This guide walks through the first week with Autovella: setting up your organization, inviting your team with the right roles, importing existing clients and projects, and configuring your first real project so your team can start logging time and tracking work immediately.
In this guide
Step 1: Set up your organization Step 2: Invite your team and assign roles Step 3: Import existing clients and projects Step 4: Configure your first project Step 5: Turn on the modules you need Your first-week checklist Frequently asked questions
Step 1: Set Up Your Organization
After you sign up, the first screen you'll see is your organization profile. This is where you set your company name, time zone, default currency, and the fiscal year start, all of which feed into reporting and invoicing later, so it's worth getting right before you start creating projects.
Time zone matters more than it seems: attendance, timesheet due dates, and automation schedules all run against the organization's default time zone unless a team member overrides it in their own profile. If your team is distributed across regions, set the organization default to wherever your admin or finance team is based, and let individual users adjust their own display time zone from their profile settings.
Step 2: Invite Your Team and Assign Roles
From Settings → Team, invite team members by email. Each invite can be assigned a role at the same time, so people land in the right permission level from their very first login instead of getting broad default access you have to walk back later.
A few starting points that work for most teams:
- Give Admin to whoever owns billing, integrations, and org-wide settings, usually one or two people
- Give Manager to project leads and team leads who need to approve time and assign work
- Give Employee or Contractor to everyone logging time and working tasks day to day
- Reserve Finance for whoever handles invoicing, expenses, and payment tracking
You can adjust individual permissions later without re-inviting anyone, see Roles, Permissions and Team Sharing for the full breakdown of what each role can and can't do.
Step 3: Import Existing Clients and Projects
If you're moving from spreadsheets or another tool, you don't need to start from zero. Accounts, contacts, and active projects can be imported from CSV under Settings → Import. Most teams import in this order: accounts first, then contacts (linked to those accounts), then projects, then any open tasks.
Import active work first, backfill history after. Bring in your currently open projects and this quarter's clients before you worry about years of closed-project history. That gets your team working in Autovella immediately, and historical records can be added later without blocking day-to-day use.
Each import screen shows a column-mapping step before anything is written, so you can match your spreadsheet's headers to Autovella's fields and catch mismatches before they become bad data in the system.
Step 4: Configure Your First Project
Create your first project from Projects → New Project. At minimum, set the client, the project owner, and a start date. From there you can choose how your team will work, Kanban board, list, calendar, or Gantt timeline, all of which sit on the same underlying task data, so switching views later doesn't require re-creating anything.
If you already have a repeatable project shape (a standard onboarding flow, a typical retainer setup), save it as a template after building it once. New projects built from a template inherit the task structure, sections, and default assignees automatically, see Creating and Managing Projects for more on templates and structure.
Step 5: Turn On the Modules You Need
You don't need to configure every module before your team starts working. Most organizations start with projects, tasks, and time tracking in week one, then layer in CRM, invoicing, and automation as those workflows become relevant. Because every module shares the same data model, nothing has to be re-entered when a new module is switched on, a project created in week one is already available to the invoicing module in week four.
A reasonable rollout order for most service businesses:
- Projects, tasks, and time tracking (week one)
- CRM, if you're tracking a sales pipeline (week one or two)
- Invoicing and expenses, once you have approved time to bill (week two or three)
- Automation rules, once you understand your team's actual workflow patterns (week three onward)
Your First-Week Checklist
- Set organization name, time zone, currency, and fiscal year
- Invite your team with the correct starting roles
- Import active accounts, contacts, and open projects
- Create your first project and choose a default view
- Confirm everyone can log in and log time against a task
Want a guided walkthrough instead?
Book a live demo and we'll set up your first project together, mapped to how your team actually works.
Frequently asked
A basic workspace, organization details, team invites, and one project, can be set up in under an hour. A full migration with historical clients, projects, and time data typically takes a few days, depending on how much needs to be imported and cleaned up first.
No. Most teams start with projects, tasks, and time tracking, then turn on CRM, invoicing, and automation as they need them. Every module shares the same underlying data, so nothing has to be re-entered when you switch a module on later.
Yes. Clients, contacts, projects, and tasks can be imported from CSV, and most teams migrating from another PSA or project tool bring over active projects and open tasks first, then backfill historical records afterward.