Contractor Management in Bonsai can be accessed through Client Mode and is an all-in-one tool designed for managing contractor relationships.
Within Client Mode, you can:
Invite contractors to custom onboarding flows - allowing you to configure various action items such as connecting Stripe or PayPal and gathering contact information.
Create projects with contractors to organize their invoicing, contracts, and files.
Draft and send customized contracts to contractors.
View overall spending across all contractors.
You can invite multiple contractors to your account with no requirement for them to have a paid subscription themselves.
To learn more about the differences between Contractor Mode and Client Mode, refer to this resource here.
The difference between Contractor Management and inviting a team member
Contractor Management is different from inviting team members to Bonsai.
You can use Contractor Management when you need to work with a contractor on a specific project or task. It operates in Client Mode, which is separate from the default Contractor Mode where your company's ongoing projects and client relationships are managed. The key advantage of Client Mode is that it helps you keep your contractor relationships distinct from your regular company projects and clients.
If you need to add a member of your company to an existing client project, you'll want to invite them as a team member instead. For more information on the different user roles in Contractor Mode, check out this article here.
How to access Client Mode
To learn about how to switch from 'Contractor Mode' (Bonsai's default mode) to 'Client Mode', take a look our help article here.
Inviting contractors
To learn how to add a contractor to your account, feel free to review the steps in our help article here.
Creating custom onboarding templates for contractors
Custom onboarding templates are a list of preset tasks for new contractors to complete.
To access your onboarding templates, navigate to the 'Contractors' page, and select the 'Onboardings' tab.
To create an onboarding template, click on 'Manage Templates'.
From the next page, select 'New Template' and type in a name for your new onboarding template. Then, click on the 'Submit' button:
On the onboarding template page, you can add and manage the to-do items. To add a new to-do, click on the 'Add New To-Do' option:
When adding a new to-do, you can select a pre-set action item or manually input your own to-do:
Creating a new project for a contractor
You have the ability to collaborate with contractors on project work by creating a new project and assigning them to it.
To get started, navigate to the left-hand navigation bar, select the 'Projects' page and then select 'New Project'. Input the project's title and assign the project, then click 'Create Project':
After the first project has been created, you will be able to review and manage all existing projects under the 'Projects' page.
Each project includes it's own associated tasks, time-tracking entries, invoices, and settings.
Creating and sending contracts and invoices
Our help article here delves into how to create and send contracts to your contractors and how contractors can invoice you for their work.