Skejuhl Operations Guide

Skejuhl is a scheduling and field operations accountability platform. Your business lives in a workspace — its calendar, its team, its services, its bookings, its money trail. This page documents the operational surface in full: every area of the workspace, and the complete receptionist console with every setting explained.

Skejuhl also pairs with Aussern, an AI receptionist that answers your business phone and books appointments directly onto your Skejuhl calendar. The receptionist is programmed in Aussern; everything it books, and every rule about what may be booked, lives here.

Getting Started

1. Create your account — free to get started, no credit card required. You provide your name, email, and password, confirm you are 18 or older, and accept the terms. Verify your email to unlock the app.
2. Create your workspace — from your personal dashboard, click New entity. A three-step form walks you through Details (name, type — Business, Division, Team, Network, Freelancer, or Other — timezone, optional description), Plan (Workforce, Pro, or Enterprise), and Payment — or start a 30-day free trial with no card.
3. Invite your team — under People → Members, click Invite member with an email and a role: Admin (full access), Manager (operational access), or Member (their own schedule and submissions).
4. Set availability — each person sets their weekly hours in their personal Availability page. Real bookable time comes from this plus the shifts you schedule.

Your Personal Space

Outside any workspace, the sidebar is yours alone:

• Dashboard — your day across every workspace you belong to: shifts, meetings, pending items.
• Calendar — your personal calendar: shifts, meetings, tasks, and leave in one view.
• Meetings — your own meetings, each with a public guest link others can respond to without an account.
• Tasks — personal tasks only you can see.
• Availability — your weekly hours, per day, used everywhere booking happens.
• Mileage — IRS-compliant trip logging: vehicles, odometer readings, per-trip deductions, and a year-end tax summary with CSV export.
• Messages — direct conversations with other users.
• Badges — your achievements.
• Profile — your account details.

The Workspace: Overview Section

Select a workspace and the sidebar becomes the business. Each tab is a full feature; this and the following sections document how each one works.

Dashboard

The workspace at a glance: upcoming shifts, active projects, weekly hours, upcoming meetings, pending leave requests and tasks, and total members. It is the morning read — what is happening today and what is waiting on someone.

Calendar

Every event in the workspace on one calendar, in four views:

• Day — a single day on a time grid.
• Week — seven days on a time grid.
• Coverage — the manager's view: every member laid out on one weekly grid, showing availability and conflicts before you schedule anyone.
• Agenda — a list of upcoming events by day.

Six kinds of events appear: meetings, shifts, tasks, blockouts, leave, and pay periods. Blockouts are periods a member marks unavailable, and they come in two strengths: firm (a hard block — nothing books over it) and flexible (a soft block — bookings allowed with notice). The receptionist reads this same calendar when it offers appointment times, which is why keeping it honest keeps bookings honest.

Schedule (Shifts)

The shift system. An admin or manager creates shifts from the Schedule page: assign a member, set start and end times, optionally link a location. Recurring patterns can be saved as schedule templates instead of rebuilding each week.

• Lifecycle — a shift moves through Scheduled → Confirmed → In progress → Completed.
• Check-in and check-out — members punch in at shift start and out at the end. The recorded times are what feed hours-worked and payroll. Location verification by geofence and GPS capture are optional per your setup.
• Adjustments — managers can correct the record for missed punches, forgotten check-outs, or disputes, as a check-in correction, a check-out correction, or a missed check-in. Every adjustment is logged with the manager who made it, the original time, the corrected time, and the reason — an audit trail, not an eraser.

The Workspace: Work Section

Receptionist

The console for your AI receptionist — the largest surface in the workspace, documented in full in its own section below.

Projects

Containers for related work. Create a project inside the workspace, give it a color, a priority, and a status, and link tasks to it. Projects appear on the entity dashboard and are tracked through Reports, so a body of work has one place its progress reads from.

