What is Kalepio?

Kalepio is for anybody who works to commission and has to ask questions before they can start: a photographer, a graphic designer, a web developer, a printer, a decorator, a consultant. One person, sometimes a small workshop, doing paid work for clients.

The problem

Nobody can start until the client has said the things they never think to say. Which machine and which year, or the copy and the logo and access to the domain, or the date and how long.

Today that information arrives in pieces: a message here, a photo there, a phone call for the rest. Half of it is missing, so the work stops, the client answers two days later, and the job has not begun. Or worse: the work starts on what was said, and the client answers "no, the other blue".

Kalepio turns that back-and-forth into one form the client fills in once.

The five words

Everything else in this help uses these five words. They are worth the minute it takes to read them.

Word	What it is
Studio	Your workshop's account. It has a public address, a colour, a logo: everything a client sees, so a form never looks like it belongs to somebody else.
Service	What you sell: "vehicle wrap", "brochure site", "product photography". It carries the questions asked for that kind of job, and it is never filled in itself.
Order	One job, for one client. This is where the work lives: the answers, the files, the status, your private notes.
Request	One round of questions sent to the client. The first is the brief. When a job needs more, you add another round to the same order.
Client	A record: contact details, plus whatever information you decided is worth keeping.

How it fits together

1. You create a service and write your questions once.
2. For a new job you create an order from that service, which copies the questions across.
3. You send the link to your client. They answer from their phone, in their own time, and upload their files.
4. You follow the job, talk to them, ask for a deposit, and hand the work over.

The client installs nothing and creates no account. One link, one page, and that is all.

What Kalepio is not

It is not an empty form builder. Every trade arrives with its questions already written: the machines, the panels and the finishes for a wrap, the pages and the credentials for a website, the date and the duration for a shoot. That is a starting point rather than a verdict: everything is rewritable, and you are the one who knows your trade.

It is not built around one trade. Nothing in Kalepio assumes a physical object, a print run or something sent by post. What is sold always has the same shape: questions, rounds, an order, a delivery, a payment. The trade only decides which questions you start from.