Employee App – Page 2 – Frequently Asked Questions

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:

Approve all: This button will approve all time for the period for all workers on the selected teams.
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.

Quickbooks Online Integration

SYNCrew can export data to Quickbooks Online! 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. Unfortunately, due to the complex nature of the interactions between QBO and SYNCrew., we cannot help troubleshoot issues on the QBO side.

How to pull data: When you want to pull data from SYNCrew to Quickbooks, 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:

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

5. Once the page reloads, pick “QBO” from the options under Quickbooks
6. Click “authorize quick books” to log into your QBO account

Now we need to set up the categories. Again, under settings, but this time click on “Configuration” and scroll down the page to find the “Employee Options” section.

You need to create at least one Category. If you create only one, it should be a simpler setup. Type a category name (Can be whatever you want) and click “Add”.

Then go back to the Quickbook settings, and into the “Time Sync Settings” and select the category.

If you added only one category, all the employees will be added to that category. Any employee of the selected category will have the hours imported into QB.

Finally, you have to make sure ALL EMPLOYEE AND PROJECT NAMES ARE THE SAME ACROSS SYNCREW AND QBO.

When you are ready to sync the hours, click on Update Quickbooks.

After you complete the steps above, check your email for a status update. If there were any issues with matching projects or workers to your data in Quickbooks, it will noted. Once you fix those issues, click “update quickbooks” again to send those hours over.

Scheduling in the app

This article explains how your employees see schedules in the Android and iPhone app.

Alert for newly scheduled event: When you create an event in the admin portal, the employee(s) who had the new event scheduled will get a simple alert like the one shown below. This alert shows on the phone regardless of whether the app is open or closed (but the user does need to have alerts enabled for the SYNCrew app):

Home Screen if events are scheduled for current day: If the employee has an event scheduled for that day, their home screen (what they see when they open the app) will show the next scheduled event as you see below on the left. They can see their full schedule for the day by clicking “jobs today” as shown at the right:

To see future days: The user can select “My Time” from the menu and then click the “scheduled” button (circled in red below). That will show today by default but the user can click the arrows (circled in green) to see different days.

If you do not use scheduling for a given user, or they just don’t have any events scheduled in the near future, they just see the project selection screen shown here:

Worker Time Review

Worker Time review is the fastest way to check hours for your pay period. We recommend using Worker Time Review to quickly check how many hours your employees had each day, including overtime. Required edits can be made here, meal breaks added, missing days of job locations added and most other common changes as well.

This video is the easiest way to see how worker time review works:

Video is the easiest way to see how Worker Time Review works

How to run the Worker Time Review

Select Worker Time Review from under the Manage in the left navigation panel
On the page that loads, select your options:
1. Team: select the teams you want [red underline below]. You can pick one team, a few teams, or all teams. The system will remember the teams you selected last time.
2. Period ending: This is end date of the the pay period you want to review [green underline below]. Once you select the date, you may see a box pop up to indicate that the period is locked (more info on period lock). If you don’t see the right pay periods for your company, please email support@syncrew.com with details on your pay period cycle.
Click “Run”

After you click Run, the hours will load you can easily see each worker’s activity. There are two views and the system will remember which you used last. Neither option is better and both show mostly the same information, so have a look at both and use the one you prefer.

Hours and Break Summary View

This is the more common view since it does the math of calculating hours for you! To enter this view, make sure you click on “hours and break summary” [circled in red below].

You can see each worker’s name, total hours for the pay period and then a break down of hours on each day, with breaks taken below. There are a few tricks as well:

View Photo and edit time: By clicking on the hours worked on a given day [examples are circled in purple above], you will see all the events in that day, as shown below.

If you click on an event, you can see the photo. For example, if we click on the 5:52pm clock out above, we will see the box below. In the box below, you can see any notes the employee may have left and also make any needed edits by clicking on the arrows [circled in green below]. You can also click on the numbers [circled in blue below] to open a number pick box and prevent clicking 30 times to edit 30 minutes!

Add a break: From the hours and breaks summary view, you can also add a break on days where there is no break. To do this, click the box that says “no break” and follow the onscreen instructions.

Note that if there is already a break, but it’s not the correct duration, you can edit the start or end time of the existing break as shown above to correct the time.

View Clocked In Hours View

This view is used by people who want to see the time of the clock ins and outs. To enter this view, click on “View clocked in hours” [circled in red below].

View Photo and edit time: By clicking on any of times shown [examples are circled in purple above], it will open a box to show any notes the employee may have left and also make any needed edits by clicking on the arrows [circled in green below]. You can also click on the numbers [circled in blue below] to open a number pick box and prevent clicking 30 times to edit 30 minutes!

Meal breaks cannot be added from this view.

Time Period Lock

Time Period Lock is a feature that allows you to prevent Limited Admin users from editing of hours after the payroll has been run. This article explains how to enable and use this feature.

Feature Description:

Time Period Lock allows FULL or PARENT ADMIN to “lock” a time period so that LIMITED ADMIN cannot make edits to that period while it is locked. Parent and Full admin are able to make edits to locked periods but will get a reminder that the period is locked before any edits are saved.