Tasks

Work items at two levels: personal tasks visible only to you, and entity tasks assigned to a member within the workspace. An entity task can be linked to a project, given a priority — Critical, High, Medium, or Low — and a due date, and moves through To do → In progress → Done. Tasks appear on the calendar alongside everything else, so committed work occupies visible time.

Meetings

Full meeting management, personal and entity-level — and the home of everything the receptionist books.

• Kinds and platforms — internal, external/client, or billable; held on Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, phone, in person, or other.
• The guest link — every meeting has a unique public page. Guests can view details, propose times, respond, check in, and pay — all without a Skejuhl account. Meeting proposals flow back to the host to accept or decline.
• Billable meetings — attach a dollar amount and the guest pays through the public page; funds process through the workspace's Stripe payment account and deposit to your connected bank.
• Availability-driven booking — guests only see times that fit the member's availability windows.
• Attendance — check-in is tracked three ways: guest check-in from the public link, member check-in from the app, and QR scan check-in — an admin or manager displays a QR code and attendees scan it to check in instantly.
• Receptionist bookings — appointments the receptionist creates land here as confirmed meetings, labeled by source, with the customer as a participant and the job-site address attached.

Locations

The workspace's places: business locations and meeting locations, each with an address and coordinates. Locations serve three jobs — they anchor meetings and shifts to a place, their coordinates power geofenced check-in verification, and members can pin one as their dispatch base, which the receptionist's scheduling uses as that technician's starting point when computing drive time.

Contract Jobs (Pro and Enterprise)

The 1099 contractor workflow, end to end:

1. Assign — an admin creates a contract job with a title, a flat rate, a due date, and an assigned member.
2. Work — the contractor completes the work.
3. Submit — the contractor submits the job with completion notes.
4. Review — the admin approves, requests a revision, or rejects.
5. Pay — once approved, the admin clicks Pay contractor and Skejuhl sends a Stripe transfer directly to the contractor's connected bank account.

Jobs carry a status throughout: Assigned, In progress, Submitted, Approved, Paid, or Disputed. Before a contractor can be paid the first time, they complete Stripe Express onboarding to connect their bank — the admin starts it from the job page with Set up contractor payment, and the contractor returns to Skejuhl when done.

The Workspace: People Section

Members

The team directory. Every member holds a role that controls what they can see and do:

• Admin — full access: settings, billing, members, payroll, payments, every feature, and the power to delete the workspace.
• Manager — operational access: schedule shifts, approve expenses and leave, create contract jobs, issue payments, view reports. No billing or settings.
• Member — standard access: their own schedule, expense reports, leave requests, contract jobs, and personal calendar. Finance, Billing, Reports, Payments, Payroll, and Settings are out of view.

Invite from People → Members with Invite member: enter an email and a role; the invitee receives a link and creates an account when accepting if they don't have one. Each member can carry a pay rate — hourly, salary, or contract — which the payroll system uses to calculate earnings.

Customers

The customer database — including the records your receptionist builds call by call. A customer record accumulates names, household members, verified addresses, and service history against a phone number, which is exactly what lets the receptionist greet a repeat caller by name and offer their usual service without re-asking what the office already knows.

Contractors (Pro and Enterprise)

Your contractor relationships in one place: who works with the business, their contract jobs, and their Stripe payment onboarding status — whether they are ready to receive transfers or still need to connect a bank.

Leave

Time off, from policy to balance:

• Policies — admins create leave policies defining the type (vacation, sick, personal, and so on), accrual rules, and carryover limits, then assign policies to members.
• Requests — a member goes to People → Leave, clicks Request leave, selects dates and type, adds a note, and submits. Their manager approves or denies.
• Calendar integration — approved leave appears on the entity calendar and the Coverage view, so scheduling always sees who is out.
• Balances — every member has a running balance per policy: accrual happens automatically (hours per pay period, days per year, or a fixed allowance), approved leave deducts, and carryover limits apply. Members see their own balance, year-to-date used, and accrual rate. Admins can adjust any balance — for corrections, legacy time from a previous system, or bonus days — and every adjustment is logged with the admin, previous value, new value, and reason. Negative balances are allowed but flagged for admin review.

