Category: General

General information

Worker Portal

Most SYNCrew users use the app in the field, but many companies have at least a few people in the office and want to have them log hours in SYNCrew as well. This feature allows those users to add hours from a web browser.

Enable Access

Access to the Worker Portal is on a worker-by-worker basis so you can enable only for those who need it. To enable access, go to their worker profile in the Admin section and check the boxes circled to allow the appropriate level of access for that user. Click Save.

If the Worker is ALSO an admin user, you can link the accounts together. Doing this will allow them to log into the admin portal and quickly go to their worker portal by going to the menu shown at right so they can manage their own hours.

To set up this connection, go to the person’s admin account and click “Link worker.” Then search for their worker account and click save.

How to use

Once a Worker is set up, they can access the portal by going to www.syncrew.com and clicking “employee login” at the top-right. Then they log in with the same phone number and password they use to log into the app. You can reset it for them if they have forgotten it.

Once they log in, they will have several options (these can vary a bit based on the level of access provided in their settings). They can track in real-time, add time in the past, or edit past hours.

Track in Live Time: Some users will want to track hours as they work. To do that, they can select the project and skill (circled in red below) and click “start working.” The screen will then show a clock for how long they have been at work and they can change task, clock out, or even upload a photo.

Add past time: The easiest way to add past time is to do it while clocked out. When the user is clocked out, they will see the information and buttons circled at the bottom of the screen shown below.

To add time, pick the day you want to add by clicking on the blue box with the date. To see a different week, click the arrows to the left or right of the blue boxes to go to the next week. Once you have the day selected, pick the project, skill (plus any optional fields your company has), select the number hours and minutes for that task. Once that is complete, click one of the buttons to add the hours:

  • Add hours in beginning: Adds hours before the earliest event. For example, if the hours currently show 9am to 3pm, using this option to add an hour will add the time from 8am to 9am.
  • Add hours at end: Adds hours at the end of the currently entered hours. In the example above, this hour would be added from 3pm to 4pm.

You can enter more time by following the same process.

Edit time: Sometimes time needs to be edited after the fact. Doing so can be done for prior days only (so you cannot do this “today”). To edit the time, simply click on the time shown in the “Total” colum (circled in red below) and change the time in the pop-over that opens.

SYNCrew Forms Overview

This article has some overview information and a video of how the forms look on the app. To jump in to how to create a form, jump over to SYNCrew Forms: How to set up.

SYNCrew Forms are a powerful way to capture information from the field. Like everything with SYNCrew, the information and photos are organized and saved forever so you can always find the form when you need it most. As always, please contact us with your needs so we can help you set up exactly the forms that will eliminate your paper-chasing!

How does it work:

  • Set up forms: Forms are configured by an admin user (email your forms to support@syncrew.com and we’ll help set them up). You may have many different types of forms
  • Employees complete forms: Employees select which form they need to fill in and complete it on their phone
  • When a form is submitted: Once the employee submits a form, the following happens automatically:
    • Emails will be sent to contacts for the projects, emails set up for that form type
    • Forms become searchable in Reports –> Custom forms report
    • Forms and data are saved forever and can be exported to spreadsheets, pdfs, or viewed on screen

What kind of data can a form capture? Below are the types of information that can be collected and each type can be used many times in the same form

  • Signatures: Collect employee, customer, or other signatures directly in the app
  • Dates: Pick any calendar day
  • Time of Day: Pick any time of day
  • Check Boxes: The user check put a check-mark in a box (usually to mark completion of a task)
  • Text: Text or numbers can be entered
  • Pick Lists: a pre-set list of options. For short lists, all options are displayed while long lists allow you to search (2 to thousands of options supported). You may allow user to select multiple options or only one option
  • Worker List: This is like the pick list but pre-populates the list of workers in your system
  • Headings: There are two kinds of headings that can be used to group things together within the form
  • Photos: Photos can be added to any of the above data types. Photos for each item can be optional, required, or not available to take

Since the forms are 100% customizable, clients are using them for many different things and you can use it for anything you traditionally used a paper form for. Here are a few examples:

  • Customer acknowledgement of work
  • Employee vacation or sick time request
  • Material request
  • Tenant chargeback form
  • Walk-through inspection report form
  • Customer and employee signed daily work log report
  • Security company incident report form
  • Pool cleaning and chemical reading log
  • Expense reimbursement
  • Mileage reimbursement forms
  • Company phone use acknowledgement

Email your current paper form to support@syncrew.com so we can help get rid of the paper!

SYNCrew Forms: How to set up

Forms are easy to set up. To edit or create any form, click “settings” in the left navigation, then click “Custom Forms.” The following assumes you are already there.