Full or Parent admin can lock and unlock any time period at any time. The time periods are based on the payroll schedule configured in SYNCrew. If you have quesitons about that, please contact us at support@syncrew.com and we can help set that up properly.

Limited admin will be able to see that a period is locked in Worker Time Review and Timesheets but will not be able to change the locked status. Additionally, in places where edits can be made (work block reports, activity reports, worker profile pages, etc), the buttons to edit and/or save edits are simply removed so that they cannot be edited. An example of this in a Work Block report is shown below.

The period that contain the bottom 3 rows has been locked so Limited Admin cannot make edits. The top rows are not locked so the edit buttons remain.

Note that when using the Time Period Lock, it is very important that only payroll administrators and people who understand the implications of editing time after payroll are set up as Full or Parent Admin. Everybody else needs to be a Limited Admin.

How to enable Time Period Lock

Time Period Lock is a company-wide setting (so it cannot be enabled for a single user or team) and is disabled by default. To turn it on

Go to “Settings” in the left-navigation panel and select “Configuration”
Scroll down to the “Timesheets” section of the configuration page
Check the box next to “enable time period lock” (shown below)
Scroll all the way down to the bottom and click “save”

How to lock or unlock a period:

Once you have enabled Time Period Lock as described above, locking or unlocking a time period is done by doing the following:

Go to the Manage Menu in the left-navigation and select either Worker Time Review or Timesheets
Select the time period you wish to lock or unlock
If you are a Full or Parent admin, you will see either a green or red button appear at the right side of the screen. A green button indicates the period is unlocked and a red button indicates that the period is locked
Click the button to change the option from unlocked to locked, or locked to unlock

When time period is unlocked, the indicator is green. Click to lock the period.

When time period is locked, the indicator is red. Click to unlock the period.

A few details

As with all things, the devil is in the details so here are a few of those:

If a period is locked and events come in from a users phone, they will be discarded. As a practical example, If a person clocked out on their phone on Friday while they were out of cell coverage, then the period was locked on Sunday night. When the worker arrives on Monday and the clock out sends, it will be discarded by the system and never be seen. SYNCrew admin will attempt to preserve Progress Photos since they are not part of the timekeeping system.
Events cannot be moved into a period. If a worker was accidentally clocked in overnight and the starting day is in a locked period while the ending day is not, you will be able to edit the clock out so long as it stays outside the locked period. This will have the effect of changing the time shown in a locked period since SYNCrew puts all hours on the day of the clock in.

Skill management

Every event in SYNCrew has a “Skill” associated with it. The information below explains how to enable skills for your company first and then for each employee.

Company enabled skills

Each company must have at least one enabled and can have as many as they wish. To make skills available for your company, go to Settings in the left navigation panel and then select “update skills.” That will show you the list of all SYNCrew skills and you just need to click the box to the left of any skill you want and click “Update” to save.

SYNCrew has hundreds of skills available. You can view the list by going to “Settings” in the left navigation panel, then selecting “Update Skills.” If you need a skill that is not available in the list, please email support@syncrew.com to request a new skill and they can typically be added quickly.

Worker enabled Skills

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.

Project-Specific Skills

The worker enabled skills above can be over-ridden by location-specific skills list. To enable that, go to the project edit screen and scroll down until you see a check box next to “use location skills list”. Check that box and you will see your company’s enabled skills appear below. Select the skills you want workers to be able to select from the list and save the project settings. Once you have a location-based skills list for a project, workers will see ONLY that list of skills when they clock in there, regardless of what their own list looks like.

Skill-based Account Name

You can make the accounting name change based on the selected skill for certain projects. This is described in the “accounting name” section of the Project Settings article you can find HERE.

How employees can use Work Orders on the app

When using Work Orders to instruct your field team on what to do, they can view and close them from the field. This article explains how Workers can do this.

Closing Work Orders from the Admin Portal

Before going into that, many clients simply close It is also possible to close the work Orders from the office by clicking on the work order you want to close to view and edit the details. At the top, select “completed” from the “status” field toward the top of the screen. Then scroll down and click save. The work order will now be closed.

Closing Work Orders from the Worker app

In order to close a work order, a worker my open the work order on their phone. When they arrive a project where they have a work order assigned to them (or where there are unassigned work orders), they will see the screen below.

Clicking “open” above will open the work orders page that will show their work orders at that location. they can also see unassigned work orders by clicking on that tab below. They will see the title and summary in the list and they can touch a row to open it.

They will then see all the details of the work order. Clicking “Work on this WO” will alert the system that they are going to accept that work order and start working.

As a confirmation, they will see the work order number they working on as circled below:

When they go to change task or clock out, the system will ask if they want to close the work order (click “yes”) or leave it open (click “no”)

Once they click “yes” to close, the work order will be closed in the system.

Error 1039 in Quickbooks Web Connector

This error comes up pretty often when a client first starts using the Quickbooks Desktop integration. It is caused when the Quickbooks company file is moved from the computer where it was created. This can happen if you created your company on a desktop machine and now use it on a server or if you simply bought a new computer.

The instructions below are on Intuit’s website and while we at SYNCrew have followed them with success, we do not guarantee this since it is based on another company’s product. We also strongly recommend backing up your company file before starting this.

https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/your-books-or-my-company/fix-error-qbwc1039/00/294400#