It is launch day. Your landing page is live, the Show HN post is queued, and you have maybe twelve hours before the first real customer asks where to send a payment or how to file a bug. You do not have a CRM. You do not have a helpdesk inbox. Your invoicing setup is a Stripe Payment Link in a Notion doc. The clock is running.
You can ship CRM, helpdesk, and invoicing in 60 minutes flat — without spending the rest of the week wiring integrations. The trick is starting with one all-in-one platform instead of trying to assemble three best-of-breed tools. This guide walks through the exact 60-minute checklist, broken into six ten-minute blocks, plus what you can defer to next week, what you can defer to next quarter, and the four mistakes that turn a one-hour task into a one-week task.
Why founders waste a week on this
Here is what usually happens. A founder picks HubSpot for CRM because someone on Twitter said the free tier is great. They pick Intercom for helpdesk because that is what their last company used. They pick Stripe + a separate invoicing tool because Stripe alone does not do recurring proposals or net-30 invoices well. Now they have three accounts, three logins, and zero integrations.
Day two: the founder realizes a new lead in HubSpot does not show up in Intercom unless you wire Zapier. Day three: a closed deal in HubSpot does not auto-create an invoice. Day four: a paid invoice does not auto-update the deal stage. Day five: the founder is reading API docs instead of building product.
This is the integration trap. Three tools that each cost $50-$200/month, plus a Zapier plan to glue them together, plus eight hours of setup per integration. By the time it is wired, you have spent more time configuring software than talking to customers.
The alternative is to start with one platform that ships these three apps already connected. A new contact in CRM is the same record the helpdesk shows when they email support. A closed deal triggers an invoice without a webhook. A paid invoice updates the deal stage automatically. No glue code. No Zapier bill. The setup time collapses from a week to an hour, because the integrations were never separate to begin with.
The 60-minute setup checklist
Open a timer. The next sixty minutes are broken into six ten-minute blocks. Each block has one goal and one exit criterion. If you finish a block early, do not move ahead — use the spare minutes to clean up. If a block runs long, skip the optional steps and move on. You can refine later.
Minutes 0-10: Sign up and import contacts
- Create your account. Sign up at the platform of your choice. If you are using Deelo, that is roughly two minutes — email, workspace name, role.
- Set your company profile. Logo, business address (needed for invoice headers), tax ID if you have one, support email forwarder.
- Import contacts. If you have a CSV from a beta list, Mailchimp export, or Google Contacts dump, drop it into CRM now. Map name, email, company, and source. Skip every other field — you can enrich later.
- Tag your beta users. Apply a tag like `beta-2026-q2` so you can segment them out of cold outreach later.
Exit criterion: you can search for any beta user by name in the CRM and find them. If you cannot, your import did not stick — fix it before moving on.
Minutes 10-20: Set up the CRM pipeline
- Pick five stages, no more. A new SaaS does not need a 12-stage enterprise pipeline. Start with: New lead, Demo booked, Trial active, Paid, Churned.
- Set stage probabilities. New lead 10%, Demo booked 30%, Trial active 50%, Paid 100%, Churned 0%. These power your forecast view.
- Add three custom fields: plan tier (Free/Starter/Pro), trial expiry date, and acquisition source (Show HN, Product Hunt, organic, referral).
- Move your beta users into Trial active. Bulk select, change stage. Done.
Exit criterion: your pipeline view shows real deals at real stages. Not empty. Not test data. Real.
Minutes 20-30: Configure the helpdesk inbox and canned replies
- Forward your support email. Set up `support@yourdomain.com` to forward into the helpdesk. Most platforms give you a forwarding address like `inbox-abc123@helpdesk.tool`. Copy it into your DNS or Google Workspace forwarder.
- Send a test email. From a personal address, email `support@yourdomain.com`. It should land in the helpdesk inbox within 30 seconds. If it does not, your forwarder is misconfigured — fix now or this whole setup fails.
- Write three canned replies. `Bug acknowledged` (we are looking into it, will follow up within 24 hours), `Billing question` (forwarding to billing, ETA same day), `Feature request` (logged in roadmap, no commitment on timing).
