Operations Manual

0Start here

How to read this manual, and what you need before your first day.

How this manual is written

• Bold text inside a step is the exact label of a button, menu, or field on your screen. Look for that exact wording.
• Text in a box like this is something you copy and paste exactly. Do not retype it. Do not change it.
• Each numbered step is one action. Do the steps in order. Do not skip steps.
• A line that starts with Result: tells you what you should see after a step. If you do not see it, stop and go to section 11.
• Blue boxes explain a word or a concept the first time it appears. Read them once; after that you can skip them.

What you need on day one

Ask the account owner for these before you start. You cannot operate without the first four.

1How the business works

Read this once. Everything else in the manual is a zoom-in on one of these steps.

Crestline Growth is a lead-generation agency for roofing companies. The deal with every client is the same: Crestline runs Facebook and Instagram ads that get homeowners to book a free roof inspection on the client's calendar, and the client pays a fixed fee for every inspection that gets booked. The card is on file; charges and refunds happen automatically.

The life of one lead

1. A homeowner sees the client's ad on Facebook or Instagram and taps it.
2. They land on the client's landing page and answer a short survey (homeowner? roof age? zip code?).
3. The system checks their zip code against the client's approved service area. Outside the area, they are routed to a polite "we do not serve your area" page.
4. Inside the area, they pick a time on the client's booking calendar.
5. Automatic text messages confirm the booking and remind them before the inspection.
6. The moment the inspection is booked, the client's card on file is charged the per-inspection fee. If the homeowner cancels or does not show, the fee is refunded automatically.

The life of one client

1. Sales call. A prospect books a call. You use the Growth Snapshot Calculator on the call (section 3).
2. Close. The closer fills in two fields on the contact and adds one tag. Automation creates the billing account, the card-save link, and the service agreement, and texts the card link during the call (section 4).
3. Onboarding form. The client receives one email, fills in the onboarding form, and signs the agreement inside it. The moment the form is submitted, the system builds their entire CRM account automatically and emails them their login (section 5).
4. Setup. You finish the parts that need human hands: domain, one access token, calendar hours, texting number, and a few guided pastes. A portal generates every paste for you and checks your work (section 6).
5. Kickoff call. You walk the client through their login and set expectations (section 7).
6. Ads. You build their ad campaign following the playbook, using the ready-made ad library (section 8).
7. Steady state. Leads book, charges run, texts send — all automatic. You check in weekly (section 10).

2The systems you use

Seven links do everything. All of them are one click from Crestline HQ.

3The sales call

The calculator turns the pitch into the prospect's own numbers.

1. Before the call, open the Growth Snapshot Calculator in a browser tab.
2. On the call, share your screen and fill in the prospect's real numbers as they give them to you (average job value, close rate, volume).
3. Walk through the output with them. The point is that they watch their own numbers produce the result — do not rush this part.

The offer you are selling is fixed and simple: Crestline runs the ads and the booking system; the client pays a flat fee per booked inspection, card on file, refunded automatically for cancels and no-shows. Do not invent custom deal structures.

4Closing a client

When a prospect says yes, the closer does four small actions in the sales sub-account. Everything else fires on its own. This whole section happens while you are still on the call with them.

The closer's actions

1. In GoHighLevel, switch to the sales sub-account and open the prospect's contact record.
2. Fill in the Business Name field with the client's company name as customers know it (the name on their trucks — for example "Priority Roofing"). Legal names come later, on the form.
3. Fill in the Inspection Fee field with the agreed per-inspection price as a plain number. Type 85, not "$85" and not "85 dollars".
4. Add the tag onboarding_needed to the contact.
   Result: within about one minute, the contact's Card Save Link and Agreement Link fields fill in, the tag onboarding-ready appears, and the client receives a text with the card-save link.
5. Stay on the call while the client opens the text and saves their card. The page is Crestline-branded, takes card or bank details, and does not ask them to create any account.
   Result: the tag card-on-file appears on the contact when the card is saved.

