Managing LMN Users and Staff: A Guide

This article will provide you with a comprehensive guide to creating users, user permissions and more, all  relating to your Staff in LMN.

 

Understanding LMN’s User Types

Click Here to Watch a step by step LMN Academy Video to understand users and permissions

Within the Manage Users & Staff Settings screen, a new or existing user can be classified (via the ‘User Type’ dropdown) as one of two types of users. Each User Type consumes a different type of seat under your LMN subscription plan – check your Subscription Settings page if you need to check how many seats are available for each type. 

Office Staff / Crew Lead

There are two types of staff members who would be an appropriate fit for this user type:

  • Crew Leads who need to be able to log time/resource usage, track other crew members/leads, and submit timesheets for approval on behalf of their crews.
  • Office Staff – such as administrators, estimators, and operations managers – who need access to LMN web-app functions like Estimating or Scheduling.

You can control an office staff / crew lead user’s access to different parts of the LMN system using the ‘Permissions’ tab (see below section 'Permission Options for an Office Staff/Crew Lead User').

The Edit view will also have a Goals tab that can be opened to set Efficiency Goals and Revenue Goals for that individual. (This panel is exclusive to this user type, and will not show if the user is a Crew Member.)

Keep in mind that any user of this type will also be able to access the LMN Crew app. You may, however, control the level of access they have to job histories (either their own or the histories of other employees’ jobs).

Crew Member

The Crew Member user type is suitable for those staff members who are in the field performing work, but are not responsible for tracking time/resources or working with crew timesheets.

You can use the ‘Crew App Permissions’ panel to:

  • Enable or disable a Crew Member’s ability to log into the Crew app.
  • Configure a Crew Member’s level of access to job history information (you may permit them to access the history for others’ jobs, only the ones they worked on, or none).

When a Crew Member logs into the Crew app, they will be able to view schedule and job information as read-only. This means that a Crew Member will not be able to perform tasks such as punching in/out, recording resource usage, tracking other crew members/leads, uploading photos, or editing/submitting timesheets.

You will notice that, as is the case for Office Staff/Crew Lead users, the Time Tracking & Payroll settings are available to tweak for Crew Members regardless of whether or not they have Crew App access. Regularly keeping these fields up-to-date for each user will help ensure that the work of all your frontline team members is captured accurately in your job costing and accounting:

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Permission Options for an 'Office Staff/Crew Lead' User

Most companies will need to add more than one user to their LMN account.  Estimators, office managers, bookkeepers/accountants, and sales people will need access to make their jobs more efficient. 

However, you'll likely want to protect/secure sensitive information (particularly budgeting information) from some users.  

This guide will show you how to add a new user to LMN, and how to configure their access rights so that they can only use specific areas of the application.

Once the user has been created, click the Permissions tab to setup access rights:

  • Security Admin 
    • with Full Access, users will be able to create new users and change any users' security permissions.  Security Admins should only be granted to users who have permission to view and edit all LMN data.
  • Settings Admin
    • With Full Access, user will be able to view and change different settings. 
  • Budgeting
    • Company Administrator - these users can view/edit all company budgets, even other users'
    • Default - these users can only view/edit their own budgets.  This is useful when you want to teach an estimator about budgeting, but you don't want them to view financial details of the company's actual budget
    • No access - users will not be able to view or edit any budgets, but they will be able to use budgets for estimates
  • Estimating
    • Company Administrator - these users can view/edit all company estimates, even other users'
    • Default - these users can only view/edit their own estimates, or estimates assigned to them.
    • No access - users will not be able to view or edit any estimates
  • CRM
    • Full access - these users can add new leads and clients and can edit any lead/client information
    • No access - users will not have access to edit lead/contact information
    • Users who have access to estimating must have access to CRM
  • Price list:
    • Full access - these users can add/edit the cost and price database 
    • No access - users will not have access to edit the cost and price database
    • Note: we recommend anyone with permission to estimates have full access to the estimating catalog
  • Forms Library
    • Full access - these users can download any of the 700 forms, policies and procedures in the systems library
    • No access - users will not have access to the forms and documents in the systems library
  • Taxes
    • Full access - these users can add and edit sales tax information
    • No access - users will not be able to add/edit sales tax information
  • Accounting
    • Full access - these users will be able to sync estimates and payroll information to QuickBooks
    • No access - users will not be able to sync estimates and payroll information to QuickBooks
    • LMN strongly recommends you give only a select few users, such as the bookkeeper, access to Accounting so that your accounting data stays clean and organized
  • Timesheet Approval
    • Full access
    • No access
  • Timesheet Approval
    • Full access
    • No access
  • Scheduling
    • Full access
    • No access
  • Add/Edit Jobs

    • Full access - user will have access to add jobs to the LMN system, or edit jobs in the Job List

    • No access

  • Add & Manage Staff

    • Full access

    • No access
    • Full access & wage costs - user will have the ability to view and make changes to another user's Wage Costs tab.
  • Reports

    • Full access

    • No access

Note:  Only some users can add and edit new users.  User Setup is ONLY available to users where the Security Admin permission is set to true.  Note that users with Security Admin permission have access to all areas of the application and can control who else has access to the application - so be careful when assigning security admins.

