Knack Tutorial for Beginners: No Code App Builder

About this video

Beginner Knack tutorial, in partnership with Knack, building a no-code invoice system for the fictional Kevin Cookie Company from scratch. Signup needs no payment information and includes 14 days free; apps can also start with AI, a template, or imported data, but starting blank teaches the fundamentals. Two tables are created: Customers with Name plus Email, Address and Phone, and Invoices with an auto-increment Invoice Number, Amount Due (currency, required), Due Date (required) and Paid (Yes/No, default No). A connection links them — each invoice connects with one customer, each customer connects with many invoices — without needing to manage primary keys. User roles Employee and Customer are added. Records are added manually and by bulk import from Excel or Google Sheets, mapping spreadsheet columns (including separate street, city, state and zip) to the Address field. A sample invoice for YT Restaurants is $5,000, due October 31st, unpaid, on two-week payment terms. A daily Task emails customers about outstanding invoices when Paid is No, using dynamic fields for invoice number and due date in the subject and message. The Data Model view shows tables, fields and relationships. An Employee Dashboard login page shows a grid filtered to open invoices (Paid = No) with edit forms, plus a line chart ‘Upcoming payments and revenue’ grouping Amount Due by due date. Customer users are connected to the Customers table so a Customer Invoices page shows only that customer’s invoices — demonstrated with Lee of YT Restaurants. E-commerce payment views are noted but left beyond scope. Settings cover app name and URL, design, and API access with custom JavaScript and CSS. Finally, Flows — Zapier-like automation built into Knack for hundreds of apps — sends each new invoice (Record Created trigger) to a Google Sheets spreadsheet ‘Invoice Tracker Finance Team’, mapping Invoice Number to column A, Due Date to B and Amount Due to C, with a run history log; other integrations named include QuickBooks, Twilio, Dropbox, MySQL and PostgreSQL. The AI Builder can generate a first version from a description, and Knack is said to charge no user fees.

Key takeaways

• Knack apps are built from tables and fields — the demo uses Customers and Invoices connected as one customer to many invoices
• User roles plus login pages control visibility: employees see all open invoices, customers see only their own connected invoices
• Tasks automate follow-up, e.g. a daily email to customers for any invoice where Paid is No, using dynamic field values
• Flows automate data to other apps, e.g. adding each new invoice as a row in Google Sheets with a run history log
• Signup is free for 14 days with no payment information, and Knack is claimed to charge no per-user fees for external users

Episode details: published October 29, 2024 · 39:05 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Kevin Stratvert’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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