Knowledge
How service businesses actually run.
Written for three people: the owner deciding how the business should operate, the team delivering the work, and the customer trying to work out whether they are being looked after. Useful before you ever become a SYNQ customer.
Start here
Guide · 6 min read
Why we built SYNQ
Eleven years of running a service firm, and the same failure every time: the client could not see the work. The origin of the operating model.
Read itProduct education · 8 min read
Inside SYNQ: a product tour
How a lead becomes a sale, a sale becomes assigned work, and that work becomes something your client can watch move.
Template
Workflow templates for 26 industries
The task libraries, pipeline stages, service menus and KPIs SYNQ ships per vertical. Browse them before you sign up — they are the workflow, not a brochure.
Guide · 3 min read
What to expect from a service provider
The five things any professional service should be able to tell you at any moment — and what it means when they cannot.
The library
Who are you reading as?
12 resources
Guide · 6 min read
Why we built SYNQ
Eleven years of running a service firm, and the same failure every time: the client could not see the work. The origin of the operating model.
OpenProduct education · 8 min read
Inside SYNQ: a product tour
How a lead becomes a sale, a sale becomes assigned work, and that work becomes something your client can watch move.
OpenGuide · 7 min read
What is an operating system for a service business?
Storage systems record what happened. An operating system moves the work. Why the distinction decides how your week actually goes.
OpenIndustry guide · 6 min read
One workflow per industry, not one workflow for everyone
How task libraries, pipeline stages, vocabulary and KPIs change per vertical while the engine underneath stays identical.
OpenGuide · 5 min read
Pricing a service business you can actually staff
How SYNQ priced itself, and the operating-cost thinking behind it.
OpenAnnouncement · 4 min read
Summer 2026 platform update
Industry workspaces, the unified live tracker, client ordering and mobile access — what shipped and why.
OpenAnnouncement · 6 min read
The founder story
A publicist, operator and mother turning an infrastructure problem into a platform. The reasoning behind the two-sided promise.
OpenAnnouncement · 3 min read
Private beta: how admission works
Why access is granted in controlled waves, and what a beta firm is committing to.
OpenTemplate
Workflow templates for 26 industries
The task libraries, pipeline stages, service menus and KPIs SYNQ ships per vertical. Browse them before you sign up — they are the workflow, not a brochure.
OpenPlaybook
The operating model, stage by stage
Attract, close, start, assign, run, show, move, measure, complete — what the business gets and what the customer sees at each stage.
OpenComparison
SYNQ compared to the stack you already run
Where a CRM stops, where project management stops, where a client portal stops — and what the gap between them costs.
OpenGuide · 3 min read
What to expect from a service provider
The five things any professional service should be able to tell you at any moment — and what it means when they cannot.
OpenFor clients & customers
Five questions any service provider should be able to answer.
You do not need special software to hold a provider to this standard — you just need to ask. We wrote it down because the inability to answer these five is the reason SYNQ exists.
- 01Where is my work right now?
- You should be able to answer this without sending an email. A real percentage, based on work actually completed — not a stage someone typed in before a meeting.
- 02Who has it?
- At any moment one party holds the work: the team, you, a supplier, or a third party. If nobody can tell you which, the work is probably sitting still.
- 03What is happening today, and what follows?
- A provider running properly can name the current task and the next one. Vagueness here usually means the plan lives in somebody's head.
- 04Is anything waiting on me?
- You should be told directly when you are the blocker — with the specific thing to approve, sign or send. Not a general nudge to check in.
- 05What did I actually get?
- At the end there should be a record: deliverables, dates, the invoice and the outcome. Not a verbal summary on a closing call.
Glossary
The words we use, defined exactly as the product uses them.
If a term here means something different inside SYNQ than it does on this page, the page is wrong and we fix it.
- One source of truth
- The dashboard, the client portal, the alert and the report all read the same records. No side copy of the status exists.
- Whose Move
- Who currently holds the work: the team, the client, a media contact, a vendor — or nobody, because it is complete.
- Now / Next
- The task in progress and the task that follows it, both taken from the real task list rather than written by hand.
- Task-derived progress
- A percentage counted from completed tasks. Reopening a task lowers it again. Nobody can type a number in.
- Action required
- Shown only when the person reading genuinely has something to do — an approval, an upload, an answer.
- Client-visible
- A per-item setting. Anything marked client-visible appears in the portal immediately; everything else stays internal.