The Workspace: Finance Section

Payroll (Enterprise)

The payroll system: member pay rates, pay runs, pay period approval, contractor payouts, tax classification, and a pay period calendar banner. Output is built for the systems accountants already use — payroll export to CSV, plus ADP- and Paychex-formatted exports. Full W-2 payroll with tax withholding is in development on this plan.

Payments (Pro and Enterprise)

Pay a member immediately — no contract job required. Useful for bonuses, commissions, reimbursements, or any payment that doesn't need the full job workflow. Methods: Stripe (instant transfer to the member's connected bank), cash, check, wire, Zelle, or other — every method is recorded either way, so the history stays complete. The Payments page lists each payment with recipient, amount, method, memo, issuer, date, and Stripe transfer ID where applicable, with totals per member at the top.

Expenses

Expense reporting with real controls:

• Setup — an admin enables Expenses in Settings → Expense reports and configures who may file and whether job numbers or locations are required.
• Filing — a member opens Finance → Expenses, clicks New expense report, and adds line items. Each line is a standard expense, mileage, or per diem.
• Mileage — uses the current IRS rate or a custom rate the admin sets; the member enters miles and the reimbursement is calculated.
• Per diem — rates sourced from GSA federal rates or employer-set, with the first-and-last-day rule applied automatically at the configured percentage.
• Approval chains — admins configure multi-stage approval; each stage can require a specific user, any manager, any admin, or a specific role. Reports move through the chain to approved or denied.

Billing

Each workspace carries its own subscription — plans are per-entity, not per-user, managed by an admin under Finance → Billing. Three plans ladder the feature set: Workforce (scheduling, shifts, meetings, projects, tasks, leave, expenses, team calendar, and the receptionist connection), Pro (everything in Workforce plus contractor payments, Stripe Connect for contractors, contract jobs, direct payments, and 1099-NEC year-end reporting), and Enterprise (everything in Pro plus the payroll system). Billing intervals run monthly, yearly, two-year, and three-year, with longer terms discounted; the first seat is included and additional members are per-seat. Every new workspace can start a 30-day free trial with no credit card. Current prices live on the Pricing page.

Reports

Financial and operational reporting under Finance → Reports, for admins and managers. Four report types: Payroll summary (hours worked, gross pay, pay period breakdowns by member), Expense summary (totals by member, category, and date range), Contract job report (jobs assigned, completed, paid, and outstanding by member and date), and Payment history (all direct payments by method, recipient, and issuer). Pick a report, set the date range — weekly, monthly, quarterly, custom, or all time — click Generate, and export to CSV or PDF. This is what year-end runs on: preparing 1099-NEC forms for contractors paid through Skejuhl, reconciling payments against the books, and handing your accountant documentation instead of a shoebox.

The Workspace: Settings Section

Settings

Admin-only workspace configuration: name and details, entity closures (dates the whole business is closed — the receptionist reads these and stops offering those days), expense report configuration, and the Payment account — the Stripe Connect onboarding that lets the workspace receive money from billable meetings and receptionist payments. Setup requires Stripe's business onboarding, including bank details and identity verification. Skejuhl never stores card numbers or bank account details; all financial data is handled by Stripe.

The Receptionist Console

The Receptionist page is where your business controls everything the AI receptionist may do. The receptionist itself is programmed in Aussern — its knowledge, voice, and conduct. Skejuhl owns the operational truth it works from: which services exist, who performs them, when bookings may land, what the change policy is, and where every result goes. One workspace connects to exactly one receptionist, and one receptionist serves exactly one workspace.