How to create a new form:

  1. Click “New Custom Form” at the top of the page
  2. On the pop up, enter the name of the form and, optionally, one email address (you can add more emails while editing the form later)
  3. Click “Save”
  4. Now follow the steps to edit forms below

Setting up Forms

This refers to the options at the top of the forms setup page

  1. Enable: This option just enables or disables the form. If there is a check box showing, the form is enabled.
  2. Send to project email: When this option is selected, completed forms will be sent to the email(s) that are listed for the Project. You can see these emails by clicking “edit project” from the project profile page.
  3. Email address for completed form: Whenever a form is completed, these emails will receive the form.
  4. Name: This is the name that shows up on the form list in the app and admin portal
  5. Project: This setting managed when the form can be seen by workers in the field. If you want the form to appear both clocked in and out, you just need to copy the form once completed and set the copy to have different project settings
    1. Clocked in project: The form will show anytime a user is clocked into any project (as you are now)
    2. Single project: The user will see the form when they are clocked into ONLY that selected project. They will also see that form if you select “allow user to see while clocked out” AND they search for that project.
    3. Allow user to select: These forms will only be seen while the user is clocked out. 
  6. ALWAYS CLICK “UPDATE” AFTER EDITING THESE SETTINGS OR THEY WILL NOT BE SAVED

Adding and editing form fields

This section shows how to add data elements to forms and change the options for photo requirements and reordering

To add a new element:

  1. Scroll to the bottom of the page where you will see a drop-down menu and submit button (circled in green in the image above)
  2. Click the menu and select the option you want. You can read the various field types at this page: http://www.syncrew.com/faq/app/syncrew-forms-overview/
  3. Click “submit”
  4. A form will open where you need to put some text in the Label. This label is what will show on the form and each label on a form needs a unique name. Click “Save” once you complete the label.

Editing a data element: Click the “edit” button next to the label, at the right site of screen. Make whatever edits you desire in the pop up and click Save. One trick for elements that have lists (like “pick lists”) is that you can enter multiple items at one time separated by commas. So “Option1, Option2, Option3” will create three separate options.

Changing Order: The screen shows the elements in the order they will appear on the Worker app and also on emails and PDFs. To cahnge the order, click the blue up or down arrow at the far right of the element. This will cause the element to move by one slot in the list. To go multiple spaces, just click the button multiple times.

Removing a data element: Simply click the “remove” button next to the element you with to remove. Once removed, the element will no longer show up on newly completed forms but it will be there for forms that were completed before it was removed.

If you have any trouble, please contact your account manager or support@syncrew.com

Other links:

Quickbooks integration: Common causes of errors

Below are some issues we have seen on multiple occasions so we posted there in case you are having a similar issue.

EXTRA SPACES: Spaces in SYNCrew Accounting Name field. This is the most common issue we see. Clients will enter a space at the front or back of the field, or before or after the “:” that is used to break up the Project and Job. If you suspect this is the issue, contact support@syncrew.com and we can run a quick audit to check for this.


SAME ACCOUNTING NAME ON TWO PROJECTS: For the integration to work and prevent duplicate entries from being made into Quickbooks, each project in SYNCrew must have a unique Accounting Name (or Project Name if you are using that in your QB Sync settings).

MIDDLE NAME MIS-MATCH: Too many letters stored in the middle initial field in Quickbooks. This is a strange one but has popped up a few times and is hard to track down. The Middle Initial field in QB can only hold 5 characters but sometimes multiple names will get put in there. In the examples below, you can see that “Robinson” is the second, first name in SYNCrew, but just Robin fits in QB.

This particular problem will allow the Work Block to be written into QB, but it will NOT be confirmed within SYNCrew and re-running Web Connector will cause duplicate entries to be made.

How to disable a project (delete a project)

SYNCrew was designed to allow for an unlimited number of projects. Since the app uses GPS to always show the nearest projects at the top of the list, you could have 10,000 projects in a single city and each worker would always see the one they are near!

Even so, many people like to keep their project lists clean which is certainly a noble goal! When you do not expect any more work to be done at a project, you can disable it. A disabled project will not show up on the worker app so they will not be able to clock into that project anymore. All work associated with the project still exists and can be searched for.

To disable a project: Go to Settings –> Manage projects. Then click the “make inactive” button next to the project. If you have a lot of projects, use the search bar to find the one(s) you want to inactivate. 0

In the event that you need to re-enable a project, you can search for it and click to enable it, just as we disabled the example above.

A note on deleting projects: Since projects usually have work connected to them, the system does not allow projects to be deleted. If work never commenced you can just inactivate them or rename the project to a new one (although we do not recommend renaming projects as you may do it by mistake and it will impact any work that was associated with that project).

Quickbooks Integration & de-duplication explained

One major issue when you connect critical data (like hours for payroll and billing!) is that you need to be sure that everything goes though AND that it only goes one time!

Technical steps to send data from SYNCrew to Quickbooks Desktop

1. Quickbooks user clicks the “Update selected” button in QB web connector.
2. QB Web Connector contacts SYNCrew and create a secure connection.
3. SYNCrew will then send the information over one Work Block at a time (think of each row of a Work Block report).
4. For each Work Block that SYNCrew sends, Quickbooks will validate that the employee and customer (& project if used) match.

IF THEY MATCH:
5. The hours are added to the Employee timesheet in Quickbooks
6. Quickbooks confirms this addition and SYNCrew notes that the Work Block has been send to Quickbooks. If the QB Web Connector connects to SYNCrew while the same time period is selected again, that Work Block will be skipped.

