User guide

How to get real value out of this
starting today.

We are building toward something that takes years: a professional record the whole market can trust, owned by the people who did the work. That is the mission, and it is honestly a long road.

This page is not about that. It is about what the product does for you this week: the invoice you need out the door in ten minutes, the client who can confirm your work in one tap, the month of hours you have to turn into a bill. Every section below is something you can use now.

Last updated 3 September 2026 · this guide is revised whenever the product gains something new.

01Day one · no account

Get something useful out of it in five minutes

The invoice and timesheet generators are open to anyone. They run entirely in your browser: nothing is saved to an account, nothing is stored on our side, and nothing is emailed anywhere. Fill it in, download it, send it yourself.

Free · no sign-up

  1. Build the document

    Your details, your client, the lines, the totals. It previews as you type, so what you see is what downloads.

  2. Download or print it

    You get a clean PDF you can send from your own email, on your own letterhead terms.

  3. Keep it if it was useful

    Nothing is kept for you here by design. When you want the numbers to carry forward (clients, rates, running totals, payment status), that is what a signed-in account adds.

02The core loop

Your first verified record

This is the one thing Can0nical exists to do. You describe work you delivered; the client who received it confirms that you did. What you are left with is not a claim about yourself; it is a claim someone else stood behind.

Free · logging and client confirmation are not paywalled

  1. Create an account

    Continue with Google, or have a one-time code sent to your email. There is no password anywhere in Can0nical: nothing to remember, and nothing that can leak.

  2. Log what you delivered

    Dashboard → Ledger → Log a milestone. Give it a title, the role you actually held for that piece of work, and a real description of what you did. Add the date, a project tag, and a link to evidence if you have one. You can save a draft and send it for confirmation later.

  3. Write it for a stranger, not for yourself

    Your skills are read out of this text, and any CV you generate is written from it. "Redesigned checkout" tells a reader nothing. Name the outcome, the tools, and the constraint you worked under. Detail here is the single highest-leverage thing you control.

  4. Send the client a Magic Link

    On a pending entry, choose Send Magic Link, enter your client’s name and email, and pick how long the link stays live. Then copy it, or send it on WhatsApp. You deliver the link yourself; Can0nical does not email your client. Your relationship, your channel, your wording.

  5. They confirm in one tap

    No account, no sign-up, no app. They can read the full report you attached before they decide. A link confirms once.

  6. It becomes a record neither of you can quietly change

    A confirmed entry is one-way. You cannot edit it afterwards, and neither can we. A genuine mistake is corrected with a visible counter-entry, never a silent rewrite, which is exactly why the confirmation is worth anything.

03Work & Billing

Run the money side in the same place

Hours, rates, timesheets, invoices and payments live under Work & Billing on your account. It is the admin layer, and it is deliberately kept separate from the trust layer: billing data never invents a milestone or moves your score.

Included on your account today · no paid plan needed

  1. Add your clients and their rates

    Rates are held with their history, so work you did last quarter keeps last quarter’s rate when you bill it. Changing a rate never rewrites what you already logged.

  2. Log the hours

    A weekly or monthly grid, or a running timer. Enter as you go rather than reconstructing a month from memory, because the reconstruction is where disputes come from.

  3. Lock the period when it is done

    Locking freezes what you are about to send. Two locked periods can never cover the same days, so the same hours cannot be billed twice by accident.

  4. Generate the document

    A timesheet, a report, or an invoice. A disclosure profile decides what the client actually sees (hours only, task detail, money or no money), and the version you send is frozen at that moment. Later edits never mutate a document already in someone’s hands.

  5. Share it with a link

    Expiring and revocable. Your client opens it without an account, downloads the PDF, and confirms it. You can see when it was opened.

  6. Bill it, then track what actually arrives

    Raise the invoice from the locked period, or from any date range you choose. Add the extras that are not hours: per diem, tools, mileage. Record part payments; overdue is derived, never hand-set.

  7. Know which of these is a trust artifact and which is not

    A timesheet your client has confirmed is a record of work, and is recorded permanently. An invoice is not: it is a request to be paid, and no chain makes it more true. Every invoice still carries a fingerprint, so a copy can be checked against the original that was issued.

04The paid step

Make the record travel

Everything above leaves you with confirmed work sitting in an account. The paid step turns it into something that outlives the account, the client, and us: a record anyone can check independently, and outputs you can hand to a stranger.

Starter plan · monthly, annual, or one payment for good

  1. Confirmed work is recorded permanently

    Only a fingerprint is written: never your name, never your client’s name, never the company, never a word of what you wrote. The record can be checked forever without an account, without asking us, and without our permission.

  2. Nothing you did on the free plan is wasted

    When you upgrade, work your clients already confirmed is made permanent too, not just what you log afterwards. Start free without hedging.

  3. You get one public profile

    A single link carrying your confirmed work, the skills read out of it, and who confirmed what. It shows only what was actually verified here. Nothing appears as a placeholder or a "coming soon": if we cannot verify it, it is not on the page.

  4. Your CV is written from the evidence

    Generated from confirmed work only. Not from a bio you typed. If there is no verified evidence, it refuses to write one rather than invent a credential.

  5. Your Integrity Score is computed, not awarded

    It is derived from confirmed, recorded work and the range of organisations that confirmed it. It cannot be bought, set, boosted, or overridden: not by you, not by a client, not by an administrator here. That constraint is the entire value; a score anyone could move would be worth nothing.

  6. A note on the free window

    On a free account, a confirmed-but-unmade-permanent entry is kept for 90 days. Upgrade inside that window and the whole history is made permanent at once.

