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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.arcuserp.com/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

This walkthrough is for owners and admins who just received access to a new Arcus entity and need to configure it before going live. If you are a team member who just received an invitation, read Sign In, Invites, and MFA instead.
A new Arcus entity ships ready, but it needs configuration before your team starts taking orders, paying bills, and shipping packages. The Settings area has 41 pages organized alphabetically. That order is right for reference, but wrong for first-time setup. Follow this 7-step sequence and your entity will be production-ready in about 90 minutes.
Entity Settings Business Profile page with entity name, environment, primary entity, website, email, business address, icon, and logo

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Step 1: Confirm Company Profile and Branding

Confirm your business identity, environment, and branding first. These settings flow into every customer-facing surface: emails, invoices, quotes, shipping labels, and the customer portal. What to do:
  1. Open Settings.
  2. Choose Entity Settings.
  3. Open the Company group.
  4. Confirm Business Profile: entity name, environment badge, primary entity, website, accounting email.
  5. Confirm Business Address: complete street, city, state, ZIP, country.
  6. Confirm Branding: primary color, square icon, logo. Preview before saving.
Sandbox vs production: the environment badge controls how Arcus presents the workspace. Sandbox is for testing. Production is live. Confirm the environment before taking real orders, buying labels, sending customer emails, or recording payments.
Full reference: Company Setup.

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Step 2: Set Up Locations

Locations represent warehouses, receiving docks, holding areas, writeoff bins, marketplace locations, dropship locations, and overflow areas. Almost every operational workflow needs at least one location. What to do:
  1. In Entity Settings, open Locations.
  2. Add your primary warehouse. Pick type Warehouse, mark Sellable, Ships From, and Receives as appropriate.
  3. Confirm the address. This is what carriers will print on shipping labels.
  4. Set the location as the Default if it is your single fallback.
  5. Add receiving, holding, and writeoff locations as needed for your operations.
The location type controls sensible defaults for the sellable, ships-from, and receives flags. Review them before saving because the right answer depends on how your team uses the space.
Add an email and phone to each ship-from location. USPS rejects label purchase when the ship-from address has no email. Freight carriers and DHL Express international need a phone. Arcus falls back to entity support and accounting emails, but per-location data is the cleanest source.
Full reference: Company Setup -> Locations.

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Step 3: Invite Your Team

A configured entity with no users is just a database. Invite the people who will use Arcus before configuring the workflows they will run. What to do:
  1. Open Admin, then Organization.
  2. Choose Users.
  3. Select Invite User for each team member.
  4. Enter the email, choose the starting role (Admin, Accounting, Fulfillment, Customer Service, Warehouse, Sales, View Only, or a custom role).
  5. Select the entities the user should access.
  6. Optionally restrict Location Access so warehouse staff only see their site.
  7. Optionally set Custom Permissions for edge cases.
  8. Send the invitation.
Plan for these roles on day one:
  • One backup Owner so a single departure does not lock the entity.
  • One or more Admin users for daily administration.
  • An Accounting user for AP, AR, GL, and reconciliation.
  • Fulfillment or Warehouse users for pick, pack, ship, and receiving.
  • Customer Service users for order edits, returns, and account communication.
Last-owner protection: do not deactivate or remove the only Owner of an entity. Add a second Owner before changing or removing the first.
Full reference: User Management and Roles and Permissions.

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Step 4: Configure Tax

Tax setup decides how Arcus calculates sales tax on quotes, orders, invoices, and returns. Most production entities use AvaTax for jurisdiction-accurate calculation. Some use entity fallback rates for flat-rate jurisdictions or test scenarios. What to do:
  1. Decide whether you are using AvaTax or entity fallback rates.
  2. If using AvaTax: connect AvaTax in Settings > Integrations with your Account ID, License Key, and Company Code.
  3. Open Settings > Entity Settings > Tax > Tax Configuration and confirm the connection status, company code, and environment.
  4. Test address validation with one known safe address.
  5. Set Product Tax Codes on top-selling products (Settings flows into each product).
  6. Review marketplace tax handling for Amazon, eBay, and Shopify if you sell on those channels.
  7. For tax-exempt customers, set a Tax Exemption Code on the customer account and record the supporting tax number before enabling the exempt toggle.
This is operational guidance, not tax advice. Confirm your tax rules, exemption policy, nexus setup, AvaTax company configuration, and filing responsibilities with your tax advisor or Avalara administrator.
Full reference: Tax and AvaTax Operations.

