Good to see you crew planner! In this guide you will learn how to invite your crew for the jobs they will execute, schedule transport, and discover everything related to crew and transport planning.

If you get lost or stuck at some point in the process, please don’t hesitate to ask our support team for help in the bottom right corner of your screen. They will be happy to assist you.

.

Modules required

• account_circle Crew planner

• group Crew members

• table_chart Projects (optional)

• access_time Time registration

• poll Statistics

But first things first, make sure you are logged into Rentman on your browser and app. Are you in your workspace? Perfect! Everything you see is what the Power User of the account of the company let you have access to. If you need to see more or maybe less, this is something you will need to ask them. 

Adding crew members and vehicles to Rentman

To be able to plan crew members and vehicles on jobs, you create functions in Rentman.  It could be that these functions are already added in your database by your colleagues. If not, this guide can help you with this: Rentman academy - Add your crew members and vehicles.

Plan your crew members and vehicles on functions

As a crew planner, you will spend the majority of time working in the crew planner module. In this module, all planned crew and transport functions for a project are displayed. The light-and sound technicians, construction workers, the trucks you will need, you name it!

Apart from the crew planner module, you can also plan crew members on functions in the planning tab of a project. You do need to have access to the projects module to be able to do this though. This article will help you with planning crew from within a project: Plan crew from within a project. 

How-to: Plan crew and transport

1 - Use a test project or, if you feel confident, a real-world project to plan a couple of crew members in the account_circle Crew Planner, by following the steps from the guide above.

2 - Now it’s time for transport! Try to plan some of your vehicles on transport functions. Just like the crew member functions, you plan your vehicles on the transport functions quoted earlier.

3 - Play around a bit more with planning crew and transport on functions. Can you also delete them?

Inviting crew members for functions

We just planned crew members directly on functions. This is perfect when you know that they are available for the job. When you are not yet sure if they are available or if they are willing to work on the function, you can also invite them!

How-to: Invite your crew members

4 - Try it out yourself! Invite a couple of crew members for functions by following the steps in the article above.

5 - Make sure to test out and understand the different types of invitations.

Plan crew members visible or invisible

When planning crew members, you might not yet want them to see that they are planned on a function. For example when you are still puzzling around or when it is not yet certain that the project will take place.  

For these instances, you can plan your crew members 'invisible’ on functions. Opposite from planning them visible, like we did in the first steps. 

How-to: Visible and invisible planning

6 - Plan some crew members invisible. By planning crew members invisible on functions, they cannot yet see in their agenda that they are planned on the functions. This can be helpful if you are still puzzling with the planning for example.

7 - Play a bit more with changing the visibility for planned crew members and check what is happening.

Add and apply crew member rates

When planning functions on a project, you can add costs such as an hourly rate. All the costs for functions will be displayed in the financial tab of a project, so you can calculate the profit you will make. It could be however, that you do not want the function costs to be taken into account, but the actual costs of the planned crew member. This is mostly the case when you have crew members with different rates that could work the same function.

How-to: Add crew member rates

8 - Give it a try! Add some rates to different crew members

9 - For planned crew members, try to change the default rate to the crew member rate. This article might help: Apply a rate.

Adding functions to a project

It might be that in your situation as a crew planner, you not only schedule the crew members on their functions but also need to plan the actual functions. If that is you, make sure to check our guide on how to add crew and transport functions to a project. 

Time registration for crew members

If you want to keep track of the worked hours of your crew members, you can use the time registration module. You have the option to link their hours to the specific functions they worked on, or just register their hours separately. 

How-to: Add a new time registration

10 - Use the guide above to add a couple of time registrations for crew members.

11 - Play around with the different types of registrations you can assign to the hours you register. Try to register on specific functions, but also try to add some registrations without a function.

Insights into crew member statistics

On a certain moment, you probably want to analyse the statistics of your crew members. Who worked the most hours, which crew member costs the most etc… These valuable insights can be found in the statistics module.

How-to: Analyze results with statistics

12 - Add a new statistics view with the help of the guide above. Play around a bit with the different column sets!

You have an eye for scheduling! Now that you understand the basics of creating and maintaining a clear crew schedule, you can start optimizing your daily tasks.