About 30 minutes of your own time to work through the seven steps below. Either of you can work through them, whatever fits your schedules. Step 7, the verification step, needs whoever has the business documents to hand, since Meta checks the name you enter against them. That step then sits with Meta for a few days while they review it, but nothing else on this page waits on that, so keep moving.
Why you are doing this, not us
You are creating these accounts yourself, in your own name, because they are your business assets. Your ad account, your customer data, and your advertising history all stay yours, permanently. We get added later as a helper with limited access, nothing more. If we ever stop working together, you keep everything and nothing breaks. Some agencies build ad accounts on their own logins so a client cannot leave without losing everything. We are not doing that to you. Setting it up this way, in your name from the start, is what makes it truly yours.
⚠ Permanent. This has to be you, not us.
1
Create your Business Manager
5 minutesDone
First, make sure you are logged into your own personal Facebook account on this device. Business Manager is built on top of it. If you do not have a personal Facebook account, create one first, it takes two minutes. You will not be posting anything from it, it just acts as your login.
Go to business.facebook.com and click Create Account. Enter your business name, your own name, and your work email address.
Business name to enter
Lantern Home Services
You must be the one who creates this account, from your own login. Do not let anyone else create it for you, including SiteSmith. This account is the container that owns everything else you build in the steps below. Ownership cannot be casually handed off later. Meta has a process for moving a Business Manager to a different owner, but it is slow and there is no guaranteed outcome. Create it yourself, right now, logged in as you, and this never comes up.
⚠ Permanent. Read this one twice.
2
Create the ad account
5 minutesDone
Inside Business Manager, look for Business Settings, then Accounts, then Ad Accounts, then Add, then Create a New Ad Account.
Suggested ad account name
Lantern Home Services Ads
⚠ Set these two exactly. They cannot be changed later.
Time Zone
Central Time (US and Canada)
Meta's dropdown wording varies. Search the list for Central and choose the US Central option. Do not pick a Canada-only or Mexico entry.
Currency
USD
Treat these two as unchangeable once you click create. Meta provides no way to change them afterwards. The only fix if one is wrong is to delete the whole ad account and build a new one, which loses all of its history. Read both values twice before you click create.
3
Add your payment method
3 minutesDone
In Business Settings, look for Payments and add the Lantern business card. Then open the ad account you just made and check its own payment or billing settings to confirm the card is attached to THAT account. Meta keeps payment settings in two places and a card added at the business level does not always attach itself to a new ad account. If the ad account shows no card, add it there directly.
This is your card, on your account. Every charge shows up directly on your own statement from Meta, and you can shut spending off yourself, from any device, at any moment. You are never paying us for ad spend, and you never have to take our word for what was spent. You can see it yourself.
4
Connect your Facebook Page and Instagram
5 minutesDone
Go to Business Settings, then Accounts, then Pages, then Add, then Add a Page, and select the Lantern Home Services Page. Then look for Instagram accounts and add the Lantern Instagram account if you have one.
Ads have to run from a Page, the same way a letter needs a return address. Your ads can already appear on Instagram without an Instagram account connected. Connecting yours means they show up under your own handle instead, and it lets you see and reply to comments and messages in one place. It is worth doing if you have one, and it is not a blocker if you do not.
No Page yet? That is fine. Text Luke and he will walk you through creating one. It takes about 5 minutes.
5
Create your tracking dataset
3 minutesDone
In Business Manager, open Events Manager and look for Connect data, or Data sources and then Connect. It will ask where the data comes from. Choose Web. Then name it. A dataset is just the container that records which ads produced which leads. It does not collect anything on its own until we connect it, and we do that part.
Dataset name to enter
Lantern Home Services
You are creating this rather than us, for the same reason as everything else on this page. It belongs to you. The data it gathers is your customer data, and it stays in your account.
6
Add SiteSmith as a partner
3 minutesDone
Go to Business Settings, then Users, then Partners, then Add, then Give a partner access to your assets. Enter the Business ID below, then share these three things with us:
The ad account, with the Advertiser role
The Facebook Page
The tracking dataset you just created
⏳Luke is sending you this number by text. You can do the other steps first and come back to this one.
Business ID to enter
When it asks what Page access to give, choose the option that lets us create and manage ads. If you are unsure which one that is, screenshot the choices and text them to Luke rather than guessing.
This lets us build and run your ads without owning anything. Advertiser access means we can create and manage ads, but we cannot take ownership of your account, we cannot remove you, and we cannot lock you out of anything. You can revoke our access yourself in two clicks, any time you want, and everything still belongs to you.
7
Start business verification
10 minutes to submitDone
In Business Manager, open Security Center. Verification lives there. Some accounts show it under Business Settings, then Business Info instead, so if you do not see it in one place, check the other. Have these ready before you start: your legal business name exactly as it is registered, your business address, your business phone number, and one document such as a business license, a utility bill, or a bank statement showing that same name and address.
Match your documents exactly. The name, address, and phone number you type in must match your documents exactly, down to suite numbers and abbreviations. A small mismatch is one of the most common reasons verification gets rejected.
Do this as soon as Step 1 is done. Meta can take a few days to review it, and nothing else on this page waits on it finishing. You do not have to wait until you reach the bottom of this list, come here right after your Business Manager exists, submit it, then go back and carry on.
What happens next, on our side
The Odoo side of this is already underway on our end, so it does not wait on you. Once your ad account is ready, we connect that tracking to it so every lead that comes in gets tagged with the exact ad that produced it. We build the ad campaigns. And we show you everything before a single dollar gets spent. Nothing goes live without you seeing it first.
For Daryl: what we are adding to your Odoo
This part is on us. There is nothing you need to do here. Luke is making these changes himself, and this section just lays out exactly what is changing, so nothing in your system comes as a surprise.
What we are adding
We are adding a small set of tracking fields to the Lead record. They store where each lead came from: which ad, which campaign, the click ID, and the exact moment it arrived. We are also adding two uniqueness rules that stop the same lead from being created twice.
What we are not touching
We are not changing, deleting, or touching any existing data, field, or workflow. Nothing already in Odoo moves or breaks, and your team's day to day does not change at all. The new fields are additive. If you ever removed our integration, they would simply sit there unused.
Why we are doing it this way
Right now a lead's source lives in a free text notes field, which cannot be searched or added up. That means nobody can prove which paid jobs came from which ad. Making the source a real field on the record means the revenue share gets computed from your own Odoo data, not from our word and not from a platform's marketing dashboard. You can run the numbers yourself, independently, and land on the same answer we do. That is the point. A number you can check yourself is worth more than a number you have to take on trust.
One honest note
The ad platforms will report their own conversion counts, and those numbers will not match the Odoo numbers exactly. That is expected and normal, since each platform counts using its own rules for what counts as a conversion. Odoo stays the single source of truth for anything billed.
One more thing we need from you
Real photos and video of your crew
Send us the crew working, the vans, real installs, real panels, and you or the team on camera, even if it is just a quick video on your phone. Every competitor running ads in Dallas Fort Worth is using the same stock photo of a smiling stranger in a hard hat, and homeowners can tell. Real faces of the actual people who show up at their door is the one thing no competitor can copy. Phone footage is genuinely fine. It does not need to be professional.
One last thing
Text Luke if you get stuck on any step.
A 30 second text about steps 1 or 2 is always worth it before you click create.