not ask for Gmail or for Drive. Drive is asked for only when somebody presses a Drive button.

Each brokerage's records are stored separately, not in a database shared with other brokerages. There are no ads, trackers or analytics. No money moves through Deskwork. You pay agents the way you do today. Deskwork works out each share, writes the statement and emails it.

The privacy policy is the full list of what is collected, what leaves the office and what Deskwork never does.

How do I export my records or leave?

The broker-owner can download a copy at any time from Office settings, under Your records: the office's records as one file, and the roster and the files as spreadsheets. The copy names documents and does not hold them. Those stay in Google Drive. Only the broker-owner can download it.

To close the office, the broker-owner uses Delete this office in Office settings. The office keeps working for 14 days. Everybody who signs in is told the day it closes, and the broker-owner is emailed and can cancel until then. When the 14 days are up, nobody can open it, and it stops using your Google Drive. Soon after, we take it off our servers. We keep its records, encrypted, for 30 days after the closing, and then delete them. Documents in Google Drive stay yours.

You can also ask for a copy, or for deletion, at privacy@deskworkapp.com.

Who do I contact?

Questions about the product: support@deskworkapp.com.

A copy of your records, or a request to delete them: privacy@deskworkapp.com.

To have us set the office up with you, use request access rather than starting by email.