Build a book of business

This walkthrough takes you from an empty workspace to a working book of business: a single place that holds every account, remembers its history, and has the renewal conversation already on the list before it comes due. You'll touch collections, notes, tasks, and dashboards — all in plain language.

Everything below is something you say to your AI assistant once it's connected to mente.

1. Create the book

Create a "Book of business" list with columns for account name, primary contact, product, annual value, renewal date, and status.

mente sets up the collection with those columns. There's nothing to configure — you can add or rename columns later just by asking.

2. Load your accounts

If your accounts already live somewhere connected — a spreadsheet, a CRM — bring them in:

Pull my accounts from the "Accounts 2026" Google Sheet and add each one to the book of business, matching the columns as best you can.

Or add them by hand, a few at a time:

Add Acme Corp — contact Jane Doe, product Premier, annual value $48,000, renews 2026-11-01, status Active.

3. Give each account a memory

For Acme Corp, start an account-history note and record that they've been a client since 2023 and care most about response time.

Now the account has both hard data and narrative context, linked together.

4. Never miss a renewal

For every account in the book, create a task to begin the renewal conversation four weeks before its renewal date, assigned to me.

mente reads the renewal dates and creates a dated task for each one, attached to the account it belongs to. From then on the question doesn't need assembling — you just ask:

What renewal work is due in the next month?

5. See it at a glance

Build a dashboard showing total annual value, accounts by status, and every renewal coming up in the next 90 days.

6. When the book outgrows one table

Sooner or later the book isn't one table. Contacts get their own list, so do carriers or products, and rows in the book point at them. Group the related tables under one name:

Group our Book of business, Contacts, and Carriers tables into a domain called Accounts.

Grouping doesn't move a single record — it just puts related tables together, so you can build one table that reaches across them and hand it to someone as a spreadsheet. See domains.

7. Work it every day

From here on, you just ask:

Which accounts renew next month, and what's the latest on each?

Acme Corp just signed for another year at $52,000 — update their record and close the renewal task.

What you ended up with

• A structured book of business you can query in plain language.
• An account history behind every row.
• A dated renewal follow-up on every account, waiting on your list.
• A live dashboard for the whole team.

All of it shareable with the right people — see Sharing & permissions — and exportable whenever you want, because it's your data.