What you can do in Autovella depends on your role. Autovella has six built-in roles: Admin, Manager, Employee, Finance, Contractor and Customer. Each one sees a different set of menu items and has different rights inside them. Find your role below for a first-week checklist, using the exact menu names you will see in the sidebar.
In this guide
Which role do I have and how do I check it?Admin: what should I set up in my first week?Manager: how do I start running projects and approvals?Employee or Contractor: what should I do on day one?Finance: how do I get ready to bill and approve?Customer: what can I see and do?Frequently asked questions
Which role do I have and how do I check it?
Your administrator picks your role when creating your account. If you are unsure, look at the left-hand sidebar: the sections you can see tell you a lot. Admins see everything, including the avatar-menu Setup area. Customers see only Projects, Tasks, Sprints, Gantt Chart, Calendar, Holidays, My Work and Favorites.
Two other things also shape what you see, so a menu item can be missing even when your role normally has it:
- Modules. Your organization may not have a module such as Invoicing or Sprints switched on. A module that is off disappears for everyone.
- Custom roles and extra access. Admins can create custom roles, permission sets and personal grants on top of the built-in six. The checklists below describe the built-in defaults.
For the full picture of how access works, read How access works: who can see and change what. Whatever your role, two quick wins on day one: open Profile from the avatar menu to set your Default Landing Tab and Timezone (see My Work, Search and Favorites), and use Favorites to star pages you use daily.
Admin: what should I set up in my first week?
Admins have full access to every module your organization has, including Settings, users and the Recycle Bin. Your first week is about getting the foundations right so everyone else can start work.
- Open avatar menu, Setup, then Company Settings, Company Information. Add your logo, name, address, tax number, Default Currency and Default Timezone. These appear on invoices.
- Add your team under Users & Access, Users with Add User, giving each person the least access that works (Employee for most, Manager for project leads, Finance for billing).
- Review Roles and Org-Wide Defaults so people see the right records. Start private and open up only where needed.
- Load existing data with Import data from the avatar menu, in the order Accounts, Contacts, Projects, Tasks.
- Create a first project, add its team, and ask a few people to log time to test the flow end to end.
- Set your invoice numbering and defaults under Company Settings, Invoices before you bill anyone.
- Check the storage and user bars on Company Information so you know how close you are to your plan limits.
Detailed guides: Getting started with Autovella, Managing users and company settings, Importing data, Roles, permissions and team sharing and Plans, storage and user limits.
Keep Admin rare. Admins can see and change everything. Give it to one or two people and use Manager or custom roles for everyone else.
Manager: how do I start running projects and approvals?
Managers have full control of delivery and time: projects, tasks, sprints, Gantt, calendar, timesheets, attendance, time off, holidays, expenses, approvals, teams and automations. They have read-only access to the dashboard, analytics and reports. By default managers have no CRM, no Invoices and no Settings.
- Create or open your projects under Projects and add people on each project's Team tab.
- Break work into sections and tasks, then pick the view you like: list, board, calendar or Gantt. See Tasks, boards, lists, calendar and Gantt.
- Open Teams and Org Chart to check your direct reports are set correctly, because your approval reach depends on them.
- Check Work Management to see who is available and who is overloaded. See Resource planner and workload.
- Open Approvals weekly to review timesheets, expenses and time off. A manager acts on requests from their direct reports and on entries logged against projects they own, not on everyone's.
- Look at Analytics for a view of delivery health.
Managers are not organization-wide approvers. If a request is outside your reach you will see an approval-scope message, and an admin or Finance user needs to handle it. More in Time tracking and timesheets and Time off, holidays and attendance.
Want your team up to speed faster?
Book a walkthrough and we will set up roles and a first project with you, mapped to how your team works.
Employee or Contractor: what should I do on day one?
Employees and Contractors have the same default rights: read, create and update on tasks, timesheets, attendance, time off, expenses and My Work, and read-only access to projects, sprints, Gantt, calendar, holidays, teams and the dashboard. Neither can delete these records by default, and neither sees CRM, Invoices, Approvals or Settings.
The difference is scope. An Employee sees records according to your organization's defaults, ownership and reporting lines. A Contractor is treated as an outside collaborator and only sees records they own, belong to or have been shared with, and never receives blanket access.
- Open My Work to see every task assigned to you across projects.
- Open a task, update its status and progress, and add comments.
- Open Timesheets, log hours in the weekly grid and click Submit Week at the end of the week. See Time tracking and timesheets.
- Check in and out on Attendance if your organization uses it.
- Request leave from Time Off with New Request.
- Log a claim with New Expense under Expenses and attach the receipt. See Tracking expenses.
Cannot see a project? You only see projects you are a member of, own, or that are shared with you or marked global. Ask the project owner to add you on the Team tab.
Finance: how do I get ready to bill and approve?
Finance has full access to timesheets, expenses, invoices and approvals, and is an organization-wide approver for timesheets and expenses (not time off). It has read-only access to projects, accounts, deals, time off, holidays, analytics, reports and the dashboard. Finance does not get tasks, sprints or settings by default.
- Open Approvals and clear the Timesheets and Expenses tabs. Only approved entries flow into invoices.
- Open Invoices and review the totals at the top: Total Invoiced, Paid and Outstanding.
- Create your first invoice with Generate from Project or New Invoice. See Billing a project from start to finish and Creating and sending invoices.
- Record payments as money arrives with Record Payment.
- Browse Accounts and Deals (read-only) so you know each customer's billing details.
- Open Analytics for the Finance tab, which shows invoiced, paid and profitability figures.
Ask your admin about tax and currency setup if you invoice across countries: Multi-currency and GST tax setup. Admins configure numbering and defaults under Settings, so Finance users do not see that screen by default.
Customer: what can I see and do?
Customer is a client-portal style role. You get a read-only view of the projects, tasks, sprints, Gantt chart, calendar and holidays for the work you are part of, plus My Work and Favorites. There is no dashboard, so you land on Projects after signing in. You do not see finance, CRM, time tracking or settings.
- Sign in with the username and password your contact at the supplier gave you, then open Profile to change your password.
- Open Projects and click a project to see its tasks, timeline and progress.
- Use the Gantt Chart and Calendar to see upcoming dates.
- Use Favorites to bookmark the projects you check most.
You only see records that belong to you or have been shared with you, and individual fields such as budgets can be hidden from your role. If something you expect is missing, ask your project contact. Some suppliers also share a read-only guest link instead of a login, see Sharing projects and guest links.
Frequently asked questions
No. Only an administrator can change a role, and nobody can change their own role or permissions. Ask your admin if you need more access.
They share the same default rights, but a Contractor is an outside collaborator who only sees records they own, belong to or that are shared with them. Employees can also see records allowed by organization-wide defaults and reporting lines.
Either your role does not include that area, or your organization does not have that module switched on. Refresh the page first, then ask your admin to check your role and modules.
By default only Admin and Finance can use Invoices. An admin can grant invoice access to another person through a custom role, a permission set or a personal grant.
No. A manager approves timesheets and expenses for direct reports and for projects they own. Admins and Finance users are organization-wide approvers for timesheets and expenses.
Customers have no dashboard, so they land on Projects. Other users land on the Dashboard unless they choose a different Default Landing Tab in Profile.