Settings for each individual worker

This article talks about settings that can be set for a specific worker account. If you want to see about company-wide settings for ALL workers, see this article HERE.

The system is highly configurable so if you do not see how to do what you want here, please contact us at support@syncrew.com or in the chat box at the bottom-right.

All the individual settings can be accessed clicking on Settings –> manage users, then clicking the worker’s name.

  • Worker Type: Worker type impacts how the app functions and is not an indicator of the worker’s position or title. Details of these types have their own article HERE.
  • Work.syncrew.com options: There are three options related to work.syncrew.com. There is more information about the worker portal HERE available but here is a quick summary:
    • Allow to view time at work.syncrew.com – This will allow a worker to go to www.syncrew.com and click “worker login” and view their hours. Since Hourly Workers and Manager Workers can easily see this in their app, this is mostly used for Managed Workers (whose time is added by others)
    • Allow to add time at work.syncrew.com – This will allow a worker to add time in the Worker Portal. This is most commonly used by office employees. Be sure to enable the option above for this.
    • “Allow to edit time at work.syncrew.com” – this final option allows the worker to edit their time from the BOTH the Worker Portal and the app directly. If you select this check box alone, the worker will only be able to edit the time from their app
  • Allow to upload photos from the photo gallery – Check this box to allow workers to upload progress photos from their camera’s pictures. This does NOT allow uploading photos for clock in and clock out. This is convenient for workers but since the photos are taken from the phone’s memory, SYNCrew cannot guarantee when or where they were taken and a watermark is applied to note this. If this box is NOT checked, the only way a worker can get a picture into SYNCrew is to take it in real-time with the app.
  • Don’t require photos: There may be some workers who you don’t want to require to take a photo at their clock in and clock out. Checking this box will make it so the worker will skip the photo at clock in and out, but they can still take progress photos and the app works identically in all other ways.
  • Allow user to edit their own time: If you want your employee to be able to edit their own time from the app, click the box next to “allow to edit time at work.syncrew.com”. Note this is referenced above but it’s commonly asked about and we wanted to highlight it.
  • Name: This is how the worker’s name will show up in the admin portal. Typically it is just the workers proper name like, “John Smith” but it sometimes has additional information like nick-names. If you with to have this field not be the property name, but need a property name to connect to payroll, you can do that by enabling the “Employee ID” field or another custom field – learn more HERE.
  • Email: This is the worker’s email and it’s optional since worker’s log in primarily with their phone numbers. If you do put an email address in here, they worker can also use that to log in.
  • Phone: This should be the worker’s cell phone number. They will use this as their primary login and they can reset their password from the app if they can get text messages at this number.
  • Team: Each worker is assigned to a team and this is where you set that. Learn more about teams HERE.
  • Skills: Each employee has skills that are a subset of the skills that a company has. You can read more about company skills HERE.
    • Each worker has a list of skills and must have at least one skill enabled. To change the skills, edit the list in their employee profile settings by putting a check box next to the desired skills and then click save.
    • If the employee only has one skill, all their work will automatically get assigned to it. If more then one skill is set up for a given employee, they will be prompted to select the appropriate skill at each clock in.
  • Hourly Cost rate: This is typically the employees wage but some clients put the fully-burdened rate in. This rate is used in the budgets, labor cost in Work Block reports and anywhere else labor cost is referenced.
  • Hourly Billing rate: This rate is shown on the project and worker profile pages – anywhere labor billable values are referenced.
  • Regular Hours: Start and End time are the time that this employee typically starts work. Workers will be able to work different hours than these, but these times are what the system uses for reminders to start work. These default to the values that were set in Settings –> Configuration.

    To prevent workers from clocking in before their start time, go to Settings –> Configuration, scroll down to the “General” section, and then check the box next to “Enforce clock in time” (then scroll down to the bottom and click “save”).
  • Tolerance: This is how many minutes the system will wait before sending a notification. For example, if the worker’s start time is set to 8am and the tolerance is set to 15 minutes, the system will wait until 8:15am before sending the reminder the clock in.

Custom Data fields associated to each worker

SYNCrew is very flexible to allow many different kinds of companies to use the system with as much complexity as they need, but without adding un-needed information for those who do not need it. The items below can be turned on or off at the system level and will apply to all employees.

There are lots of other options that can be enabled at the employee level and you can read about them HERE.

Items that can be enabled

The following options are all configured by going to Settings –> Configuration and scrolling down to the section called “employee options.”