IF THERE IS NOT A MATCH:
5. The import process stops and QB Web Connector displays an error that describes what issue was found so the user can fix (usually by adding the Customer:Job or employee in QB.
6. Nothing is reported back to SYNCrew so that SYNCrew will try to send that Work Block next time.

What if additions or edits are made AFTER the sync to QB?

  • Work Block added AFTER sync to QB: If a work block is added to SYNCrew AFTER Web Connector has run, you can simply run the Web Connector again and only new events will be added to QB.
  • Edits made to a Work Block AFTER sync to QB: In this case, the Work Block as it was at the time Web Connector was run, will remain in QB and the updated Work Block will not be synced. This is because the Work Block has already been flagged as synced so the Web Connector skips it.
  • If you add time manually into QB or through another method (like an IIF file): These hours are NOT noted in SYNCrew as having been synced and so they will be sent again one time if you sync to QB.

Need Help?

We know this can be a bit complicated so if you something strange happened, please contact us with the details so we can detmine how it happened and advise on cleanup and also how to prevent going forward.

As always, if you have any questions, you can contact your account manager or email support@syncrew.com to get further details.

Quickbooks Desktop Integration

SYNCrew can export data to Quickbooks Desktop! This flexible integration will let you get hours your team enters in SYNCrew directly into Quickbooks

Initial Setup: The initial setup is a bit complicated due to the flexibility SYNCrew has built to make sure the hours get in how you need them. For that reason, we insist on helping you so please email support@syncrew.com and ask to get this going.

How to pull data: When you wan to pull data from SYNCrew to QB, just follow these steps. Note that most people run these at the end of each pay period but you can run at other times or use the custom dates. Regardless, we recommend not running while workers are still clocked in for that period.

START IN SYNCREW: Open SYNCrew and do the following:

  1. Open SYNCrew and click on Settings in the navigation section at the left (circled in yellow below)
  2. Select QuickBooks underneath Settings (circled in green)
  3. Select the pay period you want (circled in purple)
  4. Click Save (circled in red)

Configuration screen in SYNCrew before each QB export

MOVE TO QUICKBOOKS: Open QuickBooks and do the following:
5. Go to the file menu and select “Update Web Service”
6. You may be asked to approve SYNCrew’s access at this time, please approve.
7. A window will open that shows you available apps yous can update and use. Make sure the box next to SYNCrew is selected (circled in orange) and then click “update Selected” (circled in green)

8. Once you click “Update Selected,” it may take some time depending on how many employees you have and how long the pay period is, but status bars at the bottom will keep you posted. Once the progress bars get to 100%, you can check the status to see if it was successsful or if there were errors:

IF EVERYTHING GOES RIGHT, you will see a window like this that shows “last result: ok.” If you see this, you are done and all data should be in QB!

IF SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT, you will see a window like this that shows “last result: qbwc error:…” and then a description of the error. The error will usually be that the Customer:Project or Employee is not in Quickbooks. Once you fix the issue in QB, go back to step 7 and click “update selected.” If your projects and employees are not up to date in QB, this make take a few tries to get it fully synced.


Please note, we always recommend reviewing hours in QB to be sure they are correct!


Further reading: This integration was built to be as seamless as possible, but it is a bit complicated out of necessity due to the many ways our clients use both SYNCrew and Quickbooks.

Exporting Lists (Workers or Projects)

Occasionally, it will be convenient to export a list of Worker Users or a list of current projects. To do so, follow these steps:

  1. Click “Settings” in the navigation panel at the left, then select “Export” in the sub-menu that opens
  2. For both Workers and Projects, there is a menu to select whether you want to see ALL, ACTIVE, or INACTIVE
  3. Once you pick which group, click the appropriate “export” button for what you want to export. A CSV file will download immediately and this file can be opened in your text editor or spreadsheet program (typically Excel)

The screenshot below shows how to export INACTIVE PROJECTS:

How to delete events (delete clock out, delete clock in, etc.)

SYNCrew is a management tool but it also serves as a valuable archive of all activities. As such, events cannot be deleted. In most cases, the issue can be resolved by editing the time to be a few seconds which effectively makes the time disappear. By editing, instead of deleted, the record is kept intact so that the editing history is complete and nobody can be accused of deleting information at a later date.

In certain circumstances, SYNCrew staff can delete things but it is typically limited to:

  • Events that were added by administrators
  • Events created for testing purposes by either SYNCrew or company administrators
  • Profane or pornographic images

Late Clock Out

Every so often, a Worker forgets to clock out at the end of the day. When that app believes that has occurred, it gives the Worker an opportunity to clock out at an earlier time to prevent their being clocked in for 24 hours or longer. The app alerts the Worker that it believes they forgot to clock out and asks the Worker to enter the time and date that they stopped working and explain what happened.

Since this happens after-the-fact, there is no photo taken and SYNCrew places the image below in place of the picture so its easy to see when this occurs. The GPS coordinate is taken from where the employee is at the time the late clockout is entered.