Run two venues without switching companies

The second site is where most systems start to leak. Not because anything is hard on its own, but because the software makes you be in one place at a time. You roster the first venue, log out, log into the second, roster that, and then do the pay twice because the two lists never met.

Two different things get tangled together here, and separating them comes before any setup.

• Venues inside one business. Two cafes, one company, one ABN, one payroll. Staff move between them.
• Associated companies. Two companies that you run together, each with its own books and its own payroll, managed by the same people.

Most groups are one or the other. Some are both: three venues, two of them in one company and the third in its own. Everything below works the same way for all three shapes.

One chooser, at the top of the screen

The Calendar screen carries a location button at the top. Each company is a heading, with Everyone and then each venue under it. The company you are signed in to is marked Open.

That button offers a venue, or another company. The roster loads in place. Nothing about you moves. Your login and your company stay where they were, and every shift you add, publish or confirm applies to the location on screen.

That distinction is the whole point. Actually switching company is a hard reload of the app, because the company you are in decides what every screen reads. Doing it in the middle of building a roster costs you the roster you were building. The chooser exists so that the ordinary act of looking at your other site is not a context switch.

The same chooser is on Pay review and on Routes, and it means the same thing in each.

A shift belongs to a place

Once a company has venues, a shift's Venue is set on the shift itself and is required, so a shift is always somewhere. It starts at the venue on screen, or the person's own.

Changing it moves one shift to another venue without moving the person. That covers the ordinary Saturday where somebody normally on the main floor covers the second site. The hours stay with the site that had the trade.

Venues live under Admin, then Company, then Locations. The Close action takes a venue out of the list for new shifts, and keeps every roster that already used it. Each one needs a real street address while you are there. The kiosk measures a check in against that address, and routing works out drive times from it.

Everybody, in one list

The path is Admin, then Members, then Whole group. The list holds every person in every company, with a chip naming each of their companies. A dashed chip marked via group means they administer that company through the group rather than as a member of it.

All companies ticks the companies or venues to show, and Search people narrows the list. On your own company's normal view, All locations filters your members by venue.

A person opened from the list shows their details and each company holding them. Their contact details, job title and your company's staff fields all change from there. The Change history panel records every one, with who made it and what it became. Their login, photo and active status stay with their own company, because those are theirs rather than yours.

One person, two payrolls

Here is the part that surprises people. A staff member belongs to exactly one company. Somebody who works at two venues in two associated companies is two staff records, one in each. Each company pays them separately and holds its own record.

Two venues inside one company is the opposite: one record, one payroll, hours from both sites on the same pay period.

So the question to answer before you set anything up is not how many places you have. It is how many payrolls. Venues where the answer is one payroll; associated companies where the answer is two.

Giving somebody access to both

In any picker that assigns a person, + Add from another company adds somebody who works elsewhere in the group. The form takes their name, the location they will work at here, a team and a role, then sends the invite. You are not asked for their name or email, because both come from their own company.

They keep their place in that company and gain one here. A job, a visit, an item of equipment or a task then actually reaches them.

Rostering is the exception, and deliberately so. On Calendar a shift goes to somebody in the group without adding them at all. A shift is about their time rather than your records. Everything else stores who it belongs to, and can only store somebody your company knows.

For access across the whole group, Admin, Members, Roles has a Group roles card. A role created there applies in every company in the group. Seats are one pool, so giving somebody both costs nothing extra.

Where it stops, on purpose

The chooser shows you another company's day. It does not always let you change it.

• Routes shows another company's runs read only. Planning, sending or changing anything there means switching to that company.
• Pay review needs you to be an admin of the company whose hours you are reading, not just an admin of your own.
• Whole group on Members is for group admins. An admin of one company sees that the group exists, and not the other companies' people.

None of those are oversights. A group is several businesses that trust each other, not one business with extra addresses. Money and employment records stay inside their own company. What crosses the boundary is the view.

Setting it up, step by step

1. Decide venues or companies, by counting payrolls rather than places.
2. For venues: Admin, Company, Locations, and give each a real street address.
3. For a second company: your avatar, then Create associated company. It starts with your calendar setup, so it appears in the location chooser straight away.
4. Each person's site goes on their profile, under Where they work. Routes, the kiosk and the staff lists all read it.
5. Appoint your group admins under Admin, Company Links, and give anybody who works across the group a group role rather than two company roles.