Welcome to Ruddr! In an effort to help our new workspace admins navigate their way through setting up workspace, we present this Guide to Setting up Your Workspace. In this article, you will see a recommended sequence of steps that you can take to get your workspace up and running, to invite members into your workspace, and to kick off your organization's use of Ruddr for managing your professional services business.
In this guide, we will walk you through the following:
| 1. Getting Started | Learn Ruddr basics. Get familiar with the user interface, your account, and the concept of Ruddr workspaces. |
| 2. Workspace Administration | Set up your workspace according to how you run your business. This guide will give you exposure to the various facets and features of the workspace and give you an idea as to how to step through workspace administration, including Security Roles, Integrations, and Custom Data. |
| 3. Data Import | Do you need to import historical time data or client/project data into your workspace? We will point in you in the right direction and give you a primer before jumping into the key data entities within Ruddr. |
| 4. Clients | Learn how to set up clients, provide contacts, and more. |
| 5. Projects | Projects are where it all comes together. Learn how to set these up for clients, provide project-specific settings, and |
| 6. Time Entry | Learn the basics of time entry, what your team will be capturing in terms of time detail, and explore how easy Ruddr makes it for your members to use a timer and enter their time. You will also learn about Timesheets, and approval workflow. |
| 7. Expenses | Get into the details of filing expense reports in Ruddr, approvals, and reporting. |
| 8. Resourcing | Take a run through the Resourcing feature in Ruddr -- how to allocate resources. |
| 9. Billing | Ruddr can be the primary Billing center for your business. Take a look at how Invoicing works and understand the integration with financial packages. |
| 10. Invite Members | The last step in taking your Ruddr workspace live. |
Getting Started
The first few things to get familiar with include, setting up an account, managing your profile, and understanding the concept of workspaces within Ruddr. The Getting Started section of the Ruddr Help Center contains all this and more. If you have already signed up for a trial, make sure you are familiar with the basics:
- Intro to Ruddr
- Workspaces
- Navigating Ruddr
- Manage Your User Profile
- Set up Two-factor Authentication
- Ruddr Billing
Set up Your Workspace
As the Workspace Admin, you will need to get intimately familiar with managing your workspace. There is a logical flow that can be followed in setting up the workspace for the first time, and that first step is to go through the Workspace Administration section and tailor your workspace settings to how you plan to leverage Ruddr in running your business. Here are items to consider, and ultimately configure, as you define your workspace:
Workspace Administration
| Step 1 | General Workspace Settings | Name your workspace, provide details of your company, and set defaults for Time and Expense, Client and Projects, and establish your company's standard business days. |
| Step 2 | Features |
Learn about Ruddr's features and determine which ones you will leverage in your workspace. With certain features enabled, your workspace experience will be enhanced. Understand how these features can support your business operations and determine which ones you want to leverage. NOTE: As these features have an impact on how areas in Ruddr function, it is best to evaluate these up front, so that as you progress through setup, you focus on them and the functionality they provide. |
| Step 3 | Integrations | While you may decide to set up various integrations at a later stage in your workspace configuration, take some time to get familiar with the integrations available, and their data and technical requirements. |
| Step 4 | Custom Data | Ruddr provides the ability for Workspace Admins to create and manage custom lookup data, organizational data, and tags that can all be leveraged throughout Clients, Project, Time Entries, Expenses, Invoicing, and more. Set up custom data such as Holiday Schedules, Job Titles, Practices, and more. |
| Step 5 | Invoice Settings | Set default payment terms, tax rates, email settings, and invoice details for billing in the workspace. |
| Step 6 | Security Roles | The final steps in setting up your workflow focus on your workspace members and the level of access you want to provide to your workspace's clients, projects, and time and expense. Start by learning about Ruddr's support for custom security roles and the various permission levels that you can assign to those roles. Ruddr also provides a set of default security roles to get you started. |
| Step 7 | Members | Learn about creating, editing, and activating/deactivating members in your workspace. Get familiar with the Member Profile and how to apply security roles to your workspace members. Finally, learn how to invite your members into your workspace once your workspace is configured and ready to go. |
Importing Your Data into Ruddr
Before taking steps to import data, it is recommended that you become more familiar with Ruddr's Clients, Projects, and Time and Expense. However, prior to moving forward in this Guide, it is important to note that Ruddr provides workspace admins with the ability to import data for several entities.
Be sure to read through the Ruddr Help Center information on importing data into your workspace. As you progress through this Guide and get more familiar with Ruddr, keep in mind that loading your data into Ruddr can help minimize the level of data entry necessary to get up and running in your workspace.
Ruddr Onboarding Migration Services
Additionally, as part of Ruddr's onboarding services, our team can assist you with the migration of data from your current system. If you can access your current data, we can work with you to import that into your workspace.
Clients
Clients are the foundational entity in Ruddr in that all Projects, Time Entries, Billable Expense Entries, and Resource Allocations roll up to clients. Learn how to create and manage clients in the workspace.
Projects
Projects in Ruddr are the primary entity against which time and expense, resource allocations, and invoices are created. It is important for Workspace Admins to be intimately familiar with Projects; their various settings; managing Project Team members, roles, and tasks; and project billing types. Below, key Project areas are covered with regards to Setting Up Your Workspace, but this is not an exhaustive list of project topics. Visit the Projects section of the Ruddr Help Center to access all topics related to Project Settings.
Time Entry
The Time section of the Ruddr Help Center covers all things related to time entry. This Guide will focus primarily on the aspects of time management that pertain to workspace administration, but you are encouraged to become familiar with the the entire time entry experience.
- Timesheets Overview - This was covered in the Features section of Workspace Administration and should be included here. Determining whether or not your organization will leverage timesheets in the workspace is a critical first step.
- View and Manage Time Entries of Other Members - Become familiar with this practice and inform your Security Roles and assignment of those security roles to members in your workspace based on who should have permissions to audit/manage time entries for other members.
- Time Approval
- Time Auditing
- Time Entry Locking - Understand how entries become locked and how to manage them.
Expenses
The Expenses section of the Ruddr Help Center covers all things related to time entry. This Guide will focus primarily on the aspects of expense management that pertain to workspace administration, but you are encouraged to become familiar with the the entire time entry experience.
- Expense Tracking Overview
- Manage Expense Categories
- Expensify Integration Overview
- View and Manage Expense Items of Other Members
- Expense Approval
- Expense Auditing
- Expense Item Locking
Resourcing
Take a look at the Resourcing Overview article in the Ruddr Help Center. Here you will get the basics of resourcing, how to enable the feature in the workspace, and an idea of the security permissions that need to be assigned to allow the viewing and administration of resource allocations.
Billing
You will have walked through most of the workspace settings for invoices as you worked through the Workspace Administration portion of this article, and even as part of client and projects. That said, there are some key areas pertaining to the setup of Billing in Ruddr that merit listing a second time as we conclude this Guide to Setting up Your Workspace. Additionally, it is helpful to become familiar with administering invoices and payments in Ruddr.
- QuickBooks Integration Overview
- Invoices Settings
- Creating a Draft Invoice
- Publishing an Invoice
- Taking Payments
Inviting Your Members
Congratulations! If you made it through the entirety of this guide, you should be ready to invite your members into the workspace. As your learned in Step 7 of the Workspace Administration portion of this Guide, inviting members is a click away.
Once you invite your members, they will need to create an account with Ruddr and join your workspace. You may find it useful to send along a link to this Getting Started section of the Ruddr Help Center, as it provides a lot of useful information regarding Ruddr accounts and some of the basics of the platform.
Thank you for being a Ruddr member and we look forward to working with you as our platform continues to grow!