Connect Claude and ChatGPT

Every Crewtavo comes with a connector for Claude and ChatGPT, already turned on. Once connected, an assistant can look things up for you in plain words, or do the work: bring in your customers and recurring services, run the schedule, send quotes and invoices, read your money figures, manage your team, approve time and keep track of pay, set up how your estimates and invoices print, and run your marketing. It never gets more than your own permissions.

Connect

In Crewtavo, open Settings → AI assistants and copy the connector address. It’s your Crewtavo’s address with /mcp on the end, like https://crm.yourbusiness.com/mcp.
Add it to your assistant:
- Claude: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector.
- ChatGPT: Settings → Apps and connectors → Add (in developer mode).
Sign in to Crewtavo when asked, and approve the access.

Each person on your team connects with their own sign-in.

Owners and admins can also start from Apps → Claude or Apps → ChatGPT: Install shows the same address and steps, and once your connection is made the app shows as installed, with a check on the Apps page. Uninstall there disconnects your own connection; everyone else’s stays. On Apps → Claude, if your business added its own Anthropic key there, Uninstall removes that key too, so Ask in the knowledge base and Crewtavo’s writing help stop working for everyone, unless the server has its own ANTHROPIC_API_KEY (see Optional settings).

Choose what it can change

A new connection is Read only: it can look things up, and it sees whatever you can see, nothing more.

To let it do more, open Settings → AI assistants, find it under Your connected assistants, and press Access. Everyone has this setting, whatever their role. There are four choices:

Read only. Looks things up. Can’t add or change anything.
Choose what it can change. Tick the areas it may add to and change. It can’t delete anything.
- Customers and work: clients and properties, requests and notes, jobs and recurring services
- Schedule and time: the schedule, clocks and timesheets
- Money: quotes, invoices and payments, pay and pay rates
- Marketing: campaigns, reviews and social posts; promo codes
- Setup: company details, price list, estimate templates and contract terms, crews, checklists, online booking forms, guides, automations
- Team: people and roles
Areas your own role can’t change are greyed out, with “Your role can’t change this”. Tick none and it stays read only.
Full access. Everything you can change, including deleting, people and money. Crewtavo asks you to confirm first.
Full access, no money. The same, except it can’t change quotes, invoices, payments, pay or promo codes (a promo code is a discount, so it counts as money). It can still read your figures if your role sees them.

Whatever you choose, an assistant can never:

change anyone’s sign-in, password or spare keys, connected apps and keys, or its own access;
give anyone admin access. That’s done on Settings → People, which asks for your password (see Roles and permissions);
charge a client’s card, approve an autopay charge, or refund or delete a payment;
move money. Marking someone paid only records that you paid them through your own payroll or bank.

Some changes get extra care:

A guide it writes starts as a draft, and an automation it makes starts turned off, until you say otherwise.
When it invites someone, Crewtavo emails them the invitation itself. The assistant never sees the link.
Owners get a notice whenever an assistant adds someone, changes a role or turns someone off. Only owners can make owners, there’s always an owner, and no one can give more access than they have.
Before it emails clients or posts anything in public, the assistant is told to check with you first: for a campaign, it says how many clients it reaches; for a social post or a reply to a Google review, it shows you the words.
Work it marks done on a job with autopay waits for the office’s OK before the client’s card is charged. See below.

Things to ask

Once it can change the areas involved, try:

