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. A DBS check, if you want one
A Basic DBS check is a UK criminal-record check. You don't need one to work through BOB O JOB — it's optional, and nothing about your approval waits on it. If you already have one, send it to us and we'll put it on your file. If you don't and you'd like one, this is how.
We can't yet tell you how much work having one brings in, because customers haven't been able to ask for a DBS-checked Jobber before. So treat the fee as money spent on something that is yours to keep and useful elsewhere, not as an investment we have promised you a return on.
- Apply at gov.uk/request-copy-criminal-record and pay the fee (£21.50 at the time of writing — GOV.UK shows the current price).
- You'll need your National Insurance number, ID documents, and five years of address history with no gaps — that last one is what trips most people up, so dig out the dates before you start.
- The certificate comes to you in the post. We need to see the original — we can't take a photo or a PDF as proof on its own. If your interview hasn't happened yet, bring it with you; if it already has, tell us and we'll arrange a look at it.
The fee is yours to pay and we don't reimburse it — it's a cost of running your own business, like your kit and your travel. That's true however your application ends, and it's the reason this one is genuinely your call. The certificate belongs to you either way: it stays valid, and you can show it to anyone else you work for.
If you applied for your check on or before 26 August 2026, our old policy still applies to you and we will still pay that first one back — we'll sort it out with you directly.
A criminal record doesn't automatically stop you working with us. We look at whether it has any bearing on the work, how long ago it was, and what's changed since — and we'll always talk to you before deciding. Our policy on recruiting ex-offenders sets out how we make that decision, and how to appeal if you think we got it wrong. Read it before you apply — you shouldn't have to ask for it.
A Basic certificate is a snapshot of the day it was issued, so if you want us to keep yours on file we'll ask for a fresh one every 24 months. Each one is a new application you make and pay for — and, like the first, it's optional.
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 documents 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. Your experience and equipment save straight away.
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. There's no countdown on it — you can take your time reading it — but it is first come, first served, so it's worth reading Getting jobs beforehand rather than learning the buttons on a live offer.
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 hello@bob-o-job.com and a person will reply.
Next: Getting jobs