5-minute Quickstart
Hi. This page is the shortest possible path from "I just signed up" to "oh, this is actually useful." Five minutes, one file, one question.
If you don't have an account yet, open app.thola.ai (opens in a new tab), tap Register, and come back when the screen says "Welcome." We'll wait.
Minute 1 — Land on Home
When you sign in for the first time, thola lands you on the Home screen. It's mostly empty, because we don't know anything about your business yet. That's fine.
You'll see one big card that says something like:
"Welcome! I'm your Planner. The fastest way for me to be useful is for you to drop in last month's data. What do you have handy?"
That card is your starting point.
Minute 2 — Drop in a file
Open a sales sheet from last month. It can be:
- A CSV exported from your CRM or accounting tool
- An Excel file you maintain by hand
- A PDF of a sales register or invoice book
- A photo of your handwritten cash book
Drag it into the chat box, or tap the paperclip icon.
thola reads it. Within a few seconds you'll see a preview with:
- The shape it found (sales? expenses? customers?)
- The columns it mapped (what column became what field)
- The row count
- Any rows it's unsure about, flagged for you to check
Nothing is saved yet. This is the Preview step. Look it over. If it looks right, tap Confirm and the data lands in your workspace.
💡 Don't have a real sheet handy? Tap "Use a sample file" on the same screen. We'll seed your workspace with a realistic dataset so you can play.
Minute 3 — Ask one question
In the chat box, type, in your own words:
How are we doing?
Hit send.
thola's Planner thinks for a moment (you'll see a small trace), then replies. The answer will look something like:
Sales is at 64/100 — a bit below typical for a business your size. Revenue rose 8% month-over-month, but conversion dropped from 22% to 17%. Want me to dig into which lead source did that?
Notice three things:
- It gave you a number — Sales score.
- It told you what's moving — conversion dropped.
- It offered a next step — want me to dig in?
That last part is the whole product. Every answer ends with a doorway. Tap it, and the conversation continues.
Minute 4 — Follow the thread
Reply:
Yes, dig in.
The Planner routes to the Sales agent. It pulls your data, compares lead sources, and answers with a specific picture:
Your "Walk-in" source converts at 28%. Your "Instagram ads" source converts at 8% but accounts for 60% of new leads. That's where the drop is. Want a draft re-engagement message for the leads stuck in 'Pending'?
You can say yes, you can say no, you can ask something else entirely ("how much did we spend on those Instagram ads last month?"). Each reply pulls a different bit of your data forward. You don't have to know how to query a database, or where the right chart lives. You just talk.
Minute 5 — Settle in
By now, three things have happened:
✅ Your Sales module has real numbers. ✅ A conversation is saved in your Chat history. ✅ You've seen what an answer from thola looks like — number + movement + next step.
You can stop here. Or you can keep going. Here's what makes sense next:
- Drop in another file — expenses, employees, inventory. Each one lights up another module. Today's Finance recipes walk through what to upload first if cash is your worry.
- Invite a teammate — Invite teammates takes two minutes. They land in their own version of this Quickstart.
- Tell thola what you're trying to achieve — go to Profile → Goal and set one target ("₹15L monthly revenue by August"). The Founder agent will start tracking your odds.
A small confession
We deliberately don't ask you to take a tour first. Most tours teach you the product's vocabulary, not how to do your work. With thola, you ask in your own words and we figure out the vocabulary. The Quickstart is the tour.
If you want a slightly longer orientation — what the five health modules are, what an "agent" is, why we say "agents, not dashboards" — read What is thola?. It's another five minutes.
Otherwise, find the thing on your plate today on the Recipes page and follow it. Welcome.