You've been interviewed, ID-verified and approved. That's the hard part done. This page gets you from "approved" to "earning" in about twenty minutes.
Everything here is in the bob-o-job Work app. If you haven't installed it yet, do that first — it's the app with the mint logo, and it's a different app from the one customers use.
The three things that actually block you
You can browse the app right now, but two of these must be done before you can go online or accept a single job. They're not optional and they're not a formality — the app will refuse you with a message until they're finished.
1. Set up your payouts
Account → Payouts, or the Set up payouts prompt on your Home screen.
This connects your bank account through Stripe, which is who actually moves the money. You'll be asked for your name, date of birth, address and bank details. It takes about five minutes and Stripe may ask for a photo of your ID again — that's their check, separate from ours.
Until this says Active, you cannot go online and you cannot accept jobs. If you try, you'll get a "Finish payout setup" alert.
If Stripe says Verifying, you're fine — it usually clears within a few hours. You'll be paid normally once it does.
2. Add your tax details
Account → Tax details. You'll see a Required badge next to it until it's done.
You're self-employed, so we don't deduct anything from what you earn — but the law requires us to report certain details about you and your earnings to HMRC. We need:
- Your date of birth
- How you work — sole trader, limited company, or partnership
- Your National Insurance number, or your UTR if you have one (or your company number if you work through a company)
- Your address
We store your NI number and UTR encrypted. Once a year we'll email you a statement of exactly what we've reported about you, which you can use for your tax return. See Getting paid for more on tax.
3. Your DBS check
We arrange a DBS check for every Jobber, and we pay for it — you will never be charged. If yours isn't complete yet, we'll be in touch about it. Nothing for you to do until then.
Then make your profile worth booking
Customers see your profile before they request you by name, and a thin profile gets skipped. The Home screen shows a Get set up checklist that tracks this — work through it.
- Photo — a clear, friendly picture of your face. Not a logo, not a van, not sunglasses.
- Bio — a few honest sentences about what you're good at and how long you've been doing it.
- Skills — the categories you'll actually take. Only tick what you can genuinely do well.
- Experience and equipment — what you bring with you. Customers filter on this.
- Service area — Account → Service area. Set your base postcode and your travel radius (3 to 30 km). Your radius decides which jobs you're offered at all, so don't set it to 3 km and then wonder why it's quiet.
- Documents — Account → Verification. Upload your insurance certificate and any qualifications. Approved documents show on your profile and win you work.
Changes to your skills, qualifications or equipment after approval go to a human for review before they go live. That's normal — you'll see Under review on Account → Profile review while it's happening.
Online vs. weekly hours — these are two different things
This trips almost everyone up.
Going online (the toggle on your Home screen) means "I am available right now". It gets you live, ASAP jobs — someone who needs a cleaner this afternoon. Turn it off when you're done for the day.
Weekly hours (Account → Availability) are the hours you'll be offered scheduled bookings — a customer booking you for Thursday at 10am. If you never set these, you will never be offered scheduled work, no matter how much you're online.
Set both. Scheduled work is the steadier half of the income.
When you go online, the app sends your location so we can match you to nearby jobs. If you've denied location access it will still let you online, but you'll get worse offers — jobs are matched by distance.
Turn on notifications
Job offers arrive as a push notification and the good ones go fast. If you've declined notification permission, offers will only reach you when you happen to have the app open, which is not a strategy.
Job alerts and payout & account updates are always on and can't be turned off — those are the ones that matter. Marketing emails and marketing pushes are optional, and we never send those overnight.
Your first job
When you're set up, go online and wait. Your first offer will arrive as a notification with a countdown — read Getting jobs before it does, so you're not learning the buttons with 45 seconds on the clock.
Something not working?
- "Finish payout setup" won't go away — check Account → Payouts says Active, not Verifying. If it's stuck for more than a day, email us.
- No offers at all — check you're online, check your radius isn't tiny, check your skills are set, and check the app has location permission.
- Anything else — Account → Help has an assistant that answers most questions instantly, or email jobbers@bob-o-job.com and a person will reply.
Next: Getting jobs