SOP: adding a new technician

New techs (and any other staff) are created under Admin → Employees → New Employee.

Steps

1. Go to Admin → Employees → New Employee.
2. Under Job functions, check Technician. This unlocks the Tech Details panel on the right (entity, pay rates, scheduler settings) — leave it unchecked and that panel stays hidden.
3. Leave Can login off. Techs don’t need dashboard access — only staff who log in need a password and a role.
4. Fill in, in this order:
   1. Name
   2. Phone
   3. Calendar color — see below, this one takes an extra step.
   4. Tech Details → Fixed cost per job (their standard flat rate) and Luxury car rate (flat rate paid instead of the fixed cost when a job is marked luxury).
   5. Zelle payout name — exactly as it appears in Chase (e.g. “Zelle payment to Jose Aguirre” → enter “Jose Aguirre”). This is what auto-matches their End-of-Day payouts on the bank ledger — get it right or reconciliation won’t match automatically.
5. Leave End-of-day summary texts and AI scheduling texts off for most new techs. Only turn these on if the tech has specifically been set up for nightly pay-summary texts or AI-negotiated scheduling — don’t enable by default.
6. Set Entity (location) under Tech Details to whichever location the tech works for.
7. Click Create (or Create & create another if you’re adding several in a row).

Picking a calendar color

Each tech’s calendar color needs to be unique so appointments are visually distinguishable — but the create form doesn’t show you which colors are already taken.

Before picking a color:

1. Open the Employees list (or the scheduling calendar) in another tab.
2. Scan the existing techs’ calendar colors.
3. Pick a color that’s visibly different from all of them — don’t reuse a near-duplicate shade (e.g. two similar blues). When in doubt, go with a color further around the color wheel from whatever’s already there rather than a lighter/darker variant of an existing one.

If the dashboard ever grows a “list all used colors” view, use that instead of eyeballing the Employees list — check the Technician Directory or Employees list for the current roster first.

What to leave alone

• Preferred language, Active (defaults to on), and job functions other than Technician — only touch these if the tech specifically needs them.
• Don’t turn on Can login for a tech unless they’ve been explicitly approved for a dashboard account and role (see roles).