Table of Contents
Purpose
In order for your employees to be able to perform actions in your Aspire system, you will need to create a Contact Record and User account for them. For Crew Members that would log in with a pin on their Crew Leaders’ device, they would only need a Contact Record.
Most employees require the following to be able to log in to Aspire:
A contact record
A user record
Here’s a chart to explain what an employee will need:
Crew Member | Other Employees (Including Crew Leader) |
|
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This article discusses the different ways to set up your employees, including Crew Leaders and Crew Members!
Requirements
✅You must have either System Admin or Branch Admin added to your role with Enhance Branch Admin Security enabled for your system to access Administration for user management and creation.
✅To create contact records, you’ll need Add Contact added to your user role.
✅To edit Contact Records after they are created, you’ll need either Edit My Contacts or Edit All Contacts added to your user role.
✅To create Crew Leaders without System Admin permission added to your user role, you can assign Add Crew Leader Contact to your user role.
✅To view and edit Payroll information on Employee Contact Records you’ll need HR Admin and either Edit All Contacts or Edit My Contacts added to your user role.
✅ To be able to edit User Roles and add permissions, you'll need Manage User Roles added.
Creating an Employee Contact Record
🧠It’s a good idea to check that a contact has not already been created for the user you want to create! This can be done by going to the Contacts module and searching for their name.
Employee Contact Records are good for your staff working both in and out of the office.
These records host contact information, payroll information, and branch location information.
To create an Employee Contact Record, follow the steps below:
Hover over the Quick Menu and press New Contact.
You will be brought to the New Contact screen.
Fill in the employee’s First Name, Last Name, and Title.
Pick Employee for Contact Type.
Fill in the employee’s work email address.
📌 Note: The email address does not have to be an active or real email account. The email address will be used as a username to log into Aspire. Employees that need to sync their email addresses with Aspire for email and calendar purposes will need to use their real email address.
📑More on syncing email and calendar to Aspire, here.
Pick the employee’s branch.
This is different from Branch Access that a user will have, which you will select later.
Enter in the employee’s Primary Address, Office Phone, and Mobile Phone.
Enter in any other necessary information required for your employee records.
Once you’ve finished entering information in these fields, click the three dot menu in the top right and select Create User.
If creating a Crew Member contact, click Save on the Contact record instead. You will skip to the Reviewing Employee Related Contact Fields section.
Creating a User Account for Your Employee
Employees that will need to log time, schedule jobs, estimate for bids, and keep track of data inside of your system would be the type of person that would require a User Account.
This includes Crew Leaders, who will need access to logging time and possibly their crews in the field that use Aspire Mobile.
Crew Members do not need to have a User Account You can assign them a Pin on their Contact Record so they can log time and use Aspire Mobile on their Crew Leader’s device.
A user account is built off of an Employee Contact Record.
You can create a User Account by navigating to the three dot menu on your employee’s contact record and select Create User.
Once you select Create User on your employee’s Contact Record, the contact record will automatically save and the user record will be displayed.
Next, you will add more details in order for your employee to get a User Account created!
Enter in a PIN and Password.
This is what your employee would use to log into Aspire in addition to the email address that was added to their Contact Record.
📌Note: The PIN must be unique to the employee; using the same pin for multiple users will cause Clock In and Time Entry issues in weekly time review and in Aspire’s mobile apps.
🧠The PIN and password can be the same and it can have letters and numbers!
🧠There is not a minimum number of required characters for these fields.
Aspire recommends using a naming convention for PINs and passwords for your team.
Some common used naming conventions include:
The employee’s ID Number.
Using the first two letters of their first name and first four letters of the employee’s last name.
Tom Smith’s pin would be tosmit for access to Aspire.
Select the All Branch Access checkbox or select the branches the employee needs access to from the dropdown menu.
Additional information about Branch Access in another section of this article.
Add any attachments, if needed.
📌 Note: If attachments like driver’s licenses are attached, then anyone with access to view the user record can view the attachment.
Select the Role the user will have. Setting a role defines the employee’s system access.
To learn about Crew Leader specific roles, read the next section.
📑To learn more about User Roles and Permissions, read here!
