Shop settings

Fill in Business Info. Shop Name is required — it's the name on every document. Add your Legal Name (DBA or incorporated name) and Federal Tax ID (EIN) if they differ from the everyday name.

Fill in Contact and Address. Phone, Fax, Email, Website, and your street address all print on estimates and invoices, and they're what customers see on the customer portal.

Check your Time zone. It has its own section under Address, and each option shows the current time there so you can confirm at a glance.

This is more important than it looks: it decides which day and which accounting period a transaction belongs to. A ticket closed at 6:30pm on the 31st belongs to that month — without the right timezone it can land in the next one.

If Meridian shows an amber note saying this was worked out from your address rather than chosen, check it's right and save the page. Saving is all it takes to confirm it. You'll also see a banner about it at the top of Settings until you do — click it to come straight here.

Set your Backdated entries policy. Two dropdowns — one for Appointments, one for Purchase order expected date — each set to Allow, Warn or Block. Both start on Warn. Dates are judged against today in your shop's timezone.

The three now behave as they read. Allow saves a past date without comment. Warn asks: a That date is in the past box appears naming the day, and Save anyway goes ahead with it. Block refuses outright, with no way through. Choose Allow if your team routinely books dates that have already passed and you don't want to be asked.

Set your Work orders options. Four choices that shape every order:

• Order Number Prefix — text prepended to all order numbers (e.g. WO-000123). Leave blank for plain numbers.
• Default Tax Area — the tax area applied to new orders, picked from a list of your active areas. Create the area first (below) and it appears here. Choose No default to leave new orders unset.
• Auto-invoice on complete — automatically move orders to Invoiced when marked Completed.
• Require mileage on close — warn technicians if mileage-out is not entered before closing.

Write your Invoice Footer Text. A short message printed at the bottom of every invoice — warranty terms, a thank-you, whatever you'd stamp on paper.

Click Save changes. A bar appears at the bottom of the screen whenever you have unsaved edits — Save changes commits them, Discard throws them away. Nothing is saved until you click Save.

Open Settings → Tax Areas and click New Tax Area.

Enter a code and name. The code (e.g. TX-MAIN) is what you'll reference on orders, and what identifies this area in the Default Tax Area picker; the description is for humans.

Enter the rates. Parts Rate % and Labor Rate % are separate because many states tax them differently — leave labor blank if your state doesn't tax it. Save the row.

Fill in the Jurisdiction if you want it on the list. City, County and State are optional, and show as a single column in the table. Leave them blank and the column shows a dash.

To change one later, click the pencil on its row. Every field edits freely — except the Code once it's in use. If customers, orders or recurring bills already point at that code, Meridian refuses the rename and tells you how many of each are attached, because changing the code would disconnect them. Edit the other fields instead, or make a new area and retire this one.

To retire one, click the trash icon. If nothing references it, it's deleted. If anything does, Meridian deactivates it instead and says so — the row stays in the list marked Inactive, it no longer applies to new work, and the history that points at it stays intact.

Open Settings → Labor Rates and click New Rate.

Enter a code, description, and rate per hour. For example STD / Standard Labor / 115.00. Add one row per rate you bill at — standard, fleet, warranty, mobile.

Set a default. Check Set as default on the rate most orders should start from — it's marked with a star in the list. Advisors can still pick a different rate on any labor line.