- Set business hours. When you are off, the auto-reply should say so. Founders burn out by pretending to be 24/7.
Exit criterion: a test email round-trips through the inbox and you can reply with a canned message in two clicks.
Minutes 30-40: Connect Stripe and create your first invoice template
- Connect Stripe. Most all-in-one platforms have a one-click OAuth connector. Authorize, pick the business account, done. If you do not have a Stripe account yet, create one — this adds 5 minutes but it is unavoidable.
- Create one product, one price. Skip the matrix of plan tiers. Start with one product called `Starter Plan` at $X/month. You can add tiers later.
- Build an invoice template. Logo top left, your business address, a payment terms line (`Net 7`, `Net 30`, or `Due on receipt`), a line item table, and a `Pay now` button that links to a Stripe checkout. Most platforms ship a default template you only need to brand.
- Generate one test invoice. Send to your own email. Confirm the `Pay now` link works in test mode.
Exit criterion: you can generate, send, and pay a test invoice end to end. If the test invoice does not arrive, your domain is probably blocked from sending — switch to a verified sender domain or use the platform's default `noreply@` address for now.
Minutes 40-50: Set up three automation rules
- Welcome email on signup. Trigger: new contact created with source = signup. Action: send a one-paragraph welcome with a calendar link to book a 15-minute onboarding call. This single rule is worth 20% conversion lift on most early-stage SaaS.
- Churn alert on inactivity. Trigger: trial user with no helpdesk activity in 5 days. Action: notify you in Slack or email. Catch the silent churn before the trial expires.
- Payment reminder. Trigger: invoice unpaid 3 days past due. Action: send a polite reminder email with the invoice link. Trigger again at 7 days, 14 days, and escalate to a personal email at 21 days.
Exit criterion: at least one of the three rules has fired against your test data. If none have, your trigger conditions are wrong — debug now or you will not notice they are broken until a real customer slips through.
Minutes 50-60: Invite your team and set up the customer portal
- Invite cofounders or your first hire. Send invites with role permissions. The default `member` role covers most early team needs.
- Turn on the customer portal. A self-serve portal where customers see their invoices, support tickets, and account details. Most platforms have a one-click toggle. Brand it with your logo and primary color.
- Add a support widget to your site. Drop the helpdesk's chat widget snippet into your site footer or app shell. Customers can now message you from inside the product.
- Test the loop end to end. From a fresh browser session: visit your site, click the chat widget, file a ticket, log into the customer portal, see the ticket. If any step breaks, that is your highest-priority fix.
Exit criterion: a fictional customer can sign up, get a welcome email, file a support ticket, see it in the portal, and receive an invoice — all without you touching anything manually. That is the bar. If it works end to end, you are done.
Quick reference: what each block produces
| Block | Output | If you skip it |
|---|---|---|
| 0-10: Signup + import | Account created, contacts loaded | You have nowhere to put a lead |
| 10-20: CRM pipeline | Five-stage pipeline with deals | No revenue forecast, no clarity on who is where |
| 20-30: Helpdesk inbox | support@ forwards into the inbox | Customer emails go to your personal Gmail and get lost |
| 30-40: Stripe + invoice | First invoice template ready to send | You cannot get paid |
| 40-50: Automations | Welcome email, churn alert, payment reminder live | Manual follow-up burns 2 hours/day |
| 50-60: Team + portal | Cofounder access, customer self-serve | You are the support bottleneck for everyone |
What you can defer to next week
Not everything has to ship in the first hour. Here is what to skip on day one and revisit when you have your first ten paying customers.
- Custom branded email domain. A `noreply@yourdomain.com` sender requires DNS records (SPF, DKIM, DMARC). The default platform sender is fine for week one.
- Multi-pipeline CRM. One pipeline is enough. Wait until you have a second motion (e.g. self-serve vs. enterprise) before splitting.
- SLA targets in the helpdesk. Set a casual goal in your head, not a formal SLA. SLAs matter once you have an SLA-bearing contract.