Connection: pairing starts from Aussern — you sign in there with your Skejuhl account (you must be a workspace admin) and choose this workspace. Once paired, this page shows a green Connected badge with the connection date. The workspace owner can disconnect at any time; access is revoked immediately and completely, and every appointment already booked remains yours.

The console has seven tabs: Services, Call transfer, Messaging, Forms, Intake, Payments, and Call Log.

Services

"The services your business offers. The receptionist routes a caller to the right one using the call triggers." The receptionist can only offer and book what is defined here — a service that doesn't exist on this tab does not exist on the phone. Click + Add service to create one. Each service is a small contract with many deliberate settings:

Service family

• Service family — the broad name, for example "HVAC repair." Required.
• Category — optional grouping, for example "Plumbing, Cleaning, Consultation."
• Family description — what this broad family covers.

Bookable event

• Event name — the specific bookable thing, for example "Emergency no-cooling visit."
• Caller label — how the receptionist says it on the phone, for example "emergency cooling repair."
• Internal label — optional shorthand for your team, for example "NC-EMERG."
• Event kind — what kind of event lands on the calendar: Appointment, Service call, Consultation, Quote, Installation, Inspection, Maintenance, Repair, Emergency, or Other.
• Duration — how many minutes the event blocks, from 5 to 720. This is what the availability math fits into open windows.
• Urgency — "Emergency - dispatch immediately," "Standard - same or next day," or "Scheduled - advance booking." Urgency shapes which slots the receptionist reaches for.

Scheduling behavior

• Fulfillment — how the service is delivered: "We travel to customer," "Customer comes to us," "Video call," or "Phone call." Choosing travel means a customer location and your service area are required before this can book; choosing your place lets you pick the exact business location for it.
• Assignee — whether a specific person must be attached: Required, Optional, Pooled team, or None. With Required, the receptionist only offers times when an assigned member is genuinely free.
• Capacity model — One-to-one (one caller per slot), Fixed capacity (a class or group session with a set seat count, 1 to 500 — the receptionist sees remaining seats and never overbooks), or Unlimited.
• Booking priority — "Inherit business default," "Efficiency - cluster by area," or "Soonest - earliest opening." A per-service override of the workspace objective below.

Reschedule & cancellation (per service)

"Inherits the business policy unless overridden here — a service can require a week of lead time while the shop default stays 24 hours, or the reverse."

• Reschedule and Cancellation — notice hours for each, or inherit.
• Inside the notice window — what happens to a late change request: "Inherit business policy," "Refuse + notify the office," "Refuse politely," or "Allow anyway."
• Refund on cancel — Refundable or Non-refundable; takes effect when this service takes payment.
• Policy note — spoken to callers in your own words — the sentence the receptionist reads when stating this service's policy.

Payment

A service can require or request payment only when the workspace has an active payment account and approved payment links by text. The panel shows both readiness pills: Stripe ready and SMS links ready.

• Payment policy — "No payment," "Payment requested" (the receptionist asks, but the booking doesn't depend on it), or "Payment required" (the booking is only kept once payment is secured).
• Amount — the price, from $0.50 up.
• Capture — "Pre-authorized" (hold now, capture after service) or "Paid now" (charge immediately).
• Grace minutes — how long a payment-required booking waits for payment before it lapses, 5 minutes to 7 days.
• Payment description — what this payment covers, shown to the customer.

Receptionist prompt inputs

These fields feed the receptionist's conversation directly — they are the service speaking for itself:

• Recognition phrases — one phrase per line, the ways callers describe this need ("no cold air," "AC died"). This is how the receptionist maps a caller's words to this service; blank means the service name alone does the matching.
• Custom questions — one per line. Only questions entered here become required intake — the receptionist will ask each one before booking.
• Booking instructions — the instruction the receptionist follows when offering or confirming this event.
• Operator notes template — what should be captured for the technician or office on every booking of this service.
• Confirmation message — what the receptionist says after this event is booked.
• Arrival note — for example, "The technician will call before arrival."
• Follow-up note — for example, "Office staff may call if more details are needed."
• Internal notes — a private setup note; never spoken.