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Step 5: Configure Email Templates and Sending

Customers receive emails from Arcus for quotes, orders, invoices, payments, shipping notifications, refunds, backorders, statements, and portal access. Brand and validate the templates before they reach real customers. What to do:
  1. Open Settings > Entity Settings > Documents and Email > Email Configuration.
  2. Set the sender identity and the optional custom sending domain (DKIM and Return-Path).
  3. Open Email Templates.
  4. Preview each customer-facing template.
  5. Edit subject lines and bodies as needed. Use Variables rather than hardcoded values.
  6. Send a Test of each edited template to your own inbox.
  7. Enable or disable templates based on whether your business wants Arcus to handle that communication.
Do not remove required customer action links. Quote approval, invoice payment, shipment tracking, and portal sign-in links are often the reason the email exists. Removing the link breaks the customer workflow.
Full reference: Email Templates and Email Configuration.

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Step 6: Connect Integrations

Connect the external services your operations depend on: payments, shipping, address validation, marketplaces, bank feeds, and printing. What to do:
  1. Open Settings > Entity Settings > Integrations.
  2. Connect Stripe for card and ACH payments.
  3. Connect Shippo for carrier rates, labels, tracking, and voids.
  4. Connect PrintNode if you print labels and packing slips from a thermal printer.
  5. Connect AvaTax if you have not already (Step 4).
  6. Connect Plaid if you want automatic bank feed import for reconciliation.
  7. Connect Postmark if you want branded transactional email through a managed sender.
  8. Connect Shopify, Amazon, eBay if you sell through those marketplaces.
  9. Connect RingCentral if you want softphone integration and call logs against accounts.
Test each connector after connecting it. The Connector Dashboard shows live status, masked credentials, recent logs, and test actions for each one. Full reference: Connector Dashboard and the per-connector setup articles.

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Step 7: Set Up Approval Workflows and Operational Rules

Before going live, decide which actions require approval and which operational defaults should govern day-to-day work. What to consider:
  1. Approval Workflows (Settings): credit-limit override, discount cap, manual price adjustment, return without restocking fee, period reopen.
  2. Sales Quotes (Settings): default validity, expiration behavior, approval-on-quote toggles.
  3. Payment Terms: Net 30, Net 60, COD, CIA, or custom terms with grace periods.
  4. Shipping Rules: default carrier, service-level overrides per account, freight thresholds.
  5. Packing Configuration: which packers can complete which orders, scan-to-pack rules.
  6. Document Numbering: prefix and starting number for invoices, orders, quotes, POs, AP bills.
  7. Audit and Compliance: how long to retain logs, who can export audit data.
Full reference: Approval Workflows and the Settings Overview for the complete map.

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After the Walkthrough

You are ready to take real orders. Recommended next steps:
  1. Create one test account end to end. Add an address, attach a payment method.
  2. Create one test product and set inventory in your primary warehouse.
  3. Create one test order, fulfill it, ship it, and record payment.
  4. Confirm GL postings on the test order using Accounting Dashboard.
  5. Open the Month-End Checklist so the accounting team knows the period-close cadence.
Bookmark this walkthrough and send it to every future admin you onboard. It saves a support ticket per person.

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Common Blocks and What To Check

SymptomWhat to check
Cannot save Business ProfileRequired fields like entity name and business address.
Locations dropdown is empty on ordersConfirm a sellable location exists and is set as default.
Labels use wrong ship-from addressConfirm the order location, the location ship-from flag, and the business address.
Invite did not arriveConfirm the email, mailbox filtering, security quarantine. Resend once before creating a new invite.
Tax is zero on a direct saleAvaTax connector status, shipping address, product tax code, customer exemption setup.
Test email did not arriveEmail Configuration sender identity, custom domain DKIM, mailbox filtering.
Connector test failsConnector Dashboard shows the masked credential, environment, and recent error log.
User cannot see a moduleTheir role, custom permissions, location access.

Settings Overview

The full map of admin surfaces, settings groups, and what each setting affects.

Company Setup

Business profile, branding, locations, and the workflows that depend on company defaults.

User Management

Invite users, manage entity access, restrict location access, reset MFA, and offboard.

Roles and Permissions

System roles, custom roles, the permission editor, and the Role Coverage Report.

Tax and AvaTax Operations

Connect AvaTax, configure jurisdictions, set product tax codes, and handle exemptions.

Email Templates

Preview, edit, test, reset, enable, and disable customer-facing email templates.

Connector Dashboard

Live status, masked credentials, recent logs, and safe reconnect steps for every connector.

Approval Workflows

Decide which actions require approval and route them to the right approvers.

Sign In, Invites, and MFA

Help invited users finish first sign-in, complete MFA setup, and save recovery codes.

First Day in Arcus

Orientation for new operators after their entity is configured.