The three setup steps

What each of the three screens after your first sign-in asks for, and why it matters.

The first time you sign in, HoursEasy walks you through three short steps before it lets you into the app proper. Only the last two — your first project and inviting your staff — can be skipped; each step is exactly what your organisation needs before it can do the thing you bought it for. Here is what each step asks, and why.

The video walks through the first-run setup, from your week to your first invitation.

Step 1: When does your week start?

Confirms the timezone the sign-up form guessed, and asks for your pay period. Every day and week boundary in the product is computed in your timezone, so getting it wrong puts an early-morning start on the wrong day — and in the wrong pay period. You can change both later from Business settings, but changing the pay period there moves which weeks your staff's phones keep on hand for working offline, so treat it as a correction, not something to experiment with.

Check Timezone — it is a guess from your browser, so confirm it rather than trust it.
Choose Pay period: weekly or fortnightly.
Give The period starts on a real date a pay period actually started on.

Step 2: Your first client and project

Creates a client, a project and the project's rate table in one form, and names your roles while it does. This is the step that lets the application do anything at all. Hourly rates are optional here and can be added later.

Every organisation starts with one role, Field worker. Roles are what a project's rates are set against and what prints on the works summary a client receives, so leaving the placeholder means every rate line on every project reads "Field worker" on a document a client sees.

Fill in Client and Project.
Leave Project number blank to take the next in your own sequence, or type over it if the client issues their own.
Under Who you charge out, and at what rate, rename Field worker to what your staff actually are — Field Surveyor, Plant Operator — and use the empty rows for any other roles. Each row is one role and its hourly rate on this project.
Name every role you charge for, even the ones you will price later. A rate is optional: leave it blank and add it later.

A role needs a name, not a rate. Every hour your staff record carries its role, so a rate you add later prices the hours already recorded. Your staff can start recording straight away; what waits for rates is invoicing, because an unpriced role blocks sending the invoice, not the recording. If you would rather come back to it, press Do this later and you go Home. More on pricing a project, and what an unpriced line blocks, in a project's rate table.

Step 3: Invite your staff

Sends a sign-in link to everybody you list.

List addresses under Email addresses, one per line — either just the address, or Sam Bowles <sam@example.com> to set their name at the same time.
Choose Their role for everyone on this list.

Every invitation starts out using a seat, not a login — see seats and what you pay for. Paste in more people than your plan allows and the invitations already sent stay sent — you are told to change plan on the billing screen, then add whoever is left from Staff. More on resending a lost link and what the Access column means is in inviting people.

Still stuck? Email hello@hourseasy.com. All help articles