Saved services appear as cards showing urgency, event kind, duration, fulfillment, capacity, payment status, recognition phrases, custom intake, and who performs the service — with a toggle to activate or deactivate, and Edit and Remove buttons. A service with no connected members warns you plainly: no one connected means nothing to book against.

Service area

"The ZIP codes you cover. The receptionist uses these to confirm a caller's address is in your area and to pin down ambiguous ones. Real bookings depend on this — without it, a job can't be reliably placed." Enter ZIPs separated by commas and click Save service area; the panel counts how many are saved.

Scheduling

"How the receptionist decides which slot to offer, and how tightly each day packs. You control it — the receptionist follows whatever you set here."

• When a caller books, prioritise… — two choices: "Book for efficiency" (cluster jobs by area — offer the best-routed slot first to cut travel) or "Book soonest" (earliest opening wins — fill the calendar fast when you need the work now).
• Urgent: fill soonest today — a one-tap override: offers the earliest opening regardless of routing for the next 24 hours, then lapses on its own.
• Default pace — Relaxed, Balanced, or Aggressive. Drive time between jobs is calculated automatically; pace only sets the cushion on top of it — extra breathing room, none, or overbooking to ride tighter.
• Appointment start times — how often a new appointment may start inside an open window: every 15, 30, or 60 minutes. The full service duration must still fit before closing.
• Start of shift — where a tech's day begins when nothing says otherwise: "First job starts the shift" (a 9:00 shift can book a 9:00 job at the job's own address) or "Techs dispatch from base" (the first slot allows real drive time from each tech's pinned base, or your business location). A live GPS check-in or a tech's own pinned base always wins over this assumption.
• Start-of-shift advance notice — do not book the start of a shift unless the booking is made this many hours ahead (0–168) — the first stop of the day is planned, never sprung on a tech.
• Unknown-location buffer — when no drive time can be calculated at all, the earliest bookable slot moves out by this many minutes (0–480) instead of "right now."
• Per-technician pace — each member can inherit the default or run their own pace: a commission tech can ride the edge while a steady one stays relaxed.

Click Save scheduling to apply. Every rule here is enforced on the next call.

Reschedule & cancellation policy (business-wide)

"The general rule for your business — the receptionist states it to callers and every change request is checked against it." Set the Reschedule and Cancellation notice hours, choose what happens Inside the notice window ("Refuse + notify the office," "Refuse politely," or "Allow anyway"), and write the Policy note the receptionist speaks in your own words. Click Save policy. Individual services tighten or loosen this in their own settings.

Call Transfer

"Route unresolved receptionist calls to the people assigned to answer them. Availability is owned by this Skejuhl entity; Aussern only asks for a handoff."

• Routing mode — "Basic fallback" (one default number), "Advanced member priority" (a ranked list of your people), or "Do not transfer."
• Default transfer number — where basic transfers ring.
• If nobody answers — "Transfer to voicemail," "Take a message through connected delivery," or "Do not take a message."
• Voicemail transfer number — required before voicemail fallback can be used; the console blocks saving without it.
• Live attempts before fallback — how many people to try, "1 person, then fallback" through "5 people, then fallback."
• When someone answers a transfer — "Introduce the caller first" (a warm handoff: the receptionist briefs your person before connecting) or "Connect directly, no introduction."
• Limit live transfers to a weekly schedule — check it and a weekly grid appears: each day enabled or disabled with its own start and end time, disabled days reading "No live transfers." Times are in your local time.

Priority order — with advanced routing, each member gets a row: enable them in the chain, set their Transfer phone and a Label, and check what they handle: Accepts transfer calls, Handles emergencies, May be contacted off the clock, Text when a message is taken, Text on missed calls. Routing is your call; receiving texts is each member's — a member consents by texting START to the receptionist line (STOP revokes), or from their own view of this page. Each row shows their consent state plainly: "Text consent ✓," "Opted out," or "No text consent." The console also reminds you it is your responsibility to follow local labor and wage-hour laws when granting contact permissions. Click Save call transfer.

