Welcome to ChargeGrid

Getting started with ChargeGrid

ChargeGrid runs your own power-bank swap shop — the way DryCleanPro runs a laundry or PropertyPro runs lettings, but for power banks. A customer brings in a dead power bank, hands it over, and walks out with a charged one in under 30 seconds. You record the swap and collect a small swap fee. ChargeGrid keeps the books for you.

You are the owner. You run the shop across one or more locations, helped by staff (who sign in with a phone and PIN) and serving customers (who also sign in with a phone and PIN). Installing ChargeGrid from the Pancho marketplace is free.

1. Name your business

Open Settings → Business details. Set your business name, your default swap fee, your default deposit, and the typical cost of one power bank (this is what a lost unit is worth — more on that later). Your currency symbol is already filled in from when you signed up.

2. Add a location

Your first location exists already. If you run more than one shop, open Settings → Locations and add the others. The location chip at the top of every screen switches which location you're working in — swaps, units, and takings all follow the chip.

3. Set your plans

Every customer is on a membership plan. Open Plans → Add plan and give it:

• a name (e.g. "Standard"),
• a deposit — refundable money the customer leaves with you,
• a swap fee — what each swap costs them,
• units — how many power banks that customer may hold at once.

The deposit protects your hardware: it should comfortably cover the units a customer can hold. Make two or three plans if you like (e.g. a single-unit plan and a family plan).

4. Register your first power banks

Open Power Banks → Register units. For each one, pick its colour/size and give it a code that you write on the unit itself. New units start as Ready. Start with as few as five — you can register more any time.

5. Add a staff member (optional)

Open Settings → Staff → Add staff. Enter their name, phone, a PIN, and a role:

• staff — can run swaps and see the operational screens, but not Plans, Reports, Settings or Activity.
• admin — sees everything, just like you.

They sign in at your Staff sign-in link with their phone and PIN.

6. Do your first swap

Open New swap. Enter the customer's phone and tap Find (add them first from the Customers page if they're new). Enter the Returned unit code (the dead one they handed you) and the Unit to hand out (a charged Ready one), pick a payment method, and submit. The fee comes from the customer's plan — and it's free automatically when a loyalty swap is due.

How you pay for ChargeGrid

ChargeGrid is included with the Plus plan — one simple monthly plan, the same way every Pancho app works. There's no per-swap cut: every swap fee is 100% yours and all customer deposits stay with you. Run as many swaps, customers and locations as you like on the one plan. (On a higher plan like Premium or Business? ChargeGrid is included there too — any plan at Plus or above unlocks it.)

Customers, deposits & your money

ChargeGrid records your money — it doesn't process cards. You take cash or bank transfers from customers yourself, then record them here, and the app keeps the books: swaps, deposits, expenses, profit, and reports.

Signing up customers and assigning plans

Open Customers → Add customer. Enter their name and phone, and let the customer type their own PIN so it stays private to them. Then assign one of your plans and collect their deposit.

Each customer row shows their plan, how many units they currently have out, and their deposit balance — so you can see at a glance who's holding your hardware. Customers can also sign themselves up through your Sign-up link (covered in the sharing lesson); either way they land on the Customers page.

Deposits — collect, refund, forfeit

The Deposits page is your record of every customer's refundable money. At the top it shows the total held now across all customers — money that is yours to hold but theirs to get back. For any customer you can:

• Collect a deposit (when they join or top up),
• Refund a deposit (when they leave and return their unit),
• Forfeit a deposit (when a unit is lost or damaged on their watch — the value goes to you).

Every one of these is recorded, whether the customer paid you in cash or by transfer. ChargeGrid never moves the money for you; it writes down what you did so the books stay straight.

Recording payments

When a customer pays a swap fee or a deposit, you simply choose the method as you record it — cash or transfer. There's no card terminal and no wallet to top up. The point is an honest ledger: what came in, from whom, and when.

Expenses and your profit

Open Expenses → Record expense to log what you spend — buying new power banks, rent, electricity, repairs — under categories you control (set them in Settings → Expense categories).

