Onboarding guide

This guide walks a new organization through setting up Flowtly in the order that works best: each step relies on the one before it. Each step links to the article that covers it in full. The second half lists the questions that come up most often in the first weeks, for administrators and for the people they invite, such as an external accountant.

During a trial, a Get set up checklist sits in the bottom-right corner of the workspace with the first three things to do: Add a client, Create a project and Invite a teammate. The steps below cover those and what comes around them.

Step 1: Organization settings

Start under Settings → Administration → Organization. Set the Company default currency, the interface and legal language, the date and amount formats, the working days and the company logo. These apply to everyone in the organization, so settle them before anyone else starts entering data. See Organization settings.

Then open Settings → Finance & Business → Invoicing settings and fill in the billing data your customers will see on invoices: company name, address and tax identification number. The Invoice name format sets how invoices are numbered, and the payment due days set the default payment term. See Invoicing settings.

If your organization wants every member to use a second sign-in factor, switch on Require multi-factor authentication under Settings → Administration → Security now, before you invite anyone. Nobody is locked out by it: people who have not set up an authenticator yet are taken through setup when they sign in. See Security settings.

Step 2: Users and permission groups

Decide who should see and do what before you invite people. Create Permission groups under Settings → People → Permission groups, one per role in your company, such as "Project manager" or "Accountant". A change to a group applies to everyone in it at once, which is easier to keep right than per-person permissions. See Permission groups and Permissions.

Then add your people under People → Team members with Add team member, and use Invite on the list to give each of them sign-in access. The invitation goes to the company email address on their profile. See Invite your team and Creating a New Employee.

People who approve things need their role before the first request arrives. Leave approvers are set under Settings → People → Time off approvers, and invoice approvers under Settings → Finance & Business → Invoice approvers. See Invoice approvers.

Step 3: Clients and projects

Add your customers under Clients with Add client. Set each client's country and currency carefully: rates and invoices for that client's projects use the client's currency. See Clients.

Then create projects under Projects with Add project, choose the project type, link the client, and use Attach team members to add the people who will work on it. See Adding a New Project.

Step 4: Rates

For time and material work, give each person an hourly rate on each project they bill. Open the person's profile, go to the Rates tab and choose Add rate. A rate can only be added for an active project that has a client, and its currency is the client's currency. When a rate changes, extend it from a date rather than editing it, so earlier hours keep the price they were worked at. See Rates.

Default prices tied to attributes, such as seniority, are set under Settings → Advanced → Billing rates. See Billing rates.

Step 5: Time tracking

People log their hours under Work Time, against the projects they are attached to. Under Settings → People → Timesheets you can require a minimum description length for each entry, which keeps entries useful on invoices. Time tracking can be switched off for people who do not log hours. See Time Tracking, Timesheets and Time Tracking Settings.

At the end of a month, a project's hours can be signed off before they are invoiced. See Monthly project sign-off.

Step 6: Invoicing

Every invoice needs a bank account and a client, so add your company bank account under Settings → Finance & Business → Banks before the first invoice. Then create invoices under Invoices, by hand or from the hours logged in Work Time. See Invoice List and Creation.

For supplier invoices, decide who approves them. Under Settings → Finance & Business → Invoice approvers, switch on the Invoice approval workflow and use Grant role for each person who should approve. Invoices can also be routed to the owner of a tag in one of your Invoice tag groups, such as a cost type. See Invoice approval workflow.

Step 7: Integrations

Connect the systems you already use last, once the data they exchange with Flowtly has somewhere to go: bank accounts, KSeF e-invoicing, exports for your accounting software and Google Calendar. See Integrations, Bank Integration, E-Invoicing and Accountancy exports.

Common pitfalls

Signing in with a different address than the one invited

An invitation belongs to the exact email address it was sent to. If you already have a Flowtly account under another address, for example a private mailbox, the organization that invited your work address does not appear when you sign in with the private one. Sign in with the address the invitation names. If your account should stay on another address, ask the administrator to invite that address instead.

Administrators: before you invite an external person such as an accountant, ask which address they sign in to Flowtly with.

Accepting an invitation when you already have an account

An invitation to an address that already has a Flowtly account does not create a second account. Sign in, open the account menu, choose Change organization and then See all organizations. On the Choose organization page the invitation waits under Pending invitations. Choose Accept, and the organization joins your list. See Working with multiple organizations.

An approver who has not accepted their invitation

Someone who holds the leave approver or invoice approver role but has never accepted their invitation cannot approve anything. Flowtly warns about this on the approver settings and on the invoice. Make sure each approver has signed in at least once before you rely on them.

Setting up an authenticator app

When your organization requires multi-factor authentication, the sign-in screen asks you to set up an authenticator app the first time:

Install an authenticator app on your phone, such as Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator.
Scan the QR code on the screen with the app, or type the Secret into the app by hand.
Enter the 6-digit code the app shows.
Tick Trust this device if you do not want to be asked again in this browser for 30 days.
Choose Verify and enable, then save your Recovery codes.

Never send the QR code, the secret or a recovery code to anyone, including Flowtly support. Anyone who has them can produce your sign-in codes. If you share a screenshot of this screen, cover them first. See Multi-factor authentication.

If signing in stops with an error before the setup screen appears, contact support as described below.

Choosing Sign in with Google and signing in with your email address and password reach the same account, as long as the address is the same. Google sign-in only works for an address that already has a Flowtly account or has been invited. If you never set a password, use Forgot your password? on the sign-in screen to set one. See Signing in.

Resetting a password

Choose Forgot your password? on the sign-in screen and enter the address your account uses. Flowtly emails a time-limited link to set a new password. If your organization enforces single sign-on, passwords cannot be reset in Flowtly; sign in through your company's provider.

Send a message with:

The email address you are signing in with.
How you sign in: password, Google, or your company's single sign-on.
The exact time of the attempt, with your time zone.
A screenshot of the whole browser window, with the address bar visible.

Do not include your password, a QR code, an authenticator secret or a recovery code.

Setting up KSeF

The KSeF token you paste into the e-invoicing settings needs both the InvoiceRead and InvoiceWrite permissions. A token without them is refused with a message naming what is missing; generate a new one in KSeF and paste it again.

Handing data to your accountant

Before relying on a regular export to your accounting software, export one month and ask your accountant to import it as a test. Problems with categories, registers or counterparties show up there, before they reach your books.

Example use cases

A small services company setting up its workspace in one afternoon, from organization settings through to its first invoice.
An administrator preparing permission groups and approvers before inviting the whole team, so nobody signs in to an empty or wrong view.
An external accountant joining an organization with an existing Flowtly account, and setting up the authenticator app the organization requires.