How to Use the Permitlify App: A Visual Walkthrough for Your First Week

Most contractors who sign up for Permitlify are looking at a permit-intelligence tool for the first time in their career. There is no analog in the trades. Nobody trained you on it. So here is the playbook — the exact sequence of clicks that turns "I just signed up" into "we booked our first job from a permit lead" in under a week.

Day 1 — Configure your service area

The very first thing to do is open Settings → City Coverage and pick your cities. Permitlify monitors 248+ city and county portals across the United States, and your plan determines how many you can subscribe to (1 city for Starter, up to 5 for Pro, up to 15 for Agency). Pick the cities where you actually do work — not aspirational geography. The lead value is in proximity.

If your area is not yet covered, request it from the same screen. We add about 8–12 new jurisdictions per month, and customer requests jump to the front of the queue.

Day 2 — Set up your trade filters

Open Settings → Lead Filters and tell us what you do. Roofing only? HVAC + electrical? Solar? The system tags every permit with one of 22 categories (roof, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, solar, ADU, kitchen remodel, and so on) and your dashboard will only show categories you have switched on. This is the single highest-impact configuration step. A roofer who leaves all filters on will drown in 200 daily permits, 90% of which they will never quote on.

Day 3 — Wake up to your first scored batch

Permitlify processes the previous day's permits between 4 AM and 6 AM local time, runs them through the AI scoring engine, and drops them into your dashboard. By 6 AM you have a ranked list — highest-scoring leads at the top, lowest at the bottom. Score is 0–100 and reflects estimated conversion likelihood based on declared value, permit type, contact data quality, property type, and 14 other signals.

Open the dashboard. Look at the top five. Those are the calls you should be making before lunch.

Day 4 — Make calls (and use the script)

Click any permit row to open the full lead view: address, parcel data, declared value, permit number, homeowner contact info, and our suggested opening line. The script is not magic — it is a deliberate opener that makes the call sound informed instead of cold. Use it word-for-word for your first ten calls. After that you will find your own rhythm.

Day 5 — Push leads into your CRM

If you use HubSpot, GoHighLevel, or anything Zapier connects to, set up the integration today. Settings → Integrations. Once connected, every lead above your chosen score threshold gets created as a contact in your CRM automatically — no copy-paste, no spreadsheet exports.

Day 6 — Tune the score threshold

By now you have a feel for which leads you want to chase and which you do not. Go back to Settings and raise or lower your minimum score. Most contractors settle around 65–75 after their first week. If you are getting too many leads to call, raise it. If your team has spare capacity, lower it.

Day 7 — Book your first job

If you worked the top of the list with intent, you should be sitting on at least one signed estimate by Friday. That is what Permitlify is for. The hardest part of the trade — finding people who actually want what you sell — is solved. The rest is execution.