Forward your calls
Forwarding sends calls from the number your customers already use to the receptionist. It’s a setting at your phone company. For many phone companies, the app’s Call forwarding screen shows the code to dial, with your receptionist number filled in, and Dial this code opens your phone’s dialer with it.
Before you start
- Your receptionist number: open Phone number in Settings, or the number row in Home’s setup list. The page is called Your number. No number yet? Choose Get my number on that page. It usually takes under a minute.
- When a step asks for 10 digits, enter your receptionist number’s area code and number with nothing in front.
- The phone whose calls you want to forward.
- A second phone is optional. The app can check forwarding without one.
There are two ways to use your receptionist’s number. Forwarding, on this page, is the one we recommend: you keep your business number and your phone company, and nothing is ported. The first text a caller gets starts with your business name and comes from your receptionist’s number, not from your own.
The other is to use your receptionist’s number as your business number, with no forwarding. Your receptionist answers every call first. Your number is yours. If you leave, we keep it for 30 days after a plan ends, or 7 days after a free trial ends, and release it to your new carrier on request.
Which calls go to the receptionist
Calls you don’t answer
Try this first
Your phone rings first. Calls you miss go to the receptionist. Use the steps headed “Forward calls you don’t answer”, or the ones for when you don’t answer, when you’re on another call and when your phone is off or out of range.
Every call
Your phone doesn’t ring. Every call goes to the receptionist. Use the steps headed “Forward every call”.
After hours only
Forward every call when you close, and turn it off when you open.
Each step below says which of these it’s good for.
Choose the same under How it answers in the app, so your receptionist tells callers the right thing.
Your phone company or service
Not in the list? Choose “Not listed” for what to ask your phone company, or contact support.
Steps marked From the carrier’s own page come from that carrier’s support page; the others are marked Not yet verified by a test call. Nobody has tried any of them on a call yet.
Company and product names are used only to identify their instructions. We aren’t affiliated with them.
Check that forwarding works
The app proves forwarding two ways. Either one is enough.
- Check forwarding now. Open Call forwarding and tap Check forwarding now. Your receptionist’s number calls your business number once. Let it ring and don’t answer. Your phone company forwards the call back to your receptionist, and the app says Forwarding works. A check costs about 3¢. A paid plan includes 6 checks a month; a free trial, up to 6 a day and 10 a month. If your phone or its voicemail answers the call, the app says so. If you didn’t answer, forwarding isn’t on yet: dial the code again, then check again.
- A forwarded call. When a real customer call reaches your receptionist through forwarding, and your phone company reports where it was forwarded from, that call proves forwarding by itself. You do nothing and it costs nothing. Not every phone company reports it, so the first call may not prove it.
Prefer to use another phone? Check from another phone instead asks for the number of another phone, and you call your business number from it.
The numbers allowed to call your receptionist, and the number you test from, never change this result. Only a new receptionist number, a new business number, or a check that shows you turned forwarding off does, and the app then asks you to check again.
Things to know
- Forwarding is a setting at your phone company. The receptionist can’t turn it on or off for you.
- Codes and steps differ between phone companies and types of line. A code for one company can do something else on another.
- Your phone company sets how many rings come before an unanswered call forwards.
- Your phone company may charge for forwarded calls or count them against your plan. Check with them.
- Dial a code from the phone whose calls you want to forward.
- After any change, test it: call your business number from a different phone.
- If callers can’t get through to the receptionist, turn forwarding off. Calls then ring your phone as before.
- Before you stop using the receptionist, turn forwarding off.
- If your phone service lets you choose the caller ID on forwarded calls, choose the caller’s own number. The receptionist uses it to know who called.
- If your phone service can announce a call or ask for a key press before connecting it, turn that off for forwarded calls. The receptionist can’t press keys.