Self-onboarding 101

12 steps to get Scoro up and running

With Scoro, you can customize every aspect of your site based on your workflow. Instead of working with a universal setup, make Scoro your own. If needed, we’re here to help – just let us know.

1. Start by thinking about your workflow – what’s the series of activities relevant to your everyday work and which Scoro features would be needed to cover these areas. You can get some ideas from our Walkthrough video, so make sure you take the time to watch it. In addition, we've created a bunch of articles on best practices to give you a few ideas on how to use Scoro to your best advantage.
   
   
2. Add your company data. When your company data is filled out, you can easily add it to all the PDF document templates, so your company information is automatically filled out when compiling and sending out quotes and invoices, for example. In addition, personalize your site by adding your logo for the site and for the PDF documents (that you can also personalize to have your look and feel!).
   
   
3. Configure the relevant settings on your site. Well, there are many and you can truly customize each and every detail of your Scoro site.
   
   
   
   Here are a few things you might want to set up right away:
   
   Activity types. Get detailed reporting on what your team spends most of their time on. This helps to make corrections where needed, prioritize your team's activities and make the most of your collective time. Events and tasks can also be filtered by activity types.
   
   
   
   Statuses. They're used for many features in Scoro and are highly customizable (we say that a lot, but it's true). You can pick your own names and colors for different statuses. To name a few, statuses are used for calendar events (like Busy, Tentative, Away), tasks (like Planned, In Progress, Needs Input, Completed), quotes (like Opportunity, Negotiation, Closing, Expired) projects, and so on. With statuses, it’s easy to know the progress of different items and take action, when needed.
   
   
   
   Tags and categories. These help to narrow down and segment long lists. For example, add tags to projects to differentiate design, consultancy, video, copywriting and other types of projects. Then easily filter out certain types of projects and get detailed reporting on them. The same goes for contacts. You can tag contacts by industry, market, the number of employees – you name it. Yet, the categories for contacts could be something like Cold lead, Warm lead, Client, Ex-client, Partner and so on.
   
   
   
   
4. Predefine products and services. This is essential for compiling sales and purchase documents, and ultimately, to be able to sell your services. You can always add products manually as you go, starting with a couple of most frequently used products or services. If you want to import an already existing list of products and services, follow these steps. Don’t forget to set up tax rates. This way, when compiling sales documents (e.g. quotes or invoices), this information is filled out automatically.
5. Add contacts, the people and companies you do business with, to Scoro. If starting from scratch, you can add contacts one by one. To import an already existing list of contacts, read more on how to get it right on the first try.
   
   PRO TIP: If using tags and categories, add them to the import file. This way they’re automatically added to the system alongside contacts and you can save yourself a decent amount of manual work.
   
   
6. Test your typical workflow. For example:
   
   1. Start by adding a contact, then compile a new quote for that contact.
   2. Create a project from that quote.
   3. Add tasks under the project, assign these tasks to your team members.
   4. Complete the tasks and compile an invoice (either from the work report or from the original quote).
   
   Remember, this is just one example. Test your own ideal workflow and see if everything works as expected.
   
   
7. Define user roles for your team members. With different roles, you can give users and teams a separate set of access rights on your Scoro site. You can name user roles based on people’s actual roles in your company, like Management, Finance, People Operations, Marketing, Sales and so on, or make up your own.
   
   
   
   
8. Add teammates as users and define their access rights with the help of user roles and permissions. Go to Settings > Administration > Users and groups to add new users. Just click Add user, fill out user data and pick a user role. This affects how much and what they can see and do on your Scoro site. Before saving, tick the box Send account data to user's email, so each user is invited to join in on testing Scoro. If you prefer not to invite users to try out Scoro yet, just untick this option. Just make sure you don’t forget to invite them later!
   
   
9. Set up default views and bookmarks to save time on creating personalized lists each time you want to see specific data (e.g. view only in progress Projects in the project list or today’s tasks grouped by team members and priorities in the task list). Default views help Scoro remember your preferences and each time you open a particular list, it's automatically filtered the way you like it. Bookmarks, on the other hand, help you save multiple filtered views for each list, so you don't have to use filters every time you want to see that list. Plus, you can add a Watchdog to keep an eye on it. It'll save you loads of valuable time!
   
   
   
   
10. Create role or team-based dashboards. This way, each team can quickly get a detailed overview of all the most important data for them in the form of metrics, widgets, and charts. Of course, you can create just one default dashboard for your whole team and later on everyone can create their own according to their specific needs. As creating a dashboard is so simple, why not create multiple and share them with everyone. Don’t forget to read our blog post on how to create the perfect business dashboard.
    
    
    
    
11. Automate your workflow. Use client profiles, rules and alerts, integrations, invoice reminders and other useful tools to save clicks and precious minutes each day.
    
    
12. Onboard your team. So that each and every team member knows why their effort is essential for successful onboarding and how their input is important for setting, tracking, and reaching personal, team and company goals.
    
    1. What's in it for the team. Have a discussion with your team explaining the key points of why using a unified system for work is beneficial for the whole team.
    2. Watch tutorial videos and explain your workflow in Scoro.
    3. Test the workflow with the whole team, hold a Q&A session with the team to tackle any possible issues right away.
    4. Configure personal settings (email signature and templates, SMTP, task settings) and set up different list views. Create custom dashboards and set up user menus according to everyone’s personal preferences.
    5. Set up calendar integrations and download the Scoro app for a more flexible user experience.
    
    Read more on how to get your team successfully on board.

In case you need our help, drop us a note at help@scoro.com.