Your first week with NumberGroup: a quick onboarding checklist

Welcome. You've joined Membership, your account is live, and now you've got the slightly daunting moment of "what do I actually do first?". This is the 30-minute checklist. Once these are set, the rest of your time on the platform is boring in a good way.

Take this in order — each step builds on the last. The whole thing is a single browser tab open at the NumberGroup portal.

Step 1 — Confirm your account details (2 minutes)

• Open Account → Profile
• Confirm the company name, billing email and address are correct (your billing address is the address Stripe sees on your invoice)
• Set a strong portal password — different from your other passwords. Most portal compromise we see is password reuse.
• Add a second admin contact under Account → Users if you don't want to be the only person who can log in

Step 2 — Set your 999 emergency address (2 minutes — important)

This is the one onboarding step that is genuinely time-critical for compliance. SIP and VoIP don't have a physical line, so 999 / 112 operators rely on the address you registered. If it's wrong, emergency response goes to the wrong place.

• Open Account → Emergency Address (CESID)
• Enter the full address where calls will be made from — the actual physical location, not the registered office
• If you have multiple sites, set per-trunk addresses on each trunk
• See our CESID compliance guide for the detail

Step 3 — Get your numbers in (10 minutes if you're porting)

• Brand new number? Go to Numbers → Browse, pick one (free with Membership for standard numbers, outright purchase for memorable), and it's allocated immediately.
• Bringing an existing number? Go to Numbers → Port In, fill in the LOA (Letter of Authority), and we'll lodge it with your losing provider. Typical timing: 5–10 working days for a UK geographic number, longer for ISDN30 with large DDI blocks. Read our full UK porting walkthrough before you submit.
• Don't cancel your old contract until the port has completed — number portability is independent of contract termination

Step 4 — Create your SIP trunk (5 minutes)

• Open Trunks → Add Trunk
• Name it sensibly — "Main Office", "Sales Floor", "DR Site"
• Set User-Agent Type to match your PBX or handset (3CX Phonesystem, DDI in R-URI Asterisk/FreeSWITCH, or RFC3261 Standard Trunk for desk phones and softphones)
• Set Send Numbers As — see the matching setup guide for your platform under SIP trunking guides
• Save — the password is shown once, then hashed. Click SHOW immediately and paste it into your PBX/handset config

Step 5 — Set the fraud caps (1 minute, do this before going live)

The single highest-leverage 60 seconds of your first week. On every trunk:

• Simultaneous Calls: 50–100% above your real peak (e.g. you peak at 6 concurrent, set 10)
• Daily Spend: 50–100% above your real typical day (e.g. typical £15/day, set £25)

If a compromised extension dials premium-rate numbers over a weekend, the trunk auto-disables before the bill runs up. See the UK telecom fraud guide for why this matters.

Step 6 — Register your PBX or handset (5–15 minutes)

Pick the matching setup guide from our SIP trunking section:

• 3CX
• Asterisk
• FreeSWITCH
• Cisco CUCM
• Mitel MiVoice Business
• Avaya IP Office
• Grandstream desk phone direct
• Yealink desk phone
• Poly VVX desk phone
• Zoiper softphone
• Linphone
• MicroSIP (Windows)
• Groundwire / Acrobits
• iPhone (CallKit)

Members' Grandstream desk phones arrive pre-provisioned — plug into any Ethernet port on your broadband, plug in the power, the phone registers itself. No web UI needed.

Step 7 — Test outbound and inbound (2 minutes)

• Outbound: dial your own mobile from the new system. Confirm your Caller ID is what you set
• Inbound: ring your DDI from a mobile. Confirm it routes to the right destination
• Test 999: don't actually dial 999. Confirm by ringing a small UK provider that does test-call validation, or our team will validate for you

Step 8 — Configure smart features (10 minutes)

Free with Membership — wire these up while you're here:

• IVR / virtual receptionist — "press 1 for sales, 2 for support". Record a greeting in your own voice (Mac: QuickTime → File → New Audio Recording)
• Hunt groups — calls ring multiple extensions simultaneously or in sequence
• Time-of-day routing — different behaviour business hours vs after hours vs holidays
• Voicemail-to-email — missed calls land in your inbox as MP3 attachments with the caller's number
• Call recording — enable per-trunk or per-extension. Add the "this call may be recorded" greeting. See the call-recording UK GDPR guide

Step 9 — Cancel the old supplier (when porting is complete)

• Confirm every ported number is live on the new system
• Send the termination notice to the old provider — note their notice period (typically 30 or 90 days)
• If they auto-renewed before you noticed, you may pay the remainder — usually still cheaper than staying
• See our switching guide for full detail

Step 10 — Save these for later

Bookmark the bits you'll come back to:

• Portal dashboard
• Wholesale call rate card
• Member hardware pricing
• UK support team: 0800 310 1010 or contact form — same humans every time, business hours pickup in seconds

If you get stuck

We don't run a ticket queue or a foreign call centre. Ring 0800 310 1010 or email help@numbergroup.com — the UK team picks up fast and they know your account.