In any system understanding the terminology is a big part of understanding the system. This glossary is intended to help clarify terminology used in Tātou, so users can confidently use features and tools to make the most of the system.
Click any of the Terms to be redirected to support articles with more information.
Office App = The website interface at office.tātou.app
Field App = The tablet/phone app used by crews in the field to log Jobs
Site and/or Farm Information
Clients = A group of locations (properties).
For a contractor: This can be a grouping of a client’s properties
For a grower: you can have all your properties under 1 Client - Your Organisation, or use Client to group different properties based on your organisation’s management structure (i.e. North Island Vineyards vs South Island Vineyards)
Location = A property composed of a group of blocks (aka vineyard, orchard, farm)
Block = Designated area of your property that are uniquely identified (aka patch, paddock, block)
Units = A measure of work completed e.g. plants pruned, bins picked, kilometres sprayed. Employees can be paid per unit (AKA piecework or piece rate), productivity can be tracked by unit and invoices can be charged by unit.
Key Pro Tips and Notes
Pro Tip - When deciding how to set up Clients, Locations, and Blocks - think about how you direct employees where to go. When Jobs are created in the Field App employees are asked to Select:
Client,
Location,
Block(s)
Before starting a Job, so these need to make sense to your employees, to ensure Jobs are accurately entered in the app.
Blocks at the same Location can be added to a single Job. If your crews would normally complete a single Task across multiple Blocks and you would like these to be worked together, the blocks must be under 1 Location.
(e.g. Client A, Location A, Blocks1,2,3,4,5 - Task Wire Lift)
Organisational Structure and Settings
Division = Divisions are an organisational tool to help users of both the Tātou Field App and the Tātou Office App see what is relevant to them. They can be applied to: Employees, Clients, Locations, and Task Categories.
Permissions = Permissions are used to set user’s ability to access and/or work within Tātou Field App and the Tātou Office App. There are 3 categories of users based on 26 individual permission items, which allows flexibility to grant employee access relevant to their position in the company. (e.g. Administrator - all access, Crew - Field App Access + create Jobs).
Roles play can be used in a couple of ways and play an important part in Tātou allowing your organisation to:
Set different hourly/contract rates for employees working in different roles, and
Can also be used to restrict Task completion to employees with the linked role designations
Groups = A filtering tool to help users of both the Tātou Field and Office Apps quickly locate, report on, bulk edit employee information, or filter a number of dashboards, reports, and pages. Employees can be in multiple groups, and groups can be made Active or Inactive.
Pay Period: Your organisations designated pay period - start date and frequency set in Settings.
Additional Costs: Percentage based costs that can be applied to Employees to help capture full cost of work. Common costs include Kiwisaver and Holiday, but these can be created with any name and any percent. Multiple Additional Cost items can be applied to any employee.
Entitlements: Standard requirements for work including: paid rest breaks, top up windows for contract work, and overtime.
Attendance and Absence Reasons: Tātou’s Attendance feature allows organisations to track Attendance, and log absence reasons. Absence Reasons can be set by your organisation, and define how many hours to apply, and decide whether those hours contribute to an employee’s Gross Earnings, Minimum Hours, and Agreed Hours.
Absences can be included in Payroll reports, or excluded from Payroll reports. This options is set in the Custom Report details.
Key Pro Tips and Notes
Divisions can be applied to Employees, Clients, Locations, and Task Categories on their respective pages. They cannot be applied from the Divisions Page.
Permission Group is not the same as a Group
Roles and Permission Groups can often have the same name - this can become confusing. App and Task accessibility are common errors that arise from this.
Groups, while useful, are nothing more than a filtering/grouping tool - they can be used to group people into a crew for example, but that does not assign crew members to a crew leader.
Work Tracking Terms
Job = a record of work containing details on:
Task - what type of work is happening (each Job can only contain 1 Task. If multiple Tasks are completed in a day, each Task will be a different Job)
Location - where the work is happening
Block - which blocks within a location are being worked
Expenses - any machinery or supplies that are used during the work
Timesheets - contains hours and pay rate for employee(s)
Employees working
Hours worked
Type of pay rate (i.e. hourly or contract)
Units worked
Each Job can contain 1 Task, 1 Client, 1 Location, but can include multiple Blocks, Employees, Expenses, and even rate types.
Job ID = A unique code assigned to a Job.
Pro Tip: Job ID’s are used in reports, but there is no filter to search by Job ID. That’s because the Job ID number is found in the web address for the Job →
http://office.tatou.app/#/jobs/ ________/summary
If you want to find a job based on a Job ID from one of your reports, you can paste the number into the highlighted section, and you’ll open that Job.
Task = a type of work (aka activity - e.g. pruning, mowing, picking, etc.)
Task Category = a group of Tasks designated by your organisation (i.e. Vineyard Work, Orchard Work, Harvest, etc.)
Internal [Task] = a task whose costs are applied to your organisation. Client, location, and block details are not recorded for Jobs that are created for an internal task.
Client [Task] = a task whose costs are applied to a specific client, location, or even block.
Scheduled Task = Task planned ahead of time in the office containing details of a job. They are assigned to a person or crew leader to help direct work in the field. Scheduled Tasks will appear on the assigned workers tablet, allowing them to hit PLAY, and skip past the “Start a Job” questions on Task, client, location, block, etc.
Pro Tip: Can be in bulk by using the Generate Scheduled Task feature in a Project.
Scheduled Tasks allow Tātou Field App users tracking Jobs using Simple Summary to use the CarryOver feature, which is normally only available to Jobs that track work with the Assign Row Feature.
Work Planning Tools
Project = A project is a collection of synced Jobs and can be a planning tool OR tool to retrospectively review costs, hours, and units for a group of Tasks. Synced jobs that are linked to a Project(s) contribute to progress tracking of specified tasks within the Project.
As a planning tool: Determine:
What you want to track (i.e. Winter Pruning),
Where you want to track against (i.e. All Clients, All Locations, All Blocks)
Start and Finish Dates
What Tasks are tracked (i.e. pruning, wound protection, etc.)
Schedule Tasks can be created in bulk after the above details are entered, but do not have to be if you’re not using them in your organisation
As a retrospective review: Synced Jobs can be added to a project at any time, or even used to create a project after the fact.
From the All Jobs Page - select all jobs you would like to group in a project
Then select Add to Project from the menu at the bottom of the page
Selecting New Project will create a project based on the details from those jobs
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