Setting up your WhosOff account

Setting up your WhosOff account may seem a little bit of a daunting task, don't worry it's quick and easy, in fact it will only take a few minutes!

Before you start entering information into your WhosOff account, we strongly recommend gathering together a list of all of your staff members including their;

• Staff Codes (if required)
• Email Address
• Who their Approver is 
• and their Leave Entitlement (for This Year and Next Year)

Firstly, login to your WhosOff account using the Username and Password. Whilst the below steps will be covered during this article, you do not necessarily need to complete all of them, as each company's requirement will be different.

SETTING UP COMPANY DEPARTMENTS

• Click on Administration on the Left Hand menu
• Then click on Departments
• On the right hand side of the page, use the New Department option to enter the name of the department you wish to create.
• After clicking Add, you can continue to add Departments onto your account where necessary*.

*It is not mandatory to setup multiple departments, but WhosOff requires at least 1 department.

Departments can also be used for Grouping staff together who share the same public holidays (as Public Holidays - Free Days - are applied to Departments). For example, if you have a Sales team that spans across multiple countries such as UK, France and USA, you might setup your Sales departments as "Sales UK", "Sales France" and "Sales USA". 

IMPORTING PUBLIC HOLIDAYS

Another important step in WhosOff is to ensure that your Public Holidays are managed appropriately. Normally, Public Holidays are setup using our Free Days option. This ensures that if staff members book Holiday where a Public Holiday falls, no allowance will be deducted for that day.

For example - if a staff member works Mon - Fri and books a week off, the system will deduct 5 days from their Remaining Allowance, however if the Monday is a Free Day (Public Holiday), the system will only deduct 4 days instead. 

Of course we do appreciate that Public Holidays can be managed in different ways, so if you want a little help in getting the setup right for your business, contact one of our support team and we'll be happy to help.

• Click on Administration on the Left Hand menu
• Click on Free/Restricted Days
• Then click on Import Public Holidays at the top right

The tool on the resulting page will allow you to select which Country you would like to import the public holidays for, you can then choose which Selected Departments (or All Departments) you would like to apply the public holidays to (this may be determined by how you have set up your company departments).

Once you've determined which Public Holidays apply to your company / department(s) by using the check box in line with each date, you can click on Import Selected, the system will then inform you how many of the selected Public Holidays have been successfully imported.

This process can be repeated as many times as required, for each individual country that you are looking to manage on WhosOff.

Please note that the list of available Public Holidays will be updated automatically year on year, but Free Days (Public Holidays) are still required to be imported by you.  

Once Free Days have been added onto your WhosOff account, they will appear as an F on the WhosOff calendar - the colour of this indicator can also be adjusted via your account's Company Settings.  

SETTING UP YOUR LEAVE TYPES

You can track and manage as many different types of leave as you need to within WhosOff and there are multiple customisation options available on each leave type such as being able to book certain types of leave by the hour, and others based on your staff member's allowance type (days or hours). 

• Click on Administration on the Left Hand menu
• Click on Leave Types
• On the resulting page, you will see a list of default leave types to get you started (plus any you may have added during the initial setup process); 
  • Dentist / Doctors
  • Holiday / Vacation
  • Meeting
  • Out of Office
  • Sick Leave
  • Un-Paid Leave

These can be Edited / Deleted (if no leave has been booked against them) or added to at any time.

To add new leave types click on Add Leave Type. You can then begin to enter details of the new leave type, there are multiple options that can help you manage absence better. These include the following;

Details 

• Name - Enter the name of the leave type
• Code - Enter a 1 or 2 Character code of how the leave type will be shown on the WhosOff calendar i.e. Holiday might be shown as H
• Colour - Choose a colour that best represents this leave type
• Status - This allows you to ensure that only the most relevant leave types are currently being managed in WhosOff
  • Active - Means that it can actively be used in WhosOff
  • Deactivated - Means it can no longer be booked, but can be reported on
• Confirmation Message - Each time a leave request is submitted in the system, you can choose a specific message to be displayed back to the staff member

Permissions

• Requires Approval - Choose whether the leave type requires approval or not
• Deduct Allowance Time? - Choose whether this leave type deducts from staff allowances or not
• Can this leave type only be used to book hours? - This allows staff to request the leave type in Hours only, useful for things like Doctors appointments. This is only available for leave types that do not deduct allowance time
• Max. Consecutive Days (or Hours, depending on the above setting) - How much time off can be requested in a single booking
• Notes required on request? - Are leave request notes required to be provided on leave requests
• Notes Visible To - Who can see Notes entered on leave requests in the system (based on User Level) 
• Available To - Who can request this leave type (based on User Level)
• Seen By - Who can see this leave type in the system (based on User Level) 

 Regardless of the above permissions, staff will always see their own leave and notes via the My Leave section.