What happens next, automatically

• The client receives one onboarding email with a single button.
• The button opens a page that shows their service agreement (already signed by Crestline, with their fee filled in) and the onboarding form.
• The form collects their legal details, service-area zip codes, logo, certifications, pricing, inspection availability — and their signature, which executes the agreement.
• After the form, they land on the card page (skipped automatically if the card is already on file), then a confirmation page.

You do nothing during this phase. Your next action begins when the form arrives — section 5.

5The form comes in — the account builds itself

Submitting the onboarding form triggers the big automation. Know what it does so you can verify it and pick up where it stops.

What happens on its own

1. A complete new sub-account is created for the client, cloned from the master snapshot: funnel pages, calendar, text automations, tags — everything.
2. A login for the client is created (admin of their own sub-account only) with a generated password like Maple-River-4821.
3. The client is pre-registered in the Setup portal: a new row appears in its table with their zip codes, account ID, phone, and timezone already filled in.
4. The tag subaccount-created lands on the sales contact, and the client receives a welcome email with their login and password.

What you check (2 minutes)

1. Open the Setup portal and confirm the client's row appeared in the table.
2. Click the row's Login button.
   Result: you see the client's login email, their generated password, and their account ID. This is the same login the welcome email gave them. You will read it out again on the kickoff call.

6Finishing the setup — the per-client checklist

The automation built the account. A human finishes the parts that platforms refuse to automate: the domain, one access token, a few pastes, calendar hours, and the texting number. The Setup portal walks you through every click and generates every paste — this section is the ordered checklist of what to do there and around it.

7The kickoff call

One short call after setup. The client walks away logged in and knowing exactly what happens next.

1. Before the call, open the client's row in the Setup portal and click Login so their credentials are in front of you.
2. Have them go to app.apexagency.io and read the login email and password out to them. They already have both in their welcome email; this is a walkthrough, not a reveal.
3. Tell them: "First thing, change that password — click your profile icon, then settings, then change password." Wait while they do it.
4. Have them connect their personal calendar (Google or Outlook) under their profile's calendar settings, so inspections appear where they already look.
5. Show them where booked inspections appear (Calendars) and where leads appear (Contacts).
6. Set expectations, in this order:
   • Ads go live within a few days; the first leads usually follow within days of that.
   • Every booked inspection charges the card on file at the agreed fee. Cancels and no-shows are refunded automatically. Their card statement will show the payment processor's name, WHOP, not Crestline.
   • Leads get automatic confirmation and reminder texts; the client's job is to show up to the inspections and sell.

8Launching the ads

The Ads Manager Playbook is the complete recipe — every setting captured from a live, performing campaign. This section tells you the order and the rules; the playbook has the clicks.

1. Get partner access to the client's Meta ad account (the onboarding form confirmed they will grant it).
2. Do Part A of the playbook: create the client's dataset (their tracking pixel), connect it, and put the dataset ID into the client's row in the Setup portal. The portal feeds it to their pages automatically — never paste Meta's pixel code into the funnel yourself; the playbook explains why.
3. Do Part B: build the campaign with the exact captured settings. One campaign, one ad set. The zip list for targeting comes from the portal row's Pastes panel (item F).
4. Do Part C: download the videos and images from the ads library, upload them as ads named exactly after their filenames, and use the copy templates with the client's details filled into the placeholders.

The rules that protect the budget

• One campaign, one ad set, many ads. Never split the same audience into multiple ad sets — it fragments Meta's learning and raises costs.
• Never restart or duplicate a running campaign to "fix" it. Restarts reset the learning phase.
• Kill an ad only when it has spent about $20 with zero landing-page views. Before that, let it run.
• Judge results by leads inside GoHighLevel, not by Meta's own attribution numbers. Meta over-credits ads that were merely seen.
• Do not pre-shrink the zip targeting on a hunch. After about a week, open the region breakdown in Ads Manager and remove areas the data shows are eating budget without producing.
• Never touch a client's own pre-existing campaigns. Crestline's campaign is the one named CRESTLINE | CLIENT NAME | #1.

9How the money works

Billing is fully automatic. Your job is to watch it and to handle the rare failure.