  • Employee ID: This simple field allows you to enter a value for the employee. It can have numbers or letters. If enabled for the company, it becomes a required field. The Employee ID will show up on the Teams page, on timesheets, and in many reports.
  • Category: This is a pick list that is used in connection with data integrations to other systems like Quickbooks. The purpose is that companies will often have different groups of people who need different things imported to the other system, like office vs. field work or salary vs. hourly. This category option is not visible in reports or anywhere else so if you want to use it to group certain workers, user the pick list described below.
  • Pick Lists: There are three identical fields that allow you to create lists to assign employees to. Each one allows a company to set up a list of options to be selected for each employee. If enabled, selecting an option is required when creating or editing a worker account. Data in these fields will be included in Work Block Reports only. Examples of use cases include:
    • worker classification (contractor vs. employee)
    • worker home location (Hayward branch, Oakland branch, san Jose branch, etc)
    • worker union classification (apprentice, master, foreman, etc.)
  • Employee Custom Fields: There are three identical fields that allow you put additional information into an employee record. Each one is a text field that can have any value (numbers, letters, etc) in it. If enabled, this field cannot be left blank when creating or editing a worker account. Data in these fields will be included in Work Block Reports only.
    Examples of use cases include:
    • Employee Address
    • Secondary employee ID (beyond the field described above)
    • Assigned equipment serial numbers (like truck ID for this worker)

Important note: DO NOT PUT HIGHLY SENSITIVE INFORMATION LIKE SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS INTO THE FIELDS. SYNCrew is a secure system but it typically has a lot of users outside of HR and mis-configuing user credentials could result in this information being seen by many who should not see it! If you have questions about this, please contact us at support@syncrew.com.

What to do if a user says their app is not working

This guide has a few quick steps for how to diagnose a user who cannot use the app. These steps will help you resolve issues for over 95% of cases where the worker reports “my app is not working”

1. Are they logged in? If the user sees the login screen shown below, then they need to log in. If they see any other screen skip to step 2 below.

  • Confirm that their phone number is right. This causes 90% of all issues so please check with the employee even though it seems obvious. If the phone number is wrong, correct it.
  • Once you have confirmed that the password is correct, then reset the password as shown here. We recommend setting a simple password that will be easy to type in on a phone (4 numbers usually works well).
    • If the worker does not get a text message, please double check the phone number. If it was not correct, update it and then reset the password again.
  • They should get a text message and be able to log in directly. Here are a few tips that can help on login:
    • The phone number and password must be typed exactly. Even one character off will make the login fail and it is hard to type on the small screens.
    • For the phone number, just enter the numbers. The app will put the dashes in the numbers automatically.
    • An Internet connection is required for login.

2. User is logged in, but app is not working: In this case, the worker has logged in but cannot use the app for some reason. Please check the following:

  • Go to the phone’s settings app and scroll down to SYNCrew. Make sure that all the requested permissions are allowed. The app requires camera (iPhone and Android) and storage (Android only). We recommend GPS and notifications for optimal usage, but they are not strictly required.
  • On the admin dashboard, check that the user is clocked out. If not, clock them out LIKE THIS. This clears an occasional issue on older phones.
  • Open the app again and see if it will work now.

If everything in the points above checked out, please have the employee text SYNCrew support at 415-968-1593 and we will work with them to get things sorted. SYNCrew support can text in any language.

Manager approval of hours

SYNCrew allows limited and full admin to approve work hours. Approvals can be made in Worker Time Review and the the approval status is shown in both Worker Time Review and Timesheets

How to approve time

To approve time, run Worker Time Review for the period and teams you want to approve. You will see two ways to approve:

  1. Approve all: This button will approve all time for the period for all workers on the selected teams.
  2. Approve worker-by-worker: Along the right side of the screen are “approve” buttons. These allow you do approve a single worker at a time.

Once approved, the buttons will turn gray and you cannot press them again. See below for how to undo an approval. Additionally, please note that approvals can be made by any admin even when the period is locked.

How to undo approval of time

Once time is approved, it can be unapproved by making an edit. Once any time in the period is changed, the whole period for that worker will be unapproved. Additionally, if new time comes in from the Worker’s phone or an admin adds time, the period will become unapproved again. To approve, simply click the approve button again.

Reviewing approvals in Timesheets

The Timesheets page allows the admin to see the approvals along side the hours. In the area shown in red below, a green circle indicates that the time has been approved. Placing your mouse on the green circle will open a small pop up (highlighted in purple below) that shows the details of who approved the hours and when.