RESTRICTION & LEVELS

• Notice Period - This can allow you to request that staff provide a certain number of days notice when booking time off, you can also set this as a negative value to allow staff to backdate their own leave
• Cancellation Period - This can allow you to prevent staff from cancelling leave that occurs within a certain number of days of today's date.
• Include for Department Staffing Levels - Choose Yes if you would like this leave type to consider any minimum department levels that have been set up before allowing a leave request to be submitted

IMPORTING YOUR STAFF MEMBERS

Once you've created the above information, you are now ready to begin adding your staff members into the system. To help with this, you can download the Bulk Import spreadsheet which will allow you to add multiple staff members at the same time.

• Click on Administration on the Left Hand menu
• Then go to Admin Dashboard within the Administration section
• Click on Import Staff
• On the resulting page there are 3 steps to go through:

Step 1 - Download Template - From here you can download the template import spreadsheet (in .XLSX format)

It is important not to change the format of this spreadsheet, or add / remove any columns.

Step 2 - Enter your staff data - On the spreadsheet there are multiple fields of information that can be populated, not all of this information is mandatory but could be useful for tracking withing WhosOff.

• Staff Code - Whilst you don't have to enter one, this could be used for their employee number as it shows up on Reports
• Title - i.e. Mr/Mrs/Miss/Dr etc. (Not Mandatory)
• First Name
• Last Name
• Email Address - This becomes the user's Username, and any notifications sent out of the system will be emailed to this address
• Password - At least 8 characters long, can be generic as a Welcome Message can be sent out later
• Department - Must match one of the Departments already on your account
• Approver - The First and Last name of the user's approver
• User Type - Depicts the user's permissions on the system
• Allowance type - Either Days or Hours
• This Year - Opening - Enter the amount of leave entitlement the staff member was entitled to at the beginning of this year
• This Year - Remaining - Enter the staff member's current amount of leave entitlement, if you are starting the year fresh on WhosOff, enter the same as the Opening Balance (This Year)
• Next Year - Opening - Enter the staff member's opening balance for Next Year
• Next Year - Remaining - Enter the staff member's remaining balance for Next Year (commonly the same as the Opening balance, as any already booked leave can be resubmitted)

Please note that Opening and Remaining allowances do not need to be entered on the import spreadsheet and can be easily added later on.

Step 3 - Upload your file -  Once you've completed the bulk import spreadsheet, you can return to your WhosOff account and click on Choose File, this will allow you to select the specific spreadsheet you have worked on.

Once you've completed steps 1, through to 3, you can click on Prepare Upload. You will then see a preview of the information entered on the spreadsheet, along with indications as to whether required information as been entered i.e. their Department, Approver and Allowances.

This offers you the opportunity to go back and make any changes before you import your staff. Once you are ready you can click on Import Staff.

You will then see a breakdown of any successfully imported users, as well as if any weren't able to be imported. Hovering over the Green or Red indicators will provide further information as to why they were not imported.

Finally you will get the opportunity to send all the imported users a Welcome Message, this will provide them with their Username, a link to login to WhosOff as well as their Password which upon logging in, they will have the option to change it to a more memorable password. 

GETTING THE ACCOUNT READY FOR USE

Once you've completed all of the above steps, you will be nearly ready to start sending out welcome messages and letting your staff have access to the system to book and manage their own time off. Before you do this, you might want to consider.... 

1. Submitting any already booked time off - Sometimes it's best for companies to update their staff members' leave records with any already planned/taken leave requests. This allows the system to paint a full picture of exactly what's going on and when. This can be submitted on their behalf via Record Leave (ADMIN ONLY), under the Quick access.
2. You might also want to pre-book any company holidays that apply to staff, some that might be mandatory days out of their leave balances i.e. Christmas Shutdown periods. Our Bulk Book Leave tool found via Administration will help you with this.

Within WhosOff there are a number of other useful features that can be used to help manage staff absence, such as Calendar Feeds (Internet Calendar Subscriptions), Staff to Staff restrictions and maybe even Overtime to accurately record any accrued Lieu Days. Not all of these features have to be used, but there are informative help articles on each area to make sure you know exactly how to set these things up. 

SENDING OUT YOUR STAFF LOGIN DETAILS

Now you have setup your WhosOff account, you will need to send your staff members their login credentials. The easiest way to do this in WhosOff is by sending them a welcome message, as the system then generates and sends them a temporary password. This will prompt them to change their password upon their first login, ensuring their details are kept unique and secure.

• Login to your WhosOff account
• Click on Administration on the Left Hand menu
• From the administration section click on Admin Dashboard
• Then on the resulting page, click Set/Send Emails
• From here, you will have a Prepare Settings option which will allow you to make the relevant selections for sending out welcom messages by Department;
  • Who is it for? - A Department
  • Which Department? - Administration
  • What action would you like to perform? - Send Welcome Message
  • Then click on Check Details

You will then see a list of all staff within the chosen department. This will allow you to make sure that the visible staff are correct before you send out the welcome messages, ensuring you have enough opportunity to make any changes where necessary

When you are ready click on Confirm Send and confirm the on screen dialogue message.

You can also send Welcome Messages individually, for more information on this you can visit our knowledgebase article.

Once the Welcome Message has been sent to each staff member, you can also let them know about the FREE to download iOS and Android mobile applications which work perfectly as companion apps to the main system. 

These mobile applications are available to download via the respective iOS and Android app stores.