Messaging

"Live status of what your receptionist can send by text. Brand and campaign registration are built in Aussern under Messaging; approval comes from carrier review. Approved use cases can be paused and resumed here — a paused use case stops sending immediately." The panel shows your brand status and one card per use case:

• Booking confirmations — the receptionist texts the caller a confirmation when it books an appointment.
• Appointment reminders — a reminder text to the caller ahead of their scheduled appointment.
• Form & location links — one-time links texted to the caller during a call: intake forms, GPS location pins, payment links.
• Missed-call text-back — a text sent when a call ends before the receptionist could engage.
• Internal notifications — texts to you and your staff: messages taken, abandoned calls, escalations.

Each approved use case carries a Pause / Resume control. Registration and approval live in Aussern; the day-to-day switch lives here.

Forms

"Built here, texted by the receptionist mid-call, and every submission lands on the Intake tab. The trigger tells the receptionist when to offer each form." Each form has a Title (for example "AC Service Intake"), a Link expires (minutes) setting from 15 minutes to 7 days, a Status (Active, Draft, or Archived — only active forms are offered), and the trigger: "When should the receptionist offer this form?" written in plain language, for example "Caller reports a cooling problem and agrees to share unit details." That sentence is what teaches the receptionist the moment to offer it.

Build the questions with Add field — up to twenty-five per form, each with a type (Text, Long text, Choice with its own options, Phone, or Email), a label, an optional placeholder, and a Required checkbox. Save form creates it; existing forms list their field count and trigger with Edit and Delete. The texted link works once and expires on your schedule.

Intake

"Caller information returned from receptionist links. Form submissions, location details, payment events, and booking updates land here so managers can see what came back and decide what needs action." Counters across the top show what is new, what is urgent, and the total. Each item shows its source — Form submission, Payment, Location pin, or Booking update — the caller's name, phone, and submission time, a summary, every answer as label-and-value pairs, and its links: assigned member, service, and meeting. Items move through statuses (new, reviewed, assigned, attached, dismissed) so the phone line's output becomes a work queue your office actually clears.

Payments

"Receptionist-created payment records for booked meetings. Use this view to see what is pending, authorized, paid, or failed, then open the meeting for the full billing record." Counters show pending, authorized, and paid. Each record shows the amount, its live status, the billing mode, the customer's name and contact, the meeting and service it belongs to, and the last payment event — with Open meeting and Guest page buttons to reach the full record. Card details never touch Skejuhl; all payment data is handled by Stripe.

Call Log

Three views, pulled live from Aussern when you load them — read-only, nothing stored in Skejuhl:

• Call Log — "Every call your AI receptionist has answered for this business — who called, what they wanted, and what was booked." Columns: Started, From, Outcome, Summary, and Booked (the service and customer when a booking resulted). Filter by caller phone.
• Reschedules — "Every reschedule the receptionist performed — and every attempt your change policy refused — with the caller, the old and new time, and the call it happened on. More truth than the calendar updating." Status reads Completed or Refused (policy).
• Cancellations — every cancellation performed, and every attempt refused by policy, with the caller, the reason given, and the call it happened on.

Where Bookings Land

Every appointment the receptionist books becomes a confirmed meeting on your workspace calendar — the customer attached as a participant, the assigned member's time blocked, and the verified job-site address on the meeting itself. Your technicians see it in Schedule and Calendar like any other job, check in to it, complete it, and the record stands. Bookings are safe against network retries: the same call never creates a duplicate. The receptionist reads your live calendar — shifts, meetings, blockouts, leave, closures — and offers only openings that truly exist, paced and routed by the Scheduling rules above.

