Category: General

General information

Overview of Settings and Configurations

To get the most out of SYNCrew, it’s important to make sure it is set up to deliver everything your need and desire. This page is a summary of the various settings and configurations.

There is a huge amount of information below and while we have done our best to make it clear, some of it can be complicated and if you prefer to just ask for help, we are available at support@syncrew.com to assist!

Custom Data Fields to be filled in with the app during work: SYNCrew has some optional fields that you can enable to allow (or require) workers to fill in as they leave a project or change their skill. There are text, number and pick list fields available and they are commonly used for things like description of work, materials used, contract vs. Time and Material, but they are very flexible so let us know how you want to use them. These fields can be optional or required, in which case the worker cannot move on until they enter the required information. Click HERE to learn more.

For companies that need more than the four optional fields, you can enable forms and make a custom form, with as many data fields as you want, required. Click HERE to read more about required forms.

App configuration: Click this link to see the ways you can configure the worker’s phone application. This includes optional settings, visual tweaks like changing the text on buttons, and more. Click HERE to learn more.

Custom Data fields associated to each worker: These are optional data fields that can be enabled for companies that have data to associate with workers. There are text fields and pick lists available and they are mostly used for back-end office needs like keeping track of employee information, which yard they work out of, or other things like that. Click HERE to learn more.

Project Settings: Projects have lots of customization available to reflect the reality that no two projects are identical! Click HERE to learn about the various ways you can customize projects.

Skill settings: Every event in SYNCrew has a “Skill” associated with it. These are things like terms to describe the kind of work being done (like landscaping, stone work, cleaning, etc.). Your company will have a unique list of skills and then each person and/or project will have a sub-set of those enabled, as you configure. Click HERE to learn more about skills.

Be sure you have the right service level to meet your needs: VIEW PLANS

Overview of emailable alerts in SYNCrew

SYNCrew has many ways to automatically email information outside the system. These are summarized here. If you do not see the options where they are mentioned, it is likely that your current plan does not include them. Please contact us at support@syncrew.com for any help.

Event Alerts with Photos: SYNCrew can automatically send you an email when certain actions are taken. These are easy to set up and powerful alerts to help managers keep track of certain real-time actions without needing to look in the portal since alerts can be filtered by project, worker, skill, type of event (clock in, clock out, flagged photo, etc). These are set up in Settings –> Alert Settings –> Email Alerts.

Report Alerts: You can have a work block report or budget report emailed overnight. These can be sent daily or weekly on a specific day. These are set up in Settings –> Alert Settings –> Report Alerts.

Lunch and Overtime email alerts: These alerts are designed to help managers enforce lunch break laws and overtime policies in realtime, without needing to log into the system. The admin picks a time range where these emails will be delivered every 30 minutes in that window. Each email will show the workers currently clocked in, how long they have been working today, whether they have taken lunch, and their contact information. Managers can quickly review the email and call/text any worker who is about to enter a meal break violation or unauthorized overtime. These are set up in Settings –> Alert Settings –> Lunch and OT Alerts.

Change Request: This is a simple way for workers to request edits to their time and other things they may commonly talk to the office about. These requests generate an email with the worker’s note. Learn more by clicking HERE.

Requests for help: Workers can request help in the app. Often times the help requested is a question best answered by their manager and the email has a link to easily open that workers profile page. In the event it is a technical issue that our technical support team at SYNCrew can best address, just forward this email to support@syncrew.com. Learn more about the request for help email by clicking HERE.

How do I change my plan?

SYNCrew offers a number of plans to allow our clients to get all the features they need at a great price. Why pay for stuff you don’t use?

To see your current plan, you can go to Settings –> License Information. There you can see which features you have enabled and which are not enabled.

Once you decide which features you need, you can review our current plans at the link below. To change plans or inquire about which might be the best plan for you, just email support@syncrew.com

View Current Plans

Photo Flags

Photo flags are a way to categorize photos. When a worker takes a progress photo, they will have the option to add a flag from the list you enter here. These are used for many things but common examples are for receipts, pre-existing damage, serving notices, and things like that. Importantly, each SYNCrew client sets their own photo flags so they can be whatever YOU need!

How to enable and configure photo flags

  1. Turn on photo flags for your account
    1. Go to Settings –> Configuration in the left navigation
    2. Scroll down to “App configuration options” and look for “photo flags”
    3. click the box next to “enable”
    4. Scroll down and click “save”
  2. Set up your flags
    1. Go to Settings –> Configuration in the left navigation
    2. Scroll down to “App configuration options” and look for “photo flags”
    3. To view your current flag list: Click “click to view and search current list” and the list will pop up
    4. To add a flag: Type your flag name in the “add new flag name” field and click “add.” Repeat for each flag you wish to add. Then scroll to the bottom of the page and click “save”
    5. To remove a flag: Click “click to view and search current list” and the list will pop up. Click the flag you wish to remove adn click “remove.” Repeat for each flag you wish to remove and then scroll to the bottom of the page and click “save”

What it looks like in the app

In the app, the worker will take a progress photo as normal. When they are at the screen where they put notes in, your list of options will be available and the worker can select whichever they wish.

