For testers — Nový Shipard

Translation of the project guide for testers. The Czech original is authoritative. Note that the application itself, its guides and the Discord are in Czech — see the English overview for the wider picture.

Welcome! This document is for people who want to try Shipard on their own real work. You don't need to install anything or know how to program — the application runs on our server and you open it in a browser.

(If you are a developer and want to run Shipard yourself, go to DEVELOPERS.md.)

1. What Shipard is and where it stands

Shipard is a system for managing a company's paperwork — issued and received invoices, accounting, document records and processing of incoming mail. Its main idea is that documents are not retyped by hand: an invoice arrives by e-mail, Shipard uses AI to pull out the supplier, line items and amounts, and you just check and confirm.

Status: alpha. That means the main things work, but you will run into bugs, unfinished screens, and things that change from one week to the next. That is exactly why we want you here — to tell us where it grinds.

Your data is permanent. The data source you get is not a toy for a week: we don't delete it, and when the internal structure of the application changes, we migrate your data. You won't lose work in progress. Even so, with an alpha version we recommend not having Shipard as the only place where your accounting exists — tax returns can't be filed from it yet (what else isn't there yet).

2. How to ask for access

Send an e-mail to podpora@shipard.cz with your name and contact e-mail. Optionally add what you'd most like to look at (incoming mail, invoicing, accounting…) so we know what to ask you about later.

You'll get back an invitation to the portal home.shpd.dev. Log in there — with a password, or with Google or GitHub if you have an account on the same e-mail — and create your data source yourself: the New data source button asks for a company name and the address the application will run at (say mycompany.shpd.dev). It's ready in a few minutes and you can go in.

Nothing to install — a browser is enough (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari; it works on a phone too).

3. First steps

After logging in you land on the Dashboard. That's the home screen showing what needs doing right now — new mail to process, warnings about inconsistencies, documents in progress.

A fresh data source won't leave you guessing: on the Dashboard you'll see a "Finish setup" card, which opens the Data source setup panel with a list of what's still missing — your own company (loaded from the company register, the registration number is enough), VAT registration, bank account, chart of accounts, home currency and fiscal year. None of it is blocking, and items disappear on their own as you fill them in. But without your own company you can't confirm any document, so start there. Detailed guide: First setup of a data source; the overall start is summarised on the Getting started page.

In the left panel you'll find:

What we recommend trying, in this order — processing of received mail is what interests us most right now:

1. Get a received invoice into Shipard. Either upload it directly — click Upload on the Dashboard, or drag the PDF anywhere onto the Dashboard — or forward it by e-mail: the address for incoming mail is derived from the application address, so for mycompany.shpd.dev it's mycompany@shpd.dev. Wait a moment — the invoice appears in Incoming messages and the Dashboard offers you a "create document" card.
2. Check what AI extracted. This is the most valuable part for us. Before saving you'll see a preview of the document — compare it with the original and notice what's wrong: VAT rates, units, quantities, the total amount.
3. Look into the Accounting journal to see how the document was posted. You don't enter the accounts, they are assembled automatically.
4. Create an issued invoice. Manual work, but you'll see how documents are filled in in Shipard. Let the partner be fetched from the company register (the From registry button — the registration number is enough).
5. Click on anything that catches your eye. You can't break anything we couldn't fix.

4. What we care about most in feedback

• Correctness of the numbers. A sum that doesn't add up, wrongly calculated VAT, a total different from the original. This is priority number one for us — report even a one-crown difference.
• Quality of invoice extraction. Which invoices AI handles well and which trip it up. Feel free to write "it read this one perfectly" too — that's information as well.
• Clarity. Where you didn't know what was expected of you, or where you looked for a function and couldn't find it.
• What you're missing. When Shipard won't let you do something you do routinely in the program you use today, we want to know.

5. How to report a bug

Don't e-mail us bugs. File them as an issue on GitHub — we have them all in one place there, you can see the status of your report, and it won't get lost.

👉 Report a bug or suggest an idea

You'll need a GitHub account for that. If you don't have one, it takes two minutes at github.com/signup — it's free and an e-mail is enough.

After clicking, pick a template (Hlášení chyby — bug report, or Nápad na vylepšení — improvement idea) and fill in the form. The three most important things: what you did, what you expected, what happened instead. A screenshot always helps.

⚠️ Warning: reports are public

This repository is public, so anything you write in a report can be seen by anyone on the internet — and it stays there. So never put in a report:

• names and addresses of real suppliers and customers,
• invoice numbers, payment references, bank account numbers,
• specific amounts,
• screenshots showing any of the above.

How to get around it: write when (date and approximate time) and what you were doing, and add something like "invoice from a Slovak supplier, three lines, two VAT rates". Black out sensitive data on screenshots — rectangles in Paint are enough.

If you're not sure whether something can be posted publicly, write to us at podpora@shipard.cz and we'll file the report for you.

And if you're not sure whether it's a bug at all — or you just don't feel like filling in a form for what may be a small thing — ask first on our Discord. Together we'll judge whether it's worth an issue, and if so, we'll file it.

6. Where to ask

Issues are for bugs and ideas. When you just want to ask something — how something is done, whether something is a bug or your misunderstanding, how your access is coming along — you have two options:

• Discord — fastest. It's an informal place where we and the other testers hang out; a quick question usually gets a quick answer. No need to phrase anything at length, just write "X isn't working for me, am I doing something wrong?"
• podpora@shipard.cz — if e-mail suits you better, it still works.

There are no stupid questions. When something can't be found, it's usually our fault, not yours.

7. Where to learn it

The "how things are done in Shipard" guides are in the user documentation. It's growing gradually — incoming mail and received invoices first, that is what you'll meet first as a tester.

Two pages are worth reading right away:

• Glossary — what each term means and what it's called in the interface.
• What Shipard can't do today — before you go looking for a function that doesn't exist yet.

You can also ask the AI assistant (Chat) in the application — it answers from the same documentation and sees your data while doing so.

Thank you for trying this with us. Without feedback from people who really work in it, we would build Shipard wrong.