05If someone sent you a link

You have been asked to confirm work

Somebody you worked with is asking you to confirm that they did what they say they did. Here is the whole of what that involves.

Free · no account, ever

  1. What you are being asked

    Read what they wrote, and any report they attached. Confirm it if it matches what you received. That is it.

  2. What it costs you

    A minute. There is no account to create, no password, no app, and no marketing list. You will not hear from us afterwards.

  3. Take the time it deserves

    Nothing here rewards you for being fast. A confirmation is an attestation, and a wrong one is far worse than a slow one. If the description overstates what you received, do not confirm it; say so instead.

  4. If you confirm work often

    You can sign in to a validator view with your email to see what you have confirmed. Still passwordless, still no account to maintain.

06If you are checking someone

Verify a record without taking anyone’s word for it

You have been handed a profile link, a credential ID or a CV. You do not have to trust the person who handed it to you, and you do not have to trust us either.

Free · no account

  1. Check it in the verification portal

    Paste the identifier. You will see whether the record exists, what was confirmed, and by which organisation.

  2. Understand what it proves

    It proves that the client who received the work confirmed it, on a date, and that the record has not been altered since. That is a narrow claim, deliberately: narrow and true beats broad and unfalsifiable.

  3. And what it does not

    It is not a reference, a rating, or a judgement of quality. Nobody here scores how good the work was. What you get is a reliable answer to "did this actually happen?".

07Playbook

Getting more out of what you already have

None of these are features. They are the difference between a record that convinces a stranger and one that does not, and every one of them is free.

01

Log at the point of delivery

Not at the end of the quarter, and never at the end of the year. Two minutes while it is fresh produces a better record than an hour of reconstruction, and your client remembers what they are confirming.

02

Ask while they are pleased

The best moment to send a confirmation link is right after you delivered something that landed well. Weeks later you are asking a favour; on the day, you are closing a loop.

03

Send it on the channel you already use

If you and your client live in WhatsApp, send it there. A link in an unexpected inbox looks like a cold email. A link in the thread you have been working in looks like work.

04

Use the real person, and their real work address

Confirmation is worth something because it came from the organisation that received the work. A personal address from a friend is not the same claim, and it does not carry the same weight to anyone reading later.

05

One record per real deliverable

Splitting one project into ten entries does not make your record stronger; it makes it harder to read, and inflated volume is precisely the thing verification exists to catch. Nothing here rewards quantity, and that is on purpose.

06

Be precise about the role you held

Not your general job title, but the role you held for that specific piece of work. Your client confirms that too, and it is what makes a generated CV read like a person rather than a list.

07

Keep your evidence links alive

A dead link on an otherwise strong record is a small hole in it. Point at things that will still be there in two years, or describe the work well enough that the link is a bonus.

08

Do not chase the number

The Integrity Score follows real confirmed work and cannot be gamed, bought, or argued up. Treat it as a readout, not a target. Do the work, log it honestly, and it takes care of itself.

Straight answers

What this does not do yet

A guide that only lists what works is a brochure. These are the edges you will hit.

We do not email your clients

You generate the confirmation link and deliver it yourself. That is the current design, not an oversight, but it does mean the chasing is on you.

Education and qualifications are not on your profile

Not because they do not matter, but because we cannot verify them through our own mechanism yet. Anything we cannot actually verify stays off the page, however good it would look.

Team and company surfaces are still being built

Manager, MD and company-wide views exist in the plan and are coming. Today the product is strongest for an individual professional and their clients.

Importing from your project tools is not live

Bringing work in from Asana, Trello or Jira is planned. When it arrives, imports will still be candidates: a client will still have to confirm them, because that is the only thing that makes a record worth anything.

08FAQ

Questions people actually ask

Do I have to pay to get my work verified?

No. Logging your work and having a client confirm it are free. Paying is what makes a confirmed record permanent, public and independently checkable.

Does my client need an account?

No. They open the link you send, read what you wrote, and confirm in one tap. There is no sign-up, no password and no app, and we do not add them to anything.

What actually gets recorded publicly?

Only a fingerprint of the confirmed record. Never your name, never your client’s name or company, and never a word of what you wrote. The fingerprint proves the record has not been altered; on its own it reveals nothing.

Can I edit or delete a verified record?

A confirmed record cannot be edited: not by you, not by your client, not by us. A genuine mistake is corrected with a visible counter-entry. You can delete your account and your personal data at any time; the fingerprints already recorded remain, and are inert without the source.

Can I buy a better Integrity Score?

No. It is computed from confirmed work and cannot be set, purchased or overridden by anyone, including our own administrators. A score that could be moved would not be worth reading.

Do you send my client the confirmation link?

No. You do. You generate the link and send it however you already talk to them. It keeps the request inside a relationship they recognise rather than arriving from a company they have never heard of.

What happens to my records if I stay on the free plan?

A confirmed record that has not been made permanent is kept for 90 days. If you upgrade inside that window, everything your clients already confirmed is made permanent at once, not just work you log afterwards.

Is my invoice recorded on the blockchain too?

No, and deliberately. A timesheet your client confirmed is a record of work and is made permanent. An invoice is a request to be paid; it carries a fingerprint so a copy can be checked against the original, but it is not a trust claim and we will not dress it up as one.

Guide changelog

The product keeps gaining surfaces. This page is updated in step with it, and the changes are listed here so you can see what is new since you last read it.

  • 3 Sep 2026First edition of the guide.

The best first entry is the work you finished last week.

It is still fresh, your client still remembers it, and it takes two minutes. Everything else in this guide builds on that one record.

No card to start. Your client never needs an account to confirm your work.