At the top of the page a simple profit (P&L) strip shows, for this month:

• Money in — your swap fees,
• Money out — your expenses,
• What's left — your profit so far.

It's the quick gut-check on how the shop is doing without opening a spreadsheet.

Reports

The Reports page is the fuller picture. Pick a From / To date range and it shows:

• Swaps, Swap fees, Expenses, and What you kept,
• Top customers,
• Daily takings.

Use it to compare weeks, spot your busiest days, and see which customers swap the most.

Automatic loyalty

You don't run a points scheme by hand. ChargeGrid counts swaps for each customer and, every few swaps, gives them a free swap automatically — the New swap screen simply charges nothing when one is due. It's a built-in thank-you that keeps customers coming back, and it costs you nothing to administer.

Running your shop day to day

This is the everyday rhythm of ChargeGrid: take swaps, keep your power banks accounted for, and move between your locations. Owners and staff both work from the same admin screens.

Doing a swap

A swap takes seconds at the counter:

1. Open New swap.
2. Type the customer's phone and tap Find. Their plan and details load.
3. Enter the Returned unit code — the dead power bank they just handed you.
4. Enter the Unit to hand out — a charged, Ready unit.
5. Pick a payment method and submit.

The swap fee comes straight from the customer's plan. If they're due a free loyalty swap, the app applies it automatically and charges nothing. The handed-out unit flips to With customer; the returned one goes back to Ready for the next person.

Always record every swap in the app. A power bank handed out off the books isn't tied to any customer's deposit — if it walks off, that loss is yours. The recorded swap is your protection and the customer's receipt.

Registering and managing power banks

Open Power Banks. Tap Register units to add stock — pick each unit's colour/size and give it a code you write on the unit so anyone at the counter can read it.

Every unit shows one of three statuses:

• Ready — sitting in your shop, free to hand out.
• With customer — currently out on a swap.
• Damaged — flagged as faulty and not for handing out.

You don't track which Ready units are fully charged — that's busywork. Anything not out with a customer counts as Ready; you check the charge before handing one over.

Taking a unit out of service

When a power bank is broken, or a customer never brought one back, edit the unit and change its status. You can mark it Damaged, Lost, or Retired to take it out of service so it stops appearing as available.

• Damaged from normal wear or your own mistake — no charge to anyone. It's your hardware; it just leaves your fleet.
• A customer lost or damaged a unit — its cost (you set the unit cost in Settings → Business details) is drawn from that customer's deposit and recorded as paid to you. This is exactly what the deposit is for. Their deposit balance drops by the unit's value, and the unit leaves your fleet.

Working across locations

If you run more than one shop, the location chip at the top of every screen is how you move between them. Pick a location and everything on screen — the units you can hand out, the swaps you record, the day's takings — belongs to that location. Switch the chip when you move to another shop.

Add or rename locations any time under Settings → Locations. Staff you've added can work wherever you send them; each swap records which location and which staff member processed it, so your Activity log always shows who did what and where.

Customizing ChargeGrid

Almost everything about your shop is tuned from one place: the Settings page. This lesson walks the sections, explains how you pay for ChargeGrid, and flags the few things to be careful with.

The Settings page

Share links — your four customer-facing links (Landing page, Customer sign-in, Sign up, Staff sign-in), each with Copy and Open buttons. Hand these out as covered in the sharing lesson.

Business details — your business name, currency symbol, default swap fee, default deposit, and unit cost (what one power bank is worth, used when a customer loss is drawn from their deposit).

Plans — add and edit membership plans: name, deposit, swap fee, and units a customer may hold. Make the deposit comfortably cover those units.

Notifications:

• Push (ntfy) — free phone notifications. Turn it on to get a buzz on your phone as things happen, no paid account needed.
• SMS (Twilio) — turn on and paste your Twilio SID, auth token, and "from" number to text customers.

