Using Your Business Control Panel

Everything to do with your listing lives in one place. Sign in and choose My Business from the menu. This article is a tour of what is in there and what you should be checking, and how often.

Getting In

Click Login and sign in with the email address and password you used when you created your listing
Choose My Business from the menu
Select your listing

If you have forgotten your password, use the Forgot your password link on the login page. A reset link will be emailed to you. If the email does not arrive, check your spam folder before contacting us.

Editing Your Listing

The main edit screen is where you change your name, description, address, phone number, categories, photos, opening hours, and social links. Changes to core details may go through a short review before they appear publicly. See the article on building a listing that gets you found for advice on what to write.

Messages

Visitors can contact you through your listing, and those messages appear here as well as arriving by email. Check them regularly. A message sitting unanswered for a week is a customer who has already hired someone else.

A reasonable habit is to check messages every weekday morning and reply the same day, even if the reply is only to say when you can give a proper answer.

Quote Requests

If you have quote requests enabled, this is where they land. For service businesses these are the most valuable thing the directory produces. Treat each one as a phone call you would have answered.

Respond within a day wherever possible
If you cannot give a firm price without seeing the job, say so and propose a time to visit
If it is not work you take on, reply anyway and suggest who might. People remember that, and they come back

Offers and Events

Create, edit, pause, and remove your special offers and events from here. Both have their own guides in the Support section. The habit worth building is to review this monthly, remove anything expired, and post something current so your page never looks abandoned.

Orders

If you sell products or offers, orders appear here alongside the email notification you receive. You can see what was ordered, by whom, and mark progress. Keep on top of this daily during any period when you are actively selling.

Reviews

Your reviews are collected here so you can read and reply to them. Replying to every review, good and bad, is the single highest return activity in this whole control panel. See the reviews article for how to handle criticism well.

Your Package and Renewal Date

Your current plan, its features, and the date it expires are shown in your account area.

Paid plans run for one year. We email a reminder before expiry so nothing lapses without warning
To upgrade, choose a higher plan. Your content stays exactly as it is and the extra features unlock
To downgrade or cancel, simply choose not to renew, or contact us. There are no lock in contracts
If a plan lapses, features outside the free plan stop showing publicly. Your content is not deleted, and renewing brings it back

Payments and Receipts

Receipts for package payments are emailed to you and are also available from your account. If you need an invoice with particular details for your bookkeeping, contact us and we will sort it out.

Your Account Details

Your name, email address, and password are managed under your user profile, separately from the business listing itself. Keep the email address current, because that is where notifications about messages, orders, reviews, and renewals are sent.

A Simple Routine

You do not need to live in the control panel. This is enough:

Daily: check messages, quote requests, and orders
Weekly: reply to any new reviews
Monthly: refresh your offers, remove expired events, post what is coming up
Quarterly: check hours, phone number, photos, and description are all still accurate
Annually: review whether your package still fits how you are using the directory

Getting Help

If something in the control panel is not behaving as described here, contact the Buy it Local.US team with a short description of what you clicked and what happened. More guides are in the Support section.