Getting started

Your new company account
Written by Dan Gubler
Updated 6 months ago

The Staff Times cloud solution consists of an administration center on the web, also known as the web control panel, and a mobile app for your staff's time recording, also known as the mobile member app. See below illustration.

When you created your company account with Staff Times, you received a welcome email to activate your company account and an invitation email for a test user named "Joe Sample". Your first step is to activate your company account and web control panel by clicking on the activation link in the email from a computer. Please note that the web control panel is not optimized for small screens so you need to log in from a standard screen size device (computer, laptop or tablet). In addition, a test user named Joe Sample was set up with your e-mail ID including some sample data so that you can quickly try out the app on your smartphone from a user perspective and get your first experience with Staff Times.

Please log in to the control panel and go through the default settings and update these to match your company’s environment. 

The Web Control Panel - let's get started

Once you have logged in you will land on the home screen named 'Dashboard' as illustrated below. Please take note of the In-App Messenger, where you can send us messages and look up many articles & guides with explanations to various features. Take advantage of the product tours to get to know the below sections. The In-App Messenger is located in the lower right corner of the screen, as shown below.

On the left side is the menu bar. We recommend that you click on the individual menu items and go through the automatic product tours provided.

Manage users

A test user named "Joe Sample" is automatically set up with your email ID and an invite mail sent to your email to let you try out the mobile app for time tracking. Click on "Joe Sample" to go through the detail pages and check the settings options. You may rename that user to your name if you wish. See below list view and option to add an employee (see button "Add an employee): 

When you add an employee you are setting up the Terms of Employment for that user. Your user may be set up with tracking mode of 'Full-Time', 'Part-Time', 'Basic' or 'Inactive'. Once you have gone through all screens and saved the employment profile the last step will trigger the invite mail with the personal credentials for your user.

Manage Activities

Check the left-side Menu for Manage Activities. A default set of common Activity names have been created to get your started. These names will appear on the mobile app for your users for logging time. See the illustration.

The Activity names can be configured for use on three levels as follows:

  • Company: general access is given to all mobile app users company-wide.

  • Team: access is given to staff who have been assigned to this team (default team 'Various'). Think about creating teams and team leaders which you would like to report on like 'Market Southwest' or 'Market Notheast' with respective access rights.

  • Group: access is enabled for staff assigned to this group (default group 'Various'). This feature is used by companies that wish to track customer orders and project time against plan. Think about creating groups for projects and customers to which you would like to allocate Activity names for services provided.

  • To set up and assign your staff to a Role or Group check the left-side menu options for Manage Teams and Manage Groups. Would you like to allocate your services to specific groups like customers and projects? Would you like you to allocate teams to specific Activity names? then you might consider creating Teams.

The mobile app "My Time"

Open the invite mail from your smartphone's mailbox, download the app and start logging your time on the mobile app. Following is an illustration of the mobile app's Daily Activities input page:

Check your reports for this user. Return to your computer and log in to the control panel to verify your staff's logged hours with the Detail report from View reports. Verify overtime balances and Activities against the mobile app's summary balances. See illustration:

Additional references & support

Please take note of the product tours and additional resources provided in the in-app messenger when you are logged in. Check these guides for Setting up your user - Terms of Employment and Setting up Activity names. Please use the messenger where you can clarify your questions with us. In addition, we are happy to provide an on boarding training of Staff Times free of charge at your request. Please let us know. The Staff Times complete features are available to you for testing for one full month. If you wish to subscribe simply select the users you wish to subscribe in the subscriptions listing and follow these instructions. We appreciate your interest in Staff Times. As part of a growing user community, congratulations for discovering Staff Times and welcome to the club! 

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