How to configure Sync for your business
Config Settings is where the dropdowns come from. Project statuses, workstreams, package codes, payment terms and the credentials you demand of your supply chain all live here, and getting them right early saves correcting records later.
- Who uses it
- Admins, and whoever owns how your business categorises work.
- Where it lives
- Config Settings, near the bottom of the sidebar.
- What it controls
- The dropdown options on projects, customers and trade partners.
- The golden rule
- Options can be deactivated, never deleted.
Before you start
This is the one area of Sync where a careless entry sticks around, so it is worth a minute of preparation. Check that:
- You have admin access to Config Settings.
- You know which list you need: project, customer or trade partner.
- You have agreed the wording with whoever uses it, because it is permanent.
- For package codes, you have your code list to hand, ideally as a spreadsheet.
Open Config Settings
Select Config Settings near the bottom of the sidebar. Everything here is a list of options that appears somewhere else as a dropdown.
Find the right tab
The lists are split across three tabs by what they configure.
Project departments, project status, project workstreams, payment terms and package codes.
Business types and payment terms. The shortest tab, and the one you touch least.
Eight lists, including service types, engineer roles and credentials, and the required-credential lists per partner type.
Open a list
Each row has an Edit link that opens the list itself: the options it holds, each with a name and a status, and an Add Option button.
Read it before you add anything. Sync ships with a sensible set, and most of the time what you want is already there under a slightly different name.
Read what permanent means
Built-in options are marked permanent and carry no Edit action. You cannot rename or remove them, which is deliberate: they are referenced by records all over the system.
You can always add your own alongside them, and deactivate anything you do not want your team choosing.
Add an option
Add Option slides a panel in from the right. It opens with a warning worth reading: once saved, options cannot be deleted, only deactivated.
What people will see in the dropdown. Required.
Typed again, deliberately. The option cannot be deleted later, so Sync makes you look at it twice.
Generated from the name. This is the key the option is stored under, shown so you can see what you are committing to.
Active or not. New options are normally added active.
Deactivate instead of deleting
To retire an option, set its status so it is no longer active. It stops appearing in dropdowns for new records, and any record that already uses it keeps its history intact.
Project status
Project status carries more than a name. Each option has a colour, which is what you see as the coloured pill on the projects list, and a marks project as complete flag that tells Sync which statuses mean the job is finished.
The defaults run from Feasibility and New through On site and Delayed to Final Review / Snagging, Site handover, Invoiced in full and Closed lost. Add your own stages if your business talks differently, and set the completion flag carefully, because it decides what counts as done.
Package codes
Package codes are code-and-name pairs, for example SP052 Scaffolding or SP505 Lighting Installation, and they are what the CVR costs against. There are usually a lot of them.
Rather than typing them in, use Import Excel to load your list in one go. Unlike most config lists, package codes stay editable after they are added.
Required credentials
On the Trade Partners tab, Subcontractor Required Credentials and Consultant Required Credentials decide what every partner of that type must supply before they work for you: insurances, trade certifications, whatever your clients and insurers expect.
Whatever is on these lists appears on each partner's Credentials tab, flagged until a document with an expiry date is attached. Set them once here rather than chasing different things from different partners.
See how they appear on a partner recordPayment terms, per area
Payment Terms appears on all three tabs, and so do Business Types. They look like the same list, but they are not: customer payment terms and project payment terms are stored separately.
So adding a term for customers does not make it available on a trade partner, and vice versa. If you have agreed unusual terms with your supply chain, add them on the tab that needs them.
Before your first project
Get these right before anyone creates a job: project statuses with their colours and completion flags, workstreams, departments, and package codes if you intend to use the CVR.
Changing a status after fifty projects are using it is not hard, but renaming what people have been reading for six months causes more confusion than it solves.
Before your first PO
Before you onboard the supply chain, set trade partner service types and purchase order service types so partners and POs can be categorised properly, payment terms on the trade partners tab, and the two required credential lists.
Engineer roles and engineer credentials follow, since they decide what you can record against the people who actually turn up on site.
Every list, and what it feeds
The full set, and where each one shows up.
Projects tab. The department a project belongs to.
Projects tab. Drives the coloured status pills on the projects list, and which statuses count as complete.
Projects tab. The type of work, from civils to fit-out. Appears in project names and filters.
Projects tab. Cost packages used by the CVR. Supports Excel import.
Customers and Trade Partners tabs. Limited company, LLP, sole trader and so on.
All three tabs, as separate lists. What a customer or partner record offers, and what an invoice inherits.
Trade Partners tab. The Service Provided options on a partner record.
Trade Partners tab. The service options available when raising a PO.
Trade Partners tab. The roles you can give an engineer.
Trade Partners tab. The tickets and cards that can be held against an engineer.
Trade Partners tab. What every subcontractor must supply.
Trade Partners tab. The same, for consultants.
What you can and cannot do
- Add your own options to any list, so the dropdowns match how your business talks.
- Deactivate an option you no longer want offered.
- Set a colour against each project status, and say which statuses mean the project is complete.
- Import package codes from Excel rather than typing them in one at a time.
- Decide what every subcontractor and every consultant must supply before they work for you.
- Delete an option once it is saved. Deactivating is the only way to retire one.
- Edit the built-in options. They are marked permanent, and the Edit action is not offered.
- Change one Payment Terms list and have it apply everywhere. Customers, projects and trade partners each have their own.
- Set required credentials against a single partner here. The lists apply to a type; one-off requirements go on the partner record.
Common issues
It cannot be deleted. Add the corrected option, then deactivate the wrong one so it stops appearing in dropdowns. The old one stays on any record that already used it.
Either it has not been added, or it has been deactivated. Check the list on the matching tab, remembering that customers, projects and trade partners have separate payment terms.
That option is built in and marked permanent. You can add your own alongside it, but you cannot rename the one Sync ships with.
Use Add additional credentials on that partner record instead. Changing the list here changes it for every partner of that type.
Package codes have not been set up. Add them on the Projects tab, or import them from Excel, before anyone tries to cost a package.
Setup checklist
Before you roll Sync out to the team, check that:
- Project statuses match your stages, with the right ones marked as complete.
- Project workstreams and departments reflect how you actually split work.
- Package codes are imported before anyone builds a CVR.
- Payment terms are set on the customers tab and the trade partners tab.
- Required credentials are agreed for subcontractors and for consultants.
- Engineer roles and credentials cover the tickets your sites ask for.
Summary
To configure Sync for your business:
- 1Open Config Settings and pick the tab for the area you are changing.
- 2Open the list, read it, and check whether the option already exists.
- 3Add an option, confirming the name, because it cannot be deleted afterwards.
- 4Deactivate anything you no longer want offered.
- 5Give project status its colours and completion flags, and import package codes from Excel.
- 6Set the required-credential lists before you onboard your supply chain.
Config Settings is twenty minutes of work that decides how every record reads for years. Agree the wording with the people who will use it, add it once, and deactivate rather than expecting to delete.