The automatic loop

• An inspection gets booked → the client's card is charged the per-inspection fee, once per appointment, never twice.
• The appointment is marked cancelled or no-show → the charge is refunded in full, automatically.
• A charge fails (expired card, insufficient funds) → the system retries once a day, three times, then stops and tags the situation for you.

What you do in the Billing portal

1. Open the portal. Each row is a client: card status, total billed, refunds, failures, and their history.
2. To change a client's fee: open their row, edit the fee, save. The new fee applies from the next booked inspection. No other system needs updating — the agreement viewer and charges all read from this one number.
3. To get a client a fresh card-save link (new card, expired card): open their row and copy the card-save link. Send it to the client; the page recognizes an existing card and offers "use a different card".

Payments land in Crestline's Whop account. The client's statement says WHOP — tell clients this up front (it is in the kickoff script) so nobody disputes an unfamiliar charge.

10Weekly operations

Thirty minutes, once a week, same order every time.

1. Open the Billing portal. Scan every row for failed charges or a card that stopped working. Handle per section 9.
2. In GoHighLevel, open each client's sub-account → Contacts. Confirm new leads arrived this week and carry the in-service-area tag. A client with zero new leads and an active campaign is a red flag — go to section 11.
3. In each client's sub-account → Calendars, confirm inspections are being booked, not just leads created.
4. In Meta Ads Manager, per client: check spend is pacing, check cost per lead against that client's history, and after the first week of any campaign, prune non-producing regions from the region breakdown (section 8 rules).
5. Check the internal alerts inbox. Every automated failure emails you; none of them age well.

11When something breaks

Find the symptom, apply the fix. Every automated failure also writes a plain-language reason — read the error before anything else; it usually names the fix.

Onboarding and account creation

Funnel and leads

Billing

If the error is not in these tables

1. Read the error text itself — every failure written by the system names its cause and, in most cases, the fix and which guide step to redo.
2. Run Verify on the affected client's Setup-portal row. It re-tests the whole connection and pinpoints the broken layer.
3. If a fix requires changing server code or infrastructure (nothing in this manual does), that is developer territory — escalate to whoever holds the Cloudflare account, with the exact error text.

12When a client leaves

Shut things down in this order so nothing charges and nothing dangles.

1. In Meta Ads Manager, turn the client's campaign off. Do not delete it — history has value if they return.
2. In the Billing portal, open the client's row and delete it.
   Result: no future inspection can be charged. Past records stay in Whop.
3. In the Setup portal, delete the client's row there too.
   Result: their landing-page gate and lead tagging stop resolving. Their funnel effectively goes dormant.
4. Cancel the client's Blooio number in the Blooio dashboard.
5. Leave their sub-account alone for at least 90 days (their data, possible return), then the account owner can delete it from the agency if wanted.

13Access and safety rules

The whole system is run through links that carry their own access. That is convenient and dangerous in equal measure. These rules keep it safe.

The rules

1. The HQ link, this manual, the Billing portal, and the Setup portal are team-only. Treat each URL like a password. Never forward them, never paste them into a client-facing message, never post them anywhere public.
2. The only links that ever go to a client: their card-save link, their agreement link, the onboarding form, their own funnel pages, and their own GoHighLevel login. Nothing else.
3. Clients get admin of their own sub-account only. Never give a client agency-level access, and never do client work while switched into the wrong sub-account — check the account picker before every action.
4. Do not edit the master snapshot sub-account unless you intend to change the template for every future client. Changes there do not affect existing clients; they ride into the next new account created. The placeholder values in it that read REPLACEME are deliberate — they make a missed setup step visible instead of silent. Do not "fix" them.
5. Infrastructure — the Cloudflare account, the server code, the payment processor configuration — is not part of operations. Nothing in this manual requires touching it. If something ever does, escalate to the account owner rather than experimenting.

Client-facing page patterns (recognize them when you see them)

Rebuilding a client account from scratch

If a client sub-account is ever damaged beyond repair, the master snapshot can be imported into a fresh sub-account (snapshot ID rq9O9VPIm7lqVHsoxxQY, permanent share link on the HQ page), and the client re-registered through the Setup portal's guide from step 1. Slow path, always available.

14Every link