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 we suggest you get together a list of all your staff, staff codes (if required), email addresses, leave entitlement and your company's departments (Departments may not be relevant to your company however WhosOff requires at least one) .
First, log in to WhosOff using your Username and Password , you must be a 'Super User' to manage any settings within the system (if you were the person who registered WhosOff then you are a Super User).
In the menu bar, hover over the Administration tab to view the Administration dropdown.
Step 1 - Adding Departments
- On the right hand side of the Administration dropdown, click on Departments. This will take you to the manage departments interface.
- On the right hand side of the screen of your screen there is a section titled New Department.
- Under Department Name, select the text area and enter your department name, for example Sales.
- Confirm the input by pressing Add Department.
Your department has been added to the list .
It is not compulsory to add more departments (however the system needs at least one Department).
Step 2 - Setting up Bank/Public Holidays
If your staff do not work bank holidays, you may want to consider using Free Days as these are days which are not taken from the staff members allowance when the staff member requests leave.
For example, if they book leave from Monday to Friday and the Monday is a bank holiday, 4 days will be deducted from their allowance instead of 5.
To add Free Days;
- On the right hand side of the Administration dropdown, click on Free / Restricted Days.
- On the right hand side click the Import Public Holidays tab
- Select the relevant Country
- Then choose whether these will apply to All Departments or only Selected Departments (and if choosing Selected Departments, tick the boxes for each included department).
- Below will appear a list of all public holidays within the chosen country, click Add Date in line with each appropriate one.
A Free Day will then be added to the list and also show on the WhosOff calendar page as a grey ‘F’.
You can also use the Add option on the right to enter any individual public holidays that don’t appear in the import tool.
Step 3 - Adding Staff - (Having done all the above, this next step will be very quick)
Now that you have set up the structure of your account, you can add your staff.
You can use the individual Add Staff tab for new starters, but when setting up the account we recommend using the Bulk Import Staff spreadsheet.
To download the spreadsheet, click Bulk Import Staff on the left side of the Administration dropdown.
- Click the available here link to download the Excel spreadsheet.
- Fill in the spreadsheet - all columns are required except for Staff code and Title. Do not change or add any column titles.
- Once the spreadsheet is complete, return to WhosOff and at the bottom of the Bulk Import Staff page, click Choose file and upload your spreadsheet.
- You can check the import has no errors on the right hand side.
- If you wish to set up more information before inviting staff to use the system (for example entering leave they have already booked or taken), do not tick Send Welcome Message.
- Then click Import Staff.
When creating the staff record, you can keep the password very basic as there are tools to send staff welcome messages and force them to change their password at a later date. For more information on rolling out WhosOff to your staff, see our knowledgebase article.