Skejuhl owns and operates; Aussern programs and resolves. The rules live here, the receptionist follows them, and everything it produces — bookings, submissions, payments, call history — lands where your team already works.

When Something Isn't Working: Missing Data and Recovery

Almost every "broken" receptionist is an incomplete one. The receptionist only works with the data this workspace gives it — a missing field doesn't throw an error at you, it quietly removes a capability. This section maps what missing data does, and where to go to complete it.

The three legs of a booking

A bookable appointment stands on three legs. Remove any one and the receptionist answers calls perfectly well but cannot place the job:

1. A complete service — an active service on the Services tab with a duration and event kind, and, for travel work, your service area ZIP codes saved. The console says it plainly: "Real bookings depend on this — without it, a job can't be reliably placed." A travel service with no ZIPs cannot confirm any caller's address is yours to serve.
2. A real schedule — the receptionist offers only time that actually exists: members' availability, shifts on the Schedule page, minus blockouts, leave, and entity closures. A workspace with services but no shifts and no availability has nothing to offer — every caller hears that nothing is open, because nothing is.
3. A member connected to the service — every service lists who performs it. A service card with "No one connected" is a service that cannot book when an assignee is required: there is no calendar to place the job on. Connect members to the service, and make sure those members have availability or shifts.

The fastest health check is in Aussern's builder: the Skejuhl readiness panel counts your staff, services, and slots, and its scheduling diagnostics name what is missing. Zeros in that panel are this section's checklist.

Symptom → missing data → where to fix

• The receptionist offers no times at all. No active service, no members connected to it, or no shifts/availability for those members — or the business is inside an entity closure. Fix on Receptionist → Services (activate, connect members), Schedule (create shifts), each member's Availability page, and Settings (closures).
• Callers inside your area are told they're outside it. The service area is empty or missing their ZIP. Fix in Receptionist → Services → Service area — add the ZIPs, click Save service area.
• A travel job won't book but an office visit will. Travel fulfillment requires a customer location and a service area; office visits don't. Save your ZIPs, and expect the receptionist to verify the caller's address before placing travel work.
• One technician never gets booked. They aren't connected to the service, have no availability or shifts, or are on approved leave or a firm blockout. Check the service's "Performed by" list first, then their calendar.
• The first slot of the day never books. That's the Start-of-shift advance notice doing its job — shift starts book only when made that many hours ahead. Lower it in Scheduling if it's stricter than you want.
• Earliest offered slot seems pushed out. With no check-in, no pinned base, and no known location, the Unknown-location buffer moves the earliest slot out by design. Techs pinning a dispatch base, or GPS check-ins, restore tight scheduling.
• Texts aren't sending. The brand isn't approved yet, that use case isn't approved, it's paused on the Messaging tab, or — for staff texts — the recipient never texted START. Approvals live in Aussern under Messaging; the pause switch and consent states are here.
• A payment-required service won't book. Both readiness pills must be green: Stripe ready (Settings → Payment account onboarding complete) and SMS links ready (the form & location links use case approved). Without them, billable settings on the service stay disabled.
• Transfers never reach anyone. Routing mode is "Do not transfer," transfer hours exclude the current time, the priority members' "Accepts transfer calls" boxes are unchecked, or no transfer phone was entered. Voicemail fallback additionally refuses to save without a voicemail transfer number.
• A caller's reschedule was refused. Usually not a fault — the change policy refused it inside the notice window, and the Call Log's Reschedules view shows it as "Refused (policy)" with the reason. If that's not the behavior you want, change "Inside the notice window" in the policy.
• The console says the receptionist is not connected. Pairing starts from Aussern — sign in there as a workspace admin and connect this entity. Disconnection is immediate and complete, so a disconnect means reconnecting from Aussern, not from here.

The pattern to remember: complete the data, and the capability returns on the next call. Nothing needs redeploying or resetting — the receptionist reads this workspace live. When a symptom survives every check above, write to support@skejuhl.com.