First steps for admins

You’ve signed in for the first time as your organization’s admin. This tutorial takes you from an empty organization to people logging time. You can stop after any step and come back later.

Everything here is under Admin in the sidebar. Every change is recorded in the Audit log.

1. Company settings

   Open Admin → Company settings and go through its sections:

   • General: your company’s name, and the sign-in domains. Anyone with an account on one of them can sign in once they’re invited or have an employee record.
   • Regional: country, default currency, and time zone. Reminders go out and days start in this time zone.
   • Working time: the working week, hours per day, and the month your fiscal year starts in. Expected hours, leave days, and reminders all count from these.
   • Legal details: the registered name, address, registration number (matični broj), tax number (PIB), and who signs. They go on the leave decisions (rešenja) Sandly prints.

   Save. You can change everything later except the address, which identifies your organization.

2. Your structure

   Open Admin → Structure. First add the unit types: the levels of your company and what can sit under what, such as Division → Department → Team. Mark the ones that are part of the reporting line. A grouping such as a practice or an office is not.

   Then add the units, top level first. A unit’s lead is shown on the org chart; to let someone approve a team’s hours and leave, give them the Team lead role for that unit (step 5).

3. Leave rules

   Open Admin → Leave policies:

   • Settings: the first year Sandly tracks annual leave balances. Usually it’s this year.
   • Leave types: Sandly starts with the usual Serbian types (annual leave, sick leave, the paid leave types). Adjust their yearly limits, or add your own. A type can use the annual leave balance, need approval, need a document, or be sensitive: sick leave stores no reason, and colleagues only see “Absence”.
   • Public holidays: Serbian holidays are added for each year, Orthodox Easter included. Add or remove any your company observes differently.

4. Your people

   Add employees under People → New employee, with their unit, manager, and first contract. With more than a few, import them from a spreadsheet instead: people, then clients and projects, then last year’s unused leave days.

   An employee’s work email is their way in: they can sign in as soon as their record exists, with no invitation. Invite only people without an employee record, such as an external accountant, under Admin → Users and access → Invite user. They get an email with the link, in the language you choose; until they sign in, Resend invitation on their page sends it again.

5. Roles

   Everyone is an Employee: they log their own time and request their own leave. Give more under Admin → Users and access: open a person, then Give a role, and choose its scope:

   • HR and Finance for the whole organization;
   • Team lead for a unit (and, if you like, the units below it), to approve that team’s hours and leave;
   • an end date for a temporary grant, such as an acting lead during someone’s leave.

   Project managers need no grant: whoever manages a project is its project manager. See Roles and permissions for what each role can do.

6. Projects

   Under Projects, add your clients, then their projects, each with a manager. On a project, assign the people who work on it, with dates and allocation. People can log hours only on the projects and days they’re assigned to.

7. Tell people

   Send everyone the address. They sign in with their company account, see their projects on Timesheet, and can log their first week. At the end of each week, Sandly reminds anyone who hasn’t submitted.

Later

• HR add-on: checklist templates for joiners and leavers under Admin → Checklists, and the equipment register under Equipment. See Joiners and leavers.
• Integrations: under Admin → Integrations, Google Workspace can fill in names, departments, and managers every night, approved leave can go to Google Calendar, and a team can hear about approvals in a Google Chat space.
• People who left: in Company settings, choose how many years to keep their data before it’s anonymized.