Manage Users, Companies, and Projects

This article is a guide to managing users, companies, projects and contracts in FastDraft.

This guide contains the following:

• Introduction
• What is a Company and how to create one?
• What are Company Users and how to create one?
  • Enable/disable Company Users
• What is a Project and how to create one?

Related Articles

• Managing contract users
• Understanding roles and permissions in FastDraft
• How to Delegate Actions

Introduction

Companies, projects and contracts are the three most important objects you will use in our Contract Management Platform, which allow your users and contracts to be grouped. You can access your contracts from the top right of the toolbar in the platform.

You can manage the companies, projects and contracts in the platform via the left hand panel.

What is a Company and how to create one?

Click Companies to view all the companies in the platform.

A Company is a group of users that work within an organisation. This would typically be a limited company but it can be a group of users that form a department, joint venture, working group, etc.

You use the Company page to store relevant information about company and associated company users, and hubs. In a typical set up you would add the companies involved in the contracts and projects you manage and employees from each organisation will sit within one company. The company details are used for creating contracts and completing forms on contracts.

A Company can be created by a System Administrator or Admin user in the platform. The platform also supports adding Companies automatically from an API call, integration or importing in bulk via a support request with our Customer Success Team. To create a Company in the Admin panel click the Create New action button on the Company Register

You will be asked to provide the following information:-

• Company Name - A free text field to insert the company name. Generally it is best practice to use the legal entity but it will support JV and groups of users
• Company Type  - Select either - Client, Consultant, Contractor, Other or Subcontractor
• Address 1 - Insert address
• Address 2 - Insert address
• City - Insert City
• County - Insert County
• Country - Insert Country
• Postcode - Insert Postcode
• Enable Company Users - toggle Yes/No - see here for more information
• Frameworks - Select any frameworks you want this company associated with - see here for more information
• Company Number - A free text field to insert the company number

This information can be used for reporting purposes. If you need to update the Company details once created click the Update Company action button on the Company overview page.

If you want to deactivate a company, click the red Deactivate button - note: if you want to deactivate a company you must first remove all users, either by deactivating their user accounts or moving them to another company. 

After your team has created a Company, you can add a company logo from a png file- which will appear on notifications sent from any contract with that Company being one of the parties. 

You can then start to create Company users, Areas, Hubs and Projects for the Company.  

What are Company Users and how to create one?

Select the Company and click Users on the left hand panel to view all your Company Users.

These are the end users of the platform and all users must be associated with a Company. A user can only be associated with one Company. You can add a user to your account if you have enough seats (licenses) in your subscription. You need to be a System Administrator or Admin user to create a new Company user from the Company User tab under a Company.

 Complete the following fields:-

• Username - Used by some clients to log in (generally use the email address)
• Email Address - Used for email notifications
• Full Name - Used on notices and the user interface
• Job Title - Used for customer support
• Telephone - Used for customer support
• Country - Can be used via API to segregate users
• User Type -  Used to control system level permission but not permission on contracts
• Apply Financial Limit - Add any financial restrictions 
• Allow Power BI Menus - Enable the user to see Power BI menus

If you wish to stop a user accessing the platform entirely, Admin users with the relevant access will be able to mark them as passive by clicking the red Deactivate button. These users will be hidden in the platform and no longer able to login. A record of the user is retained in the database and their associated contracts. The user can be reactivated, with an option to reinstate their access to the associated contracts, or to clear the associations and reactivate only. 

Enable/disable Company Users

Specific Admin users can enforce that some company records are created for contractual purposes only and that all users are added to a single group company.

A Site Administrator can set a flag preventing anyone adding users to a Company. This is designed to prevent users being added to a joint venture company.

There is also an optional dropdown where an existing company name can be selected - which, if specified, is where the users will be created.

What is a Project and how to create one?

Click Project on the left hand panel to view all your projects.

A Project is a collection of contracts that you've identified and are managing through the platform. Projects allows contracts to be grouped.  Each Project is managed by a lead organisation and can be categorised by Project type.

It helps your team to stay organised by understanding what contracts are associated with a Project and for managers to report on the progress of your contract across a Project. This functionality also allows subcontracts and main contracts to be grouped as well.

A Project can be created by System Admins and Admin users in the platform, and a number of other ways, for example, automatically from an API call or an API integration, importing in bulk via our API, or you can manually create a new Project as an admin.

You need to be a specific admin user type to create a new Project from the main navigation.

You will be asked to complete the following fields:-

• Project Name - A free text field to insert the project name
• Company - Select from the dropdown one of the existing companies on the platform
• Project Type:- A free text field - suggestions for type include: Development, Infrastructure, Mechanical and Electrical, Nuclear, Water and Sewage or Other
• Project Code:- This must be unique - it can be numbers or characters or a mixture of both.

Once you have created a Project you can assign contracts to it and if you need to, can go back into the Project and update the details.