Five CrewSmart settings most operators never switch on

When our support team looks at how a customer is set up, the same handful of options come up again and again. None of them are new, none of them cost anything, and each saves someone a job they are currently doing by hand. In no particular order:

1. Holiday approvals by user group

By default a holiday request goes to one named person. Change it to a user group (Users > Employment Overview > Holiday) and requests can be approved by anyone in the operations team, so nothing waits for someone who is themselves on leave. There is a bulk update to set it for everyone at once.

2. Notify the office when a profile is submitted

New crew complete their onboarding profile and then wait. Under Onboarding settings you can choose an office user group to be emailed the moment a profile is submitted for review, so it gets looked at the same day rather than when someone remembers to check.

3. Vessel-specific reading lists

In the IMS, compliance requirements can be set per vessel, contract or project. Once they are, assigning a crew member to a vessel automatically requires them to read that vessel's documents, and the office can see who has. It is the simplest way to turn "the procedures are available" into "the crew have read them", and it is the setting we point to first when Workboat Code 3 comes up.

4. Expenses on the timesheet PDF

Employment Admin > Expenses has an option to include approved personal expenses, with receipt images, in the finance timesheet PDF for the same period. Finance gets one document instead of two, and the reconciliation disappears.

5. Your own photos on the login page

Admin > Company Details > Company Branding lets you replace the login page images with your own vessels. Entirely cosmetic, and the setting customers most often thank us for afterwards. Use images of at least 1600 by 900 pixels.

Honourable mentions

• Hide old job roles in Crew Manager, so the planner only shows roles you still use.
• Reverse the actions timeline so the next step sits at the top of a long action.
• Regional requirements for training and qualifications, if your crews work in more than one jurisdiction.

If you would like us to review your set-up, raise a ticket through the Help button in CrewSmart and ask for a settings check. It usually takes half an hour and most customers come away with two or three of the above switched on.