Adding the Crew Leader User Role to an Employee Contact Record
If your employee needs to record time and manage their Crews, Equipment and Materials on Aspire Mobile, then you will need to assign them a role that has Crew Leader assigned to it.
Typically, this is the default role of Crew Leader that comes with your Aspire system, but you can assign this permission to any role you see fit.
📑To learn more about Default Roles in Aspire, read this article.
Then, you could add the role with this permission to your Employee Contact Record:
Press Save in the upper right to finish creating the User Record for your employee! This will take you back into the new Employee Contact Record.
Now, you will see new fields appear that relate to payroll, certifications, incidents, and more:
Reviewing Employee Related Contact Record Fields
Now that your employee contact record has been created, you can see that there are Payroll related sections added to their record. This will appear for all employee related Contact Records:
Scroll down to find the Payroll section of the new Employee contact.
Pick the Employee’s Pay Schedule.
Pay Schedule is setup in Administration ➡️ Application ➡️ Lists ➡️ Pay Schedule
Default Workers Comp Code appears for your payroll integration with Aspire. Default Workers Comp Code can be set here at the employee level for use when exporting employee time from Aspire.
Enter the Employee Number from your company’s payroll system or internal records.
The Employee's PIN will show based on what was entered on the user record.
💡 If you are creating a Crew Member, you can set their pin here; this is what will allow them to log in on a mobile device for Aspire Mobile.
You can set a pay rate for your employee in the Pay Rates section, click on the blue New button.
Enter in the employee’s Effective Date, Base Rate, and Burden %. The Hourly Cost will be calculated automatically.
📌 Note: Effective Date should be the Sunday before the start of the work week for a new hire.
You can also add Certifications or Employee Incidents by clicking the blue New button.
Select Save to complete the contact information.
More Information on Branch Assignment vs. User Branch Access
Branch Assignments on Contact Records
When you assign a Branch to a contact, this means you are associating the contact’s details with that branch. This further helps Filter and Display information by Branch throughout Aspire’s modules. You can assign branches for both users and non user contact records.
📌 Note: Not only do Branch assignments have an impact when adding to Contacts, but the branch field assignment in other drop downs of Aspire affects visibility for Properties, Items on Estimates, and much more.
Below, we will explain a scenario that includes branch drop downs and their options when managing routes. 👇
Under Manage Route there is a Manager field to be entered with an employee contact name. This field is driven from the branch assigned on the contact record, not the branch access on the user details screen.
In this example, Camille’s Route is from the Main branch. When selecting a Manager for this route, this drop down will only provide managers that have contact records assigned to the Main branch.
Assigning a branch to a user related contact does not have impact on what that contact has access to inside of Aspire; this setting is more for visibility across modules of Aspire.
If you are looking to assign branch related access, use the Branch Access features on the User Details screen.
Understanding User Branch Access
The branches a user is given access to will determine module details they can view and interact with across the system.
User branch assignments impact security, visibility, and workflows in Aspire. Understanding this relationship allows properly structuring branch access for employees to maximize control!
In the example below, we have assigned account manager James, Main branch access. This is the only branch he needs access to, so we have limited his access to view Main branch data, only:
When you are working with a contact record of your employees, when you assign Branch Access, this controls a number of things.
Depending on the user role, it can control:
Viewing branch related contact information of your clients.
Invoicing branch related contacts.
Accessing branch related opportunities or properties.
Editability of branch related information by the user.
📑 Viewing Opportunities and Properties data can be further limited or available with additional user role permissions. To learn about those additional features, please read this article.
For Admin related contacts, branch access is especially powerful. Branch access also defines what content your admin can see in their Aspire account when working in Administration.
If you had Administrators like a Branch Admin that manages more than one branch, Super Admin or a System Admin, you could even assign All Branch access, which grants them visibility in Aspire of all data, regardless of Branch.
Branch access combined with other admin related user role permissions can control things like:
Access to HR and payroll related information,
Approval of time reporting for employees assigned to the branch,
Altering User Role settings and their capabilities specific to branch and branch data.
Budget visibility and more.
📑To learn more about user role permissions, please read this article.
📑To learn more about Branch Administrator visibility, read this article.