A tour of the app
Learn the layout: the sidebar, global search, in-app help, the location switcher, and where to sign out.
Take five minutes to learn where everything lives. Once you know the sidebar groups and the search shortcut, you can get anywhere in Meridian in a couple of keystrokes.
Start at the sidebar. The left sidebar is your map. At the top you'll see your shop's name, then a Search... box, then the navigation, grouped under captions: Operations, Customers & Vehicles, Inventory, Money, and Insights. Employees and Settings sit pinned at the bottom, and Sign out is in the footer. On a phone, tap the menu button in the top bar to open the same sidebar as a drawer.
Expand a group. Items with an arrow — like Service, Customers, Parts & Inventory, and Accounting — expand to show their pages. Click Service to reveal Tickets and Schedule; click Accounting to reveal AR Aging, Statements, and the rest. Click the group again to collapse it.
Know what each area is for. Operations is the daily work: your Dashboard, Service (tickets and the schedule), and — where enabled — Sales for counter checkout. Customers & Vehicles holds customer accounts, the vehicle list, and Fleet PM. Inventory covers the parts catalog, purchase orders, vendors, and vendor returns. Money is accounting: AR aging, statements, payments, the chart of accounts, plus Periods and Backdated Entries for month-end. Insights is Reports — plus extras like Foreman where your shop has them turned on.
Notice what you don't see. The sidebar only shows what your role can reach. A technician won't see Accounting; a parts clerk won't see Settings. Extras like Dispatch, Field Portal, Point of Sale, and DVIR appear only when your shop uses those features and your role has access. A missing item is normal, not broken.
Open global search. Press ⌘K on a Mac or Ctrl K on Windows — or click the Search... box at the top of the sidebar. Before you type, you get quick actions: New Ticket, Quick Ticket, Schedule, Reports, and Help for this page.
Search anything. Type at least two characters to search tickets, customers, vehicles, parts, kits, and labor all at once. Matching help articles turn up too, grouped under a Help heading — press Enter on one to read it in the help panel without leaving the page. Use the arrow keys to move and press Enter to open. Handy trick: search a fleet unit number — if that truck has an open ticket, Meridian jumps you straight to it with its status and promised date.
Add to a ticket from search. If you're already viewing a ticket, parts, labor, and kits in the search results show an Add tag — pressing Enter puts the line on that ticket instead of navigating away. The footer reminds you: "Parts · Labor · Kits add to the open ticket."
Check the location switcher. If your shop has more than one location, a switcher appears in the top bar labeled Location: — pills for a few locations, a dropdown for many. It controls which location's stock counts and inventory numbers you're looking at. Pick All to see totals across every location (shown only if your account isn't limited to specific locations). Single-location shops never see this — nothing to switch.
Get help on any screen. In the top bar there's a ? button — hover it and it reads Help on this page. Click it to slide a help panel in from the right with the guide for wherever you are. Read it right beside your work, use Open full to open the whole page in a new tab, and press Esc to close. It's always there, whether or not your shop has more than one location.
Find your account controls. Your shop's name sits at the top of the sidebar, and Sign out is at the very bottom. That's it — no separate profile menu to hunt for.
What happens behind the scenes
Your location choice sticks: pick a location once and every page — parts catalog, dashboard stock alerts, exports — reports that location until you switch again, even after you close the browser. Search looks only inside your own shop's data, and quick-added lines are priced the same way as lines added from the ticket page.
Troubleshooting
The sidebar is filtered by role and by which features your shop has turned on. If you need an area you can't see — say, Accounting or Dispatch — ask whoever manages users to adjust your role or permissions in Settings → Users.
Click into the Meridian browser tab first — the shortcut only works while the app has focus. Some browser extensions also claim Ctrl K; if so, click the Search... box at the top of the sidebar instead.
It only appears when your shop has two or more active locations and your account can see more than one. Single-location shops never show it. If a location you expect is missing from the list, your account may be scoped to specific locations — check with your manager.
The panel loads pages from Meridian's online help, so it needs an internet connection. Give it a second to load; if it stays blank, click Open full to read the same page in a new browser tab, or try again once you're back online.
Check the location switcher first — the page is showing the location you have selected, which may not be the one you're standing in. Switch locations, or pick All to see the combined total.