Bring over your customers. “Here’s my customer export. Show me what you’d import first, then import them. Inactive customers should come in archived.”
Recurring services. “Set up every-other-week mowing for these 26 customers, starting the week of April 6, with the times and prices in this list.”
The schedule. “It’s raining Tuesday. Move Tuesday’s visits to Thursday.” “Find me two hours for a cleanup next week.” “Book a 50-minute mow at 12 Oak St on Tuesday at 9:00.” “Organize the mowing crew’s route for Friday, but keep the school at 7:00.” Visits can be any length, and routes work as in Schedule visits and organize mowing routes.
Money. “What did we invoice and collect last month, and who’s more than 30 days overdue?” “Which jobs this year lost money?”
Quotes and invoices. “Quote Sam Lee for a fall cleanup at $250 and text it to them.” “Invoice every job finished this week.” “Record a $120 check from Ana Diaz.”
Team and time. “Invite Jordan as a crew lead.” “Who forgot to clock out?” “Approve last week’s time.”
Pay. “What does everyone get paid for last week?” “Mark everyone paid by direct deposit.”
Setup. “Add these 12 services to my price list: …” “Make a booking form for spring cleanups that only takes requests from 24141 and 24073.” “Set up a reminder text the day before every visit.”
Estimates on paper. “Add a warranty section to our contract terms and print it on every estimate.” “Make our estimate template navy and print our license number on it.” It can change everything in Estimate template and Contract terms except the letterhead pictures: it can switch between your own letterhead and Crewtavo’s, but your own is made from your stationery in Crewtavo.
Marketing. “Draft a spring cleanup email for active clients in Roanoke and tell me how many it reaches.” “Ask Ana Diaz for a review by text.” “Write a reply to yesterday’s Google review and show me before you post it.” “Post the shared photos from the Lee patio job to Facebook and Instagram on Friday at 9.” “Make a promo code SPRING10 for 10% off until May 31.”

Campaigns, review and referral asks, and posts need Crewtavo - Marketing installed, and go out the way Marketing’s do: by your connected email and texting, to Google through Google Business Profile, and to Facebook and Instagram through Facebook & Instagram. It only posts photos your crew marked OK to share, and a post can’t name a client. Clients who opted out aren’t asked. Automated campaigns are changed in Crewtavo, not by an assistant.

For imports, the assistant shows you what it would add first: who’s new, who’s already in Crewtavo, and anything it can’t place. It only adds them once you agree. Running an import again doesn’t make duplicates. It matches customers by the ID from your old system, then email, then name. Addresses are put on the map in the background.

The assistant reads what’s there first. It asks before deleting, sending, posting, inviting or marking anyone paid, then tells you what it changed.

Autopay waits for your OK

On a job the client pays for by autopay, work a person marks done is charged to the client’s saved card by itself, unless it’s over your autopay limit. Work an assistant marks done isn’t: when it completes a visit, or marks a one-off job’s work done, the charge waits for the office’s OK, however small it is.

The invoice says “An AI assistant marked the work done, so it waits for your OK.”, and the Invoices page says how many charges need your OK. Choose Approve charge to charge the card, or Send it the usual way to send the invoice instead. Approving takes an owner, admin or office person with Invoices and payments. An assistant can’t approve it, whatever access it has.

Pay

Timesheets → Pay shows each person’s pay for any week or other stretch of dates: their approved hours at their rate, plus piece pay (per square, per job or per day) for work they finished on jobs in that period. Hours over 40 in a week show as overtime for your payroll service. Breaks are paid the way your business set in Settings → Company; by default, breaks of 20 minutes or less are paid and longer ones aren’t. Time that hasn’t been approved yet, and clocks still running, are flagged. Download the summary as a spreadsheet for your payroll service. See Track time, breaks and where people clock in.

Once you’ve paid people, press Mark paid and choose how you paid them. You can add a check number or other reference. Time and piece pay in a period someone’s been marked paid for are locked, so what was paid stays on record. To change it, take back the paid mark first. Pay is for owners, admins and office staff with Job costs and profit. An assistant can do the same with the pay area, piece pay included.

Subcontractors are paid by the job, from the Subcontractors page and each job, not here. Assistants can’t manage subs, their paperwork or their pay, and a sub can’t connect one. See Work with subcontractors.

For owners and admins

Under Settings → AI assistants, owners and admins also have two switches for everyone at the business:

Let my team use AI assistants with Crewtavo turns the connector on or off.
Look things up only, whatever each person allows keeps every assistant read only, whatever each person chose.

Recent assistant activity shows what each assistant did and when.

For whoever runs the server

The database itself checks every change an assistant makes, through PostgREST’s pre-request setting on the authenticator role, which Crewtavo’s migrations set. If the database role that runs the migrations isn’t allowed to change authenticator, the update log says so (migrate: warning in 20261019001040_assistant_access.sql) with the command to run as a superuser. After running it, run notify pgrst, 'reload config'; or restart the rest service.