Assigning Goals to an Office Staff/Crew Lead User

When you navigate to the Goals tab of an Edit User modal, you'll see two types of goals that can be set: a single Efficiency Goal, or multiple Revenue Goals (for different years):

The Efficiency Goal is available for all Office Staff/Crew Lead type users, but it is intended for Crew Leads overseeing field work. This percentage shown represents the Efficiency Score — a percentage that indicates how much of the work they performed was billable (or productive) — that a Crew Lead will be expected to meet or exceed when they go about a day's work.

When reviewing any timesheet that a Crew Lead has submitted for a crew they were leading, you can see their actual Efficiency Score for the day and contrast it against the Efficiency Goal of whichever Crew Lead is shown on the timesheet.

Connecting LMN Users to Greenius Employees

Click Here to Watch a step by step LMN Academy Video to sync Greenius to LMN and give ALL users access to their Greenius Courses on Crew app!

Note: This function will only be available to accounts that have a connected Greenius account. To learn more about adding Greenius to your LMN plan, head over to your Subscription Settings page.

Organizations with connected Greenius accounts can utilize the ‘Manage Users & Staff’ screen to connect each of your LMN users to an Active or Pending Employee within that linked account.

This connection will allow various members of your field crews to access Greenius functionality on the go, without having to leave the LMN Crew mobile app:

  • Linked users will be able to access training courses, view surveys, and access any documents that have been uploaded to Greenius and made viewable by employees.
  • If a linked user is also a Manager within Greenius, they can use the ‘Sign In - Crew Lead/Manager’ button to access additional functionality, such as administering surveys and assigning checklists.

How to Perform the Connection

Open up any LMN user’s ‘Edit Staff Member’ screen, and in the left panel you’ll see a ‘Set Up Training’ dropdown menu for Greenius. There is a good chance your user already exists within Greenius as a Pending employee – you can click ‘Link Existing Greenius Employee’ to check and see if this is the case:

After the connection is successful, you will now see that LMN has pulled in details from the chosen Greenius employee and now displays these:

If the connected Greenius employee is still Pending, this LMN user won’t see a ‘My Training’ link within Crew until you have switched that Greenius employee to Active. This must be done within Greenius, using the ‘Setup Pending LMN’ function which can be found within the ‘Pending Employees’ page: 

If your employee is also acting as a manager within the field, you will also want to double-check within Greenius that they are linked to a Training ID. This will ensure that they are able to properly access Greenius – and their own assigned training resources – within the Crew app. You can check this via the ‘Managers’ settings screen. Just click the pencil icon beside any manager to bring up their ‘Edit Manager’ view, and navigate to the Linked Training ID’s tab:

Creating Staff Groups in LMN

Staff groups allow you to organize your employees into groups, to help you and your foremen find staff easier and faster.  They can also be used for reporting purposes to pull reports on one list of staff.

Creating a Staff Group

  1. Log into LMN. mceclip25.png
  2. Select Settings.
  3. Select Staff Groups.
  4. Click +New in the top-right corner
  5. Give your Staff Group a Name and press OK.

Adding/Removing Employees to Staff Group

  1. There are a couple of ways to add an Employee to a Staff Group. The easiest would be from the Settings > Staff page. 
  2. Select the checkbox next to each Employee and then press the Staff Group button above your list of staff  mceclip26.png
  3. After selecting the Staff Groups button, you will have the ability to +Add to Staff Group or -Remove from Staff Group.
  4. If you toggle the Staff Groups drop-down at the top of the screen, you will now see your list of employees filtered down as per the Staff Group.

OR

  1. Click on Staff 
  2. Select the employee you wish to assign to a Staff Group.
  3. Click on the Group tab. mceclip27.png
  4. Select the Staff Groups you wish to assign them to.
  5. Press Save or Save & Close when you are done.

To view a video tutorial about Staff Groups, click HERE

Designating a Default Manager in LMN

You may come across areas of LMN  (particularly the Scheduling section of LMN) where you can choose Default Managers/ Managers in the dropdown option. To set a Default Manager, they need to be an existing Admin user. To add someone as an LMN Admin go to Settings> Staff > press on the employee's name > change User type to Admin.

Please note:An inactive Admin User will still appear on this list, if you wish to take them off of this list permanently, you can adjust them to an "employee" user type and they will no longer show on the list of default managers. 

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If you require further assistance, please contact our Support Team via email at support@golmn.com or reach out to us through our Live Chats feature or by Phone: (888) 347-9864! 

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