> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.politicalcomms.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Step 1: Account Setup & Organization Profile

> Confirm your organization profile, add funding, and turn on auto-recharge from the /onboarding page - typically 5-10 minutes.

<Info>
  **Estimated time:** 5-10 minutes
</Info>

## Overview

When your organization becomes active, you land on **`/onboarding`**, a checklist built from your live account status: three steps for most organizations, two for a sub-organization whose funding is managed by its agency. The same checklist stays reachable any time from the dashboard until every step is done.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Business profile" icon="id-card">
    **Required.** Your organization's name, entity type, industry vertical, organization address, and account contact. Most of it is already filled in from registration; you typically add the entity type and vertical. Legal name (if it differs from the organization name), DBA, EIN, and website are optional.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Funding" icon="credit-card">
    **Required.** A saved payment method, a credit limit, or funds added to your wallet at any point satisfies this step, and it stays satisfied even if the balance is later spent to zero. If your organization is a sub-organization of an agency that manages your billing, you cannot save a card: the step names the agency, and their team adds balance for you from **Admin > Organizations**. That counts.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Auto-recharge" icon="repeat">
    **Recommended, never required.** Turn on auto-recharge so a low balance doesn't interrupt a send. See [Billing & Auto-Recharge](/help/billing) for how thresholds and recharge amounts work. This step does not appear for sub-organizations whose billing is managed by their agency; there is no card to recharge from.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## The organization profile powers prefill

Everything in the business profile is the organization record on **Admin > Organization > General** and can be reused instead of retyped. The 10DLC brand form and the toll-free verification form each carry a **"Use organization business profile"** button that prefills the name, address, contact, and EIN and website when you have entered them. You can still edit the prefilled fields per brand or per verification if a particular registration needs different details (for example, a consulting firm registering a client under its own legal name).

## The 14-day grace window

A new organization gets **14 days** from the day it becomes active to finish the business profile and funding steps (existing organizations at the time this requirement shipped got 14 days from the deploy date). During the window, everything works normally regardless of onboarding status.

**After the window**, if the business profile or funding step is still incomplete, the platform blocks creating new things until you finish onboarding:

* 10DLC brands and campaigns
* Toll-free verifications
* Phone number purchases
* Email sending domains and sender identities
* New projects, project copies, and new email campaigns or campaign duplicates (dashboard and the public API alike, including `POST /v1/projects`, `POST /v1/projects/{id}/copy`, and `POST /v1/email/campaigns`)

Nothing that is already running is touched. Scheduled and in-flight sends, existing phone numbers, chat, and conversations all keep working; nothing is paused, suspended, or removed. The block only stops you from starting something new.

A blocked request returns `403` with a machine-readable code:

```json theme={null}
{
  "error": "Complete your account setup to continue",
  "code": "ONBOARDING_INCOMPLETE",
  "details": {
    "missingSteps": ["profile", "funding"],
    "onboardingUrl": "/onboarding"
  }
}
```

See [`ONBOARDING_INCOMPLETE`](/api-reference/errors#common-error-codes) in the error reference. The auto-recharge step never gates anything - it's a recommendation, not a requirement.

Owners and admins get reminder emails on **day 7** and **day 12** of the grace window if profile or funding is still outstanding, so there's warning before anything is blocked. When a sub-organization's funding is managed by its agency, the agency's owners and admins get the same reminder naming the sub-organizations that still need funds.

## No identity verification vendor

Onboarding does not add an identity verification step of its own. The identity checks you already know stay exactly as they are: TCR brand vetting, Campaign Verify, and toll-free verification. The business profile just gives those forms a single place to pull accurate details from instead of retyping them each time.

## Tasks to complete

<Steps>
  <Step title="Complete the business profile">
    From **`/onboarding`** (or **Admin > Organization > General**), confirm the organization name, address, and account contact carried over from registration, then choose the entity type and industry vertical. Add the legal name if it differs from the organization name, a DBA, your EIN/Tax ID, and website if you have them.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Add funding">
    Add a payment method under **Billing > Payment Methods**, or add wallet balance directly. Sub-organizations whose billing is managed by an agency ask the agency to add balance; the wizard names who that is.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Turn on auto-recharge (recommended)">
    Set a minimum balance threshold and recharge amount so campaigns don't stall waiting on a manual top-up.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Add team members">
    Invite team members with appropriate roles: **Admin** (full control), **Manager** (create campaigns), **Agent** (send messages), or **Viewer** (read-only access). If someone already has a Political Comms account elsewhere, use "Invite existing user" instead of creating a new one; entering an email that already exists on the platform does the same thing instead of failing. Either way they're added right away, with nothing to accept; they just sign in as usual. See [Organizations and memberships](/help/organizations-and-memberships) for details.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Configure settings">
    Set your timezone, notification preferences, and branding options (logo, colors) if available for your tier.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Pro tips

<Tip>
  * Use your **official campaign/organization name** exactly as it appears on FEC or state election filings, both in the business profile and later on the brand form.
  * The organization address should be the one on your IRS or FEC filings; carrier registrations are prefilled from it.
  * Finish the profile first: the brand and toll-free verification forms' "Use organization business profile" button saves you from retyping the same details.
  * Add multiple team members early to distribute workload efficiently.
</Tip>

## Next step

<Card title="Step 2: 10DLC Brand & Campaign Registration" icon="shield-check" href="/onboarding/10dlc-registration">
  Once your profile is complete, you're ready to start 10DLC registration.
</Card>


This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.