Cord 101: Getting Started

Welcome to Cord. This guide gets you operating —quoting, collecting, and invoicing— in under 20 minutes. If it’s your first time, follow this linear path.

Step 1: Set up your company

Shortcut: when you finish signing up, Cord offers to set up your account with AI. Give it your website, what your business does and your price list, and it proposes profile, branding, taxes, catalog and templates for you to review and approve. If you skipped it, it’s in Settings > General > Set up with AI. See Set up your account with AI.

The core of Cord is your tax and brand profile. What you are asked for depends on your account’s country: Cord operates end to end in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Colombia, Argentina, Chile and Peru, and the tax vocabulary changes with each one.

1. Go to Settings > General and enter your legal name, contact and basic details (currency, language and time zone are detected from your country, and you can adjust them there).
2. Go to Settings > Invoicing > Tax details (Tax profile outside Mexico) and enter your tax ID: RFC in Mexico, NIF/CIF in Spain, EIN/Tax ID in the United States, and the equivalent in each of the other countries.
   • If your account is in Mexico: also upload your CSD (Digital Seal Certificate): the .cer and .key files the SAT gives you, with their password. Without the CSD you can quote, but not stamp CFDI.
   • If your account is in Spain: upload your electronic certificate (.p12/.pfx) in the Verifactu section. From Starter, Cord registers each invoice with the AEAT through Verifactu (in beta), and the section says so (“Verifactu active”); without a certificate, it issues pro formas. See How to invoice in Spain.
   • In the other countries, your tax ID and company details are enough to issue the commercial invoice. In Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and France, registration with the authority (ARCA, NFS-e and NF-e, SII, DIAN, SUNAT and the approved platform) is being turned on; write to us if you need it. Your country’s guide is under Invoicing by country.

Step 2: (Optional) Activate Cord Payments

To collect by card (and automatic bank transfer or bank debit, depending on your country) from the link, activate Cord Payments under Settings > Payments > Account. There you will register your payout account in your country’s format (CLABE, IBAN, routing + account number, sort code and others) and complete verification; you see the fee per method under Settings > Payments > Fees. In Colombia, Argentina, Chile and Peru online payment is through Mercado Pago, which you connect under Settings > Payments > Payment methods. If you prefer manual transfers, you can still record the payment by hand.

Step 3: Create your first client

1. Go to Clients > New client.
2. Enter their legal name and tax ID (the same vocabulary as in Step 1, depending on the client’s country).
3. Assign credit terms (e.g. Net-30) and, if applicable, their credit limit so Cord monitors their exposure.
4. If your account is in Mexico and you will invoice them by name, also add their tax regime, zip code and CFDI use in their tax details section; this data is specific to the Mexican CFDI.

Step 4: Send your first quote

1. Go to Quotes > New quote (or use Create in the top bar).
2. Search for the client (or create them from the same search box) and choose their payment terms, add line items (from your catalog or free lines), set validity, deposit and currency under Terms, and review the total. Each line can carry its own tax rate.
3. When you click Create and send, Cord generates a public link and, if email is configured, sends it to the client. They open it, review, approve and, if Cord Payments is active, pay online.

The full editor walkthrough is in Create a quote or an invoice step by step.

Step 5: (For devs) Connect the API

If you’ll use Cord programmatically:

• Turn on Developer mode in Your account › Preferences, open the Workbench’s API keys tab (the Developers pill in the bottom-right corner) and create a key (sk_test_... or sk_live_...).
• Verify it works with the simplest call:

curl https://cordhq.app/api/v1/me -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_test_your_key"

• Or use the Cord CLI: npx @flouviahq/cli login connects your terminal from the browser and npx @flouviahq/cli init integrates your project.

Step 6: Automate and connect your apps

• In Workflows create your first workflow from one of the ideas Cord suggests for your business: for example, “Don’t let a quote go cold”, which creates the task to call the client as soon as they open it. It is one of the steps in the Set up Cord checklist.
• In Settings › Integrations connect the tools you already use. Slack, Zapier and Make connect with one click, without copying keys or URLs; your connected apps show up in the top bar.

What’s next?

• Configure Webhooks
• Invite your team
• Dispute management