Managing your team

Most kennels start with one or two employees. As the team grows, you must keep records of the tasks each employee can do, the employee work times, and the pay you owe each employee.

What you need

• The Manage Employees and Schedules permission shows the Employees item in your left navigation menu.
• Some actions need their own permission: Unlock Employee Accounts, Manage Employee Facility Assignments, or Edit Employee Time Entries.
• Your plan limits the number of active employees. When you reach this limit, the system replaces the employee creation form with a notice and an Upgrade Now button. The same limit applies when you try to make an inactive employee active again. Users often do not expect this second case.

The employee list

Employees opens the staff list. The list is grouped by role. Filter it with Show Inactive, Show All Facilities, or the search box (Search by first, last name, or email).

Your team, grouped by role. The pencil icon opens an employee record. The green plus icon adds a new employee.

The Status column shows Active, Inactive, or Locked Out. If you have the Unlock Employee Accounts permission, an unlock button appears for employees who are locked out.

Adding a new employee

Click the + icon (Add New Employee). Fill in the First, Last, Phone Type, Phone, alternate phone, and Email fields. The email address is important. It is the employee's login.

Then select two roles. Both roles are necessary:

• Role — the employee's group for daily work permissions.
• Report Role — the reports the employee can see.

You can assign only the roles that your group supervises. If an expected role is not in the list, see Security & permission groups.

Click Save. Two things then happen:

• The system automatically assigns the employee to your current facility. This form does not have a facility picker. Assign the employee to other facilities later, on the employee's Facilities tab.
• If the email address does not already have a Petsoft login, the system sends a set-password email to the employee.

note

Each email address can belong to only one employee in an organization. The system rejects a duplicate email address. The system always creates a new employee as Active, regardless of the setting in the Active dropdown list.

tip

The set-password link expires after 12 hours. If the employee does not use the link within this time, the link stops working. You do not need to restart the process: set a password directly on the employee's Credentials tab, or have the employee use the standard forgot-password procedure.

Setting an employee's role

A role controls what an employee can see and change. For example, a groomer does not usually need financial reports, but a manager usually does.

Petsoft does not include pre-built roles. You create your own groups, and each group contains individual permissions. The full list of permissions, what each permission allows, and how to create a group are in Security & permission groups.

If you are not sure which permissions to select, start with the fewest permissions. You can always grant more later.

Editing an employee

An employee record has four tabs:

• General — name, phones, email, and active status.
• Roles — the employee's roles (Role / Type, where Type is Core or Reporting), and a read-only table of effective permissions: Permission, Access, and Grantor. Click the + to add a role. Every employee must keep at least one core role. You cannot remove the last core role.
• Credentials — set a User Password. This also clears the employee's failed-login count. The Multi-Factor Authentication section shows Enabled or Not Configured. Reset Authenticator removes a lost authenticator, so the employee must set up a new authenticator at the next login.
• Facilities — requires Manage Employee Facility Assignments. Select the Assigned checkbox for each facility, and select one facility as Default. You see only the facilities that you can access.

warning

Changing an employee's email address changes the employee's login. Petsoft warns you: "Updating the email address will change the employee's login email address as well as any customer records associated with the login account."

If the new email address already belongs to a customer's portal account, Petsoft offers an account merge. This merge has two steps: the employee receives a verification email and must confirm the merge while logged in under the employee's own account. You cannot reverse this merge.

For a locked-out employee, click Reset Login Attempts in the header. This clears the lockout and resets the failed-attempt counter.

Staff who work at more than one location

To assign an employee to more than one facility, use the Facilities tab: select each facility under Assigned, and select one facility as Default. The employee sees the facility switcher at login.

Facility-scoped permissions follow this assignment. This also prevents a manager at one facility from changing prices at another facility.

Building schedules

The Schedules tab, in the Employees area, shows a weekly grid with Name, Role, and one column for each day. Filter by role, date, or Show All Employees.

To edit an employee's schedule for the week, click the employee's name. Each day has Start Time, End Time, Area, and Comments.

• To remove a shift, clear both the Start Time and the End Time.
• If you fill in the Area or Comments field without both times, the system shows this error: "Time schedule must be filled out."

note

You cannot schedule an employee who is not assigned to your current facility. The page shows this message and links to the employee's facility assignments.

Schedules are not just paperwork. An employee with no schedule for the current day cannot clock in. See Time tracking.

Using the time clock

Employees clock in and out using Clock In/Out in the left navigation. This opens a modal window that requires the employee to re-authenticate at every clock-in or clock-out. For the full procedure, and how to fix a forgotten clock-out, see Time Tracking & Attendance.

Paying your team

Open Reports and run the Payroll report — "Shows hours scheduled and hours worked by all employees for the given date range." Select a date range. The report lists every employee with both numbers, so you can compare the scheduled hours and the worked hours.

This report does not issue payments. It gives you the numbers for your payroll service or accountant.

note

If you cannot see the Payroll report, your Report Role does not include it.

What if someone leaves?

Deactivate the employee instead of deleting the record: open the employee's record, set Active to Inactive, and save. The employee's past time entries and reservations stay in the system, and the employee can no longer log in.

If the employee returns, set the employee to Active again, unless your organization has reached its plan's employee limit. In that case, Petsoft blocks the reactivation and offers Upgrade Now. Deactivate an employee who leaves as soon as possible. This keeps an employee slot available under your plan's limit.

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New employee setup checklist

Step	Task
1	Add the name, email, and phone number. Select the Role and Report Role.
2	Assign the employee to other facilities on the Facilities tab (if the employee works at more than one location)
3	Build the employee's first weekly schedule. Without a schedule, the employee cannot clock in.
4	Make sure that the employee uses the set-password email within 12 hours
5	Show the employee how to clock in and out
6	Verify the employee's time entry on the first day

Active vs inactive employee

	Active	Inactive
Can log in	Yes	No
Appears on schedule	Yes	No
Past time entries	Visible	Preserved
Past reservations	Visible	Preserved
Payroll history	Accessible	Accessible
Counts against your plan's employee limit	Yes	No