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Tips, guides, and news for trade businesses looking to grow.
Inventory tracks stock levels for the parts and materials you keep on hand — it's built directly on top of the Service Catalog, so anything you already price out on estimates and invoices can also carry a running stock count.
Account Settings is where the company-wide configuration lives — your business info, billing, and your team. It's only visible to superusers; everyone else on your account won't see a Settings link at all.
The Service Catalog is the price list behind everything else. Every time you've added a line item from a catalog dropdown while building an estimate, invoice, or job — this is where those items actually live and get maintained.
The Calendar pulls together everything with a date on it — tasks, leads, and recurring job visits — into one scheduling view, instead of you checking three separate grids to see what's happening today.
Messages is a simple, internal 1:1 chat between you and your teammates — not something a client or lead ever sees. Think of it as a lightweight way to say "can you call this customer back" without leaving the CRM to text or email a coworker.
The Email section is a real two-way inbox tied to one connected mailbox for your account, plus a separate campaigns tool for sending to a batch of leads or clients at once. Both share the same template system.
The Reports section is intentionally focused: right now it offers one report — the Invoice Report — built for pulling a clean, presentable summary of your invoicing over any date range.
Jobs are for recurring service agreements — the client you visit every week, every other Tuesday, or on the 1st of every month. Instead of manually scheduling each visit and writing each invoice, a job auto-generates both on the cadence you set.
Estimates and Invoices share the same underlying pattern — a grid, an editor, a service catalog, and PDF export — but they're two separate sections tied together by one important workflow: turning an accepted estimate into an invoice with one click.
Tasks are how follow-ups, calls, and to-dos actually get done instead of living in someone's head. Like Leads, Tasks has both a data grid and a kanban board — but the board works a little differently here, so it's worth understanding both.
Once a lead turns into real business, it lives in the Client section. This is your customer database — every company or homeowner you do work for, with their own contacts, tasks, and communication history attached.
Leads are where every new inquiry lands before it becomes a job. Tropical Hill gives you two ways to work them — a full data grid and a drag-and-drop board — plus tools to bulk-manage, import, and promote leads into clients once they're won.
The CRM Dashboard is the first thing you see when you log in, and it's built to be rearranged rather than fixed. You get three built-in tabs — Leads, Sales, and Jobs — each pre-loaded with a curated set of widgets, plus a full catalog of 18 widgets you can mix into any tab, including your own custom ones.
What do buttons on lead table do
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