List of flags to choose from at left. “Receipt” flag selected at right.

How to find flags on the admin dashboard

  • Dashboard: Photos with flags will have a red box around them on the dashboard. You can also click “flagged” in the row of check boxes above the photos to view ONLY flagged photos.
  • Photos: In the photos search, there is a filter for flags and you can search whichever flag you are looking for. This filter is in addition to other filters so you can search for flagged photos by a particular worker, for example.
  • Reports –> Activity: In the Activity Report, there is a filter for Photo Flags and you can search whichever flag you are looking for. This filter is in addition to other filters so you can search for flagged photos as a particular project, for example.
  • Email alerts: Email alerts can be set up to automatically send an email anytime a photo is flagged. Depending on your service plan, you can have multiple email alerts so different photo flags can be sent to different people (internal to your company or outside clients and vendors, as appropriate). To configure email alerts, go to Settings –> Alerts –> email alerts.

View GPS Status

Workers are able to disable GPS for the SYNCrew app in their phone settings. If they do this, the app will still work and the latest GPS location that was shared with the app will be used.

There is an easy way to see if GPS has been disabled. Click “teams” in the left navigation and you will see a circle next to each person’s name.

Green means GPS is on and updating:

Red means GPS has likely been disabled:

There are cases where GPS won’t work even if the employee has it enabled. The two most common reasons (among many) are that the phone’s GPS sensors are broken or the location settings are set in a way that prevents it from getting regular updates. You can read more about this here or contact us at support@syncrew.com with questions.

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.

Teams

“Teams” are a way to group Workers together in SYNCrew and are viewed on the “teams” tab and are also filters that can be used in reports, worker time review and timesheets. Each worker MUST be on a team and all companies have a “default” team created when their SYNCrew account is created.

Different companies use teams for different reasons but here are some common reasons:

  • Manager name: Group workers by manager, where the managers name is the team name
  • Work location: For companies with different branch locations or large customer sites, the name of the brach or customer site can be set as the name
  • Work type: Some companies have different groups and they name the teams for the work type.

How to create and edit team

Creating a team is simple. Go to Settings –> Manage Teams. The following screenshot shows how to add a new team and how to edit the name of an existing team

Assigning workers to teams

Workers can be assigned to teams in two main ways:

  1. When editing a workers settings or creating a new worker, there is a place to select the team and it will update when the settings are saved.
  2. When you create or edit a team’s name as described above, you can check the box next to a name to put that person on the team. When you click “save,” all users who have a check box will be added to that team.

Assigning a manager to a team

Each team can have a manager assigned. The Manager is used to route certain alerts like time change request and in-app help request. A manager must have an admin account (limited or full admin) and then you can select them in the green box below when creating or editing the team.

Select team manager

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

  1. Select Worker Time Review from under the Manage in the left navigation panel
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

Admin access on mobile phone (in app or browser)

Admin users can use the admin portal on their phones two ways:

  1. Download the SYNCrew app from your phone’s app store and log in with your admin credentials
  2. Open your phone’s web browser and go to https://app.syncrew.com

If you have BOTH a worker and admin users with the same credentials (email and password), the app will prioritize the worker account and log you in to that. To resolve that, you can either log into the admin portal using option 2 above or use a different email address for your worker and admin accounts.

If you have any trouble with this, please contact support@syncrew.com and we can review your accounts and help you sort things out.

Sharing data between companies

Option 1: Share projects: This option is for when BOTH companies are clients of SYNCrew and lets one company see everything from the other company at shared projects only (work at non-shared projects remain private). This is often more information then either party wants, but it can be very useful depending on the project. 

To set this up, we connect two companies and then one company (usually the “General Contractor”) would “share” the project with the other (we’ll call it the “sub-contractor” here). Everything looks the same in the sub-contractor’s portal except that the projects will be “owned” by the other. The magic here is that all the info shows up in General Contractors portal just as it does in Sub-Contractors’. Specifically, the General Contractor would see:

  • When a Sub-Contractor employee clocks in, out, or takes a progress picture
  • General Contractor can run reports as they would with their regular employees
  • General Contractor can search photos and notes
  • Again, the General Contractor CANNOT see work that Sub-Contractor employees do at other projects that are not shared. The Sub-Contractor employees will basically disappear from General Contractor’s view if they do work for other clients

Option 2: Set up limited admin accounts: This requires no real setup and is typically used when a SYNCrew client wants to provide access to a client of theirs for just one or a few of their projects. To set this up, just create a Limited Admin account for the person you want to be able to see and configure that admin with the appropriate access. Limited admin accounts can be set up in many ways and you can consult this article or contact SYNCrew support for help.

Option 3: Email progress pictures taken by managers: This requires no real setup either. SYNCrew has many ways to share photos which may assist in sharing data:

  • Photos can be manually sent from the app at Change Task or Clock Out. The app user can just enter the email address then and all photos taken at the time will send
  • Rules can be set up so photos that meet certain criteria can be sent automatically to pre-specificied email addresses
  • Reports: Some reports including Work Block reports and Daily Site reports can be emailed automatically or manually (varies by report)