Customer portal toggles — decide whether a customer must enter a PIN to be looked up, and whether customers may sign themselves up through your Sign-up link.

Staff — the staff card, with Add staff (name, phone, PIN, and role admin or staff). A staff-role member sees the operational screens but not Plans, Reports, Settings or Activity; an admin-role member sees everything.

Locations — manage your shops; the location chip at the top of the app switches between them.

Expense categories — the list you pick from when recording an expense.

How you pay for ChargeGrid — one simple plan

ChargeGrid is included with the Plus plan — one straightforward monthly plan, the same as every Pancho app:

• No per-swap cut. Every swap fee you collect is 100% yours.
• All customer deposits stay with you — the platform never touches deposits.
• Run as many swaps, customers and locations as you like — a busy day never costs more.
• Already on a higher plan (Premium, Business, Elite)? ChargeGrid is included there too — any plan at Plus or above unlocks it.

So a swap fee you set at, say, 200 is yours in full — the platform takes nothing from it. Your Plus plan is the only thing you pay for.

A good order to set things up

1. Business details first — name, currency symbol, default fee and deposit, unit cost.
2. Plans — at least one, with a deposit that covers its units.
3. Locations — add any extra shops.
4. Staff — add anyone who'll work the counter.
5. Notifications and portal toggles — turn on push, decide your sign-up and PIN rules.
6. Then register power banks and start swapping.

Things to be careful with

Heads up: Your currency is set once at signup from your phone's country code and can't be changed later. Everything in the app is priced in it.

• A plan's deposit should cover the power banks it lets a customer hold — a too-low deposit leaves your hardware under-protected.
• Lowering a plan's deposit doesn't claw back deposits already collected; it only applies going forward.
• Set the unit cost in Business details honestly — it's the amount drawn from a customer's deposit when they lose or damage a unit.

When a setting isn't clear, the safest move is to leave it on its default — they're chosen to be sensible for most shops.

Sharing ChargeGrid with customers

Your customers get their own little app — they sign in on their phone, see their deposit and the unit they're holding, and check their swap history. You bring them in with a few share links. You'll find all of them under Settings → Share links, each with Copy and Open buttons.

The four share links

• Landing page — a plain-language page about your shop with sign-up buttons. This is the one to put on posters, social media, or your own website.
• Customer sign-in — where existing customers log in with their phone and PIN to reach their own app.
• Sign up — where a new customer registers themselves (if you've allowed self-signup in Settings).
• Staff sign-in — where your staff log in with phone and PIN to work the counter.

Print the Landing or Sign-up link as a QR code on your counter; one scan and a customer is signing up.

What customer self-signup looks like

If you've turned on self-signup in Settings → Customer portal toggles, a customer can:

1. Open your Sign-up link, enter their name and phone, and choose their own PIN.
2. Land in their customer app, ready to be put on a plan and have their deposit collected next time they're at the shop.

If you'd rather control sign-ups yourself, leave self-signup off and add customers from the Customers page instead.

The customer app (the portal)

When a customer signs in at the Customer sign-in link, they see their own simple view:

• their deposit balance with you,
• the unit (or units) they currently hold,
• their full swap history.

It's read-only reassurance — no money moves in the customer app. Every swap you record produces a shareable receipt/invoice the customer can keep or send on, so there's never a "did that swap count?" question.

Loyalty

Loyalty is automatic and shows up here too. After every few swaps a customer earns a free swap, applied for them at the counter with no points to track. It's a built-in thank-you that brings them back — and it appears in their swap history so they can see it working.

Custom domain

You can run any of these links on your own domain instead of the platform address. Connect it under Pancho's Account → Domains, and your customer-facing pages carry your brand automatically. (Sign-in and sign-up for the platform itself stay on the platform domain; everything customer-facing follows your domain.)

Embedding on your website

Any customer-facing page can be embedded straight into another website with an iframe — drop your Landing or Sign-up page into your existing site so customers join without ever leaving it. The page resizes itself to fit, so it sits cleanly inside your layout.