The questions owners actually ask us.

Calls you forward to your AI employee are answered in under two seconds — 24/7, including 2am and Sundays. It works out what the job is and how urgent it is, and books it into your calendar (inside the booking hours you set) while the caller is still on the line. If a caller hangs up before it's sorted, they get a friendly text within seconds and the conversation carries on by SMS, so the lead never goes cold.

No — it's a natural, friendly Australian voice. It's an AI employee, not a person, and you can say so in its greeting if you like. You listen to a few voices during setup and pick the one that sounds like your business. Your business name is on the greeting, and you choose the name your AI employee goes by.

Yes. Urgency is worked out on the call: urgent words push the enquiry to the top of your lead list, and you get an email summary of the call as soon as it ends. It books into the first free time inside the booking hours you set, with at least an hour's notice — so if you take after-hours call-outs, include those hours. There's no instant text alert to your mobile for urgent calls — the only instant text you get is for marketplace leads with an accept window (see the next answer). Anything it isn't sure about goes to you rather than being guessed at.

No. You keep your existing business number and forward it to your Velobiz number — the portal shows you the exact codes to dial for your carrier, whether you want forwarding on no-answer only, when you're busy, or on every call. Most businesses forward on no-answer, so it only picks up the ones you actually miss.

It only answers from your own information — your website, your service list, your price list and any documents you give it. If it doesn't know, it says so and takes a message instead of guessing. If a caller is outside your service area, it politely tells them and still saves their details, and it only books jobs inside the area you cover. It won't turn a job away just because it isn't on your list, so keep your service list up to date.

Yes, and it's one of the biggest wins. Lead emails — hipages, ServiceSeeking, realestate.com.au, a course-enquiry form — are read automatically the moment they arrive. For marketplaces with an accept window, like hipages and ServiceSeeking, you also get an instant SMS so you can accept in time — that is the only instant text alert it sends you. Then the lead is created, replied to and followed up like any other. Other directories work too: point their lead emails at your Velobiz lead address and they're picked up the same way.

Minutes, not hours — by text or email, whichever suits that lead. It then follows up over the next week, keeping follow-up texts to 8am–8pm on weekdays and 9am–5pm on Saturdays (never Sundays or public holidays), and stops the instant they reply, book, or ask it to stop. The business that responds first usually wins the work, and that's the whole point.

It books. It reads your real calendar availability and locks in the appointment while the customer is still on the phone or texting — inside your booking hours, with at least an hour's notice. They get a confirmation by email and text with a calendar invite and working reschedule and cancel links, plus reminder emails the day before and an hour before so you get fewer no-shows.

On the call it answers "how much?" from the price list you give it — never a made-up number. Once the job is scoped, you build the quote in your portal and email it. The customer opens it on a link and accepts by typing their name. An accepted quote turns into an invoice automatically, so nothing gets re-typed. There's no quote PDF yet, and you're not notified on acceptance — check your quotes list. Quotes aren't chased automatically: when one goes quiet, your AI employee drafts a follow-up for you to check and send.

Yes — invoices are created from accepted quotes on your own numbering. You email the invoice with your payment details and mark it paid when the money lands. Customers can't pay by card online yet, and there are no automatic overdue reminders — your invoice list shows what's still unpaid.

If you want it to. Review requests are off by default: switch them on and add your review link, and a review request email goes out a set number of days after a job is won.

Every call is written up as a summary, and every text conversation, lead and booking is logged as it happens — so you can open any of it yourself and see exactly what was said and what was promised. Anything it wasn't sure about is flagged for you rather than guessed at. Anything it has written and is holding — a reply to a lead, a follow-up — sits in one list waiting on your yes, next to the lead it is about.

It takes a proper message with the details and puts a callback at the top of your list — it will not bluff its way through. Nothing gets dropped, and anything uncertain is flagged for you with the call summary attached so you can follow it up.

It's built for the Australian rules. Marketing texts only go to people who have genuinely opted in, and consent is never a condition of someone filling in your form. Replying to a customer who contacted you first is treated as an inbound conversation and always carries opt-out wording — and STOP and do-not-contact requests are honoured automatically and permanently.

You get a written summary of each call, not a recording — there's no audio file in your portal. Any recording link our voice provider creates is deleted from our records after 30 days. Customer details stay in your account; see our privacy policy for where data is stored and who processes it.

No. Plenty of businesses run on phone calls and referrals alone and it works fine — we build your AI employee's knowledge from your service list, your pricing and any documents you upload. When you sign up, just choose "No website? Skip this" and fill in your details yourself. If you do have a site, we read it to set things up, and you can add two things to it: a lead-capture form that sends every enquiry straight into the same list as your calls and texts, and a chat box that answers visitors in writing, day and night. When a visitor wants a person, the chat box takes their details and a message for you.

Yes. You set your booking hours day by day, and it only books inside them. It doesn't detect public holidays when booking, so adjust your hours around them (follow-up texts already skip public holidays). Switch call forwarding off whenever you like, or switch a capability off entirely and next month's bill drops to match — month-to-month, no lock-in, and cancelling takes effect at the end of your billing period.

Google and Apple iCloud calendars for bookings, and quotes and invoices in your portal — the money never touches us. There's no sync to job-management, accounting or CRM software yet. Lead emails from marketplaces and portals — hipages, Oneflare, ServiceSeeking, Airtasker, realestate.com.au and the like — can be forwarded straight in, so they land in the same place as your phone and website enquiries. Every enquiry arrives with the customer's details, the call summary and the urgency already filled in.

Minutes. Give us your business name and website (or skip the website and fill in your details), we read your site, then you confirm your services and pick a voice — that's the whole setup, and it goes live at the end of it. The only things left are on your side: forwarding your number, connecting your calendar, and a quick read of its answers before you point real calls at it.

We quote it to your business, because what you need comes down to volume — how many calls, texts, emails and AI Actions you get each month. Get in touch and we'll come back with pricing. A call counts once, and every call is wrapped up politely by the four-minute mark. The 24/7 answering and the bookings come as standard, and so does the missed-call text-back once your business SMS number is set up. Replies in your website chat box are included too, and never count as AI Actions. Month-to-month, change or cancel any time (cancelling takes effect at the end of your billing period), and there is a 7-day free trial with no card.

Yes. Open the lead, say what you want said — quote a price, confirm a time, answer their question — and it writes the email or the text in your words, ready to read. You change anything you like and send it in one tap. Nothing goes out until you press send. It also checks first whether that person can be contacted and on which of the two channels, so you are never one tap away from a message you should not have sent.

An AI Action is one completed piece of written work your AI employee does for you: a follow-up email or text written for a lead, a reply drafted for your approval, your morning brief or weekly summary, a website or document added to its knowledge base, or a piece of content generated. The thinking behind your conversations counts too — scoring a new lead, reading the sentiment of a conversation, handling an objection, and remembering what was said last time — so a busy week does draw on your allowance. Answering your calls and your text conversations are not AI Actions: those replies are already included in the call and in your plan. Sending is counted separately from writing: a follow-up email is one AI Action plus one email. If it appears in the list, it is in the count — including work that failed part-way, which is marked so you can see it. Every single one is itemised. In your portal, click the AI Actions number to see the date, what it was, whether you or the system set it off, and a link to open the thing it produced.