- Tax automation. If you have under 50 customers, manual tax invoices are fine. Stripe Tax or similar can wait until volume justifies the $0.50/invoice fee.
- Customer health scoring. Premature optimization. Watch usage manually until you have patterns worth modeling.
What you can defer to next quarter
- Sales sequences and outbound cadences. You do not have product-market fit yet. Outbound to cold lists wastes time you should spend with users.
- Knowledge base and self-serve docs. A pinned message in your helpdesk and a single Notion page is enough for the first 30 customers. Build a real KB once you see the same five questions on repeat.
- Custom reports and dashboards. Founder dashboards are vanity until you have a team that needs to see them. Use the default reports.
- Multi-currency invoicing. Bill everyone in USD until you have a paying customer who literally cannot pay in USD. Then add EUR or GBP.
- SAML SSO and provisioning. Enterprise security features are sales-led. They get prioritized when an enterprise prospect asks for them, not before.
Common setup mistakes
After watching dozens of founders run this checklist, the same four mistakes show up again and again. Knowing them in advance saves hours.
- Importing every contact you have ever met. Your old LinkedIn export is not a CRM. Import only the people who are actually in market for what you sell. Dirty data corrupts every report you build for the next year.
- Building a 12-stage pipeline before you have 12 customers. Five stages is not a limitation, it is a feature. You will know when to add a stage because it will be obviously missing. Until then, do not.
- Skipping the test email. Every founder thinks the helpdesk forwarder works. Half of them are wrong. The two minutes you spend sending a test email saves you from the day-three discovery that customer support emails have been silently bouncing.
- Treating automations as set-and-forget. Welcome emails, churn alerts, and payment reminders all break in subtle ways — a new field name, a renamed pipeline stage, a Stripe webhook that quietly stops firing. Re-test your three rules every Monday for the first month.
Ship your CRM, helpdesk, and invoicing in one hour
Deelo gives you CRM, Helpdesk, and Invoicing in one workspace, already connected. No integration plumbing, no Zapier bill, no week-long setup. Start free, no credit card required, and run the 60-minute checklist in this post against a real account.
Start Free — No Credit CardFrequently asked questions
- Can I really set up CRM, helpdesk, and invoicing in under an hour?
- Yes — but only if you start with an all-in-one platform. The hour breaks down to ten minutes per block across six blocks. The reason it is fast is that you are not wiring three separate tools together. If you try to combine HubSpot, Intercom, and Stripe Invoicing on day one, plan on a full week of integration work, not 60 minutes.
- What if I already have a Stripe account?
- Even better. Skip the Stripe signup step in block four (minutes 30-40) and use the OAuth connector to authorize your existing account. The 5 minutes you save can be spent on a second invoice template — for example, a recurring monthly subscription template versus a one-off services invoice template.
- Do I need a separate sales tool on top of CRM?
- Not for your first 50 customers. A CRM with a pipeline, contact records, and basic email tracking covers everything you need until you hire a dedicated salesperson. Once you do, that is the right time to evaluate whether you need a separate sales engagement tool — but most all-in-one platforms add sequencing and cadences as native features by then.
- How do I migrate later if I outgrow the all-in-one approach?
- Every reputable platform has CSV export for contacts, deals, and invoices. The data is yours. The realistic question is whether you will outgrow it — most early-stage SaaS founders do not. The pattern of switching to best-of-breed only becomes correct around Series A or 50+ employees, and even then, plenty of $10M ARR companies stay on consolidated platforms.
- What is the single most important automation rule to set up first?
- The welcome email on signup. It is the highest-leverage rule because it runs at the moment a new user is most engaged with your product. A one-paragraph welcome with a calendar link to book an onboarding call routinely lifts trial-to-paid conversion by 15-25% versus no welcome email at all. Set this rule first, even if you skip the others.
- Should I build everything in production or use a sandbox first?
- Build directly in production. A sandbox doubles your work and tempts you to over-engineer the setup. The 60-minute checklist is intentionally low-stakes — five-stage pipeline, three canned replies, three automations. If you make a mistake, it takes two minutes to fix. Optimize for shipping, not for purity.
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