Admin: Set Up Office Visitor Management

Set up office visitor management

This guide takes a new office from nothing to a working gate desk. Allow about thirty minutes, plus however long your employee list takes to enter.

Before you start

Have these ready:

• Your company name and the state you operate in.
• A phone number you can receive a one-time code on.
• Your employee list: name, mobile number, and optionally employee ID, department and designation.
• An Android or iOS tablet for the guard desk, if you have one. A phone works.

Step 1: Create the company account

1. Go to Create an account and choose to register a new organisation.
2. On the organisation type step, choose Company, not a housing society.
3. Enter your company name, address and state.
4. Verify your mobile number with the one-time code.

This choice is permanent. A tenant registered as a company cannot later be converted to a housing society or the reverse, because the two use different data models for what a unit is. If you pick the wrong one, the fix is to create a new account, so check before you continue.

Once created, your admin console shows only what an office needs: Dashboard and Settings, Employees and Roster, and Gate and Visitor Management. The society modules like maintenance billing and AGM voting are not shown, and you are not billed for them.

Step 2: Add your employees

1. Open Employees from the admin navigation.
2. Select Add employee.
3. Enter the name and mobile number. Employee ID, department, designation and a photo are optional but worth adding: the guard uses department and designation to tell two similarly named people apart.
4. Save, and repeat for each employee.

There is currently no bulk file import, so a large roster is entered person by person. If your roster runs to hundreds of people, contact us before you start, because roster import is the feature we are building next and we would rather help than have you type for a day.

Employees claim their own record. Once an employee is on the roster, they download Plinth, sign in with the same mobile number, and their record is matched to them. They can then pre-approve their own visitors. You do not need to create logins for anybody.

Step 3: Set the host response timeout

When a visitor arrives to see a named employee, that employee gets a notification. If they are in a meeting and do not respond, the request should not sit there while the visitor waits.

1. Open Settings, then the gate section.
2. Set Host response timeout to the number of minutes to wait before the request escalates to reception.

Five minutes suits most offices. Under three tends to escalate requests that the host would have answered. Over ten leaves visitors standing too long.

Step 4: Decide how deliveries are handled

Deliveries addressed to a named employee go to that employee. Deliveries addressed to the company go to reception by default, which is almost always what you want. Reception receives a pickup code, and marks the parcel collected when it is handed over.

Check this setting matches how your front desk actually works before your first courier arrives.

Step 5: Set up the guard desk

1. In Settings, find your company gate code. This identifies your office to the booth app.
2. Set a booth PIN. The guard uses the gate code and the PIN, not a personal email account, so a shift change does not mean sharing anybody's password.
3. On the tablet, install Plinth Gate from the Play Store or App Store.
4. Open it and enter the gate code and PIN.
5. If you have more than one entrance, add each as a gate location in settings, and sign each tablet in to its own location so entries are logged against the right door.

The booth app keeps working when the internet drops. Entries and exits are queued on the device and sync when the connection returns, so the guard is never blocked by an outage.

Step 6: Try it end to end before you rely on it

Do this once, with a colleague, before the first real visitor:

1. Have an employee pre-approve you as a visitor for today.
2. Arrive at the desk and have the guard scan or key in the code. You should be admitted without any phone call.
3. Now have the guard start a walk-in naming an employee. Confirm that employee gets the notification and can approve from their phone.
4. Have the guard start a walk-in with no host and send it to reception. Confirm it appears in the reception queue.
5. Wait out the timeout on a request nobody answers, and confirm it escalates to reception.

If step five does not work, your timeout is not set. Go back to step three.

Who can approve visitors

Anyone with the admin role can approve or deny a visitor request and manage the roster. Reception staff therefore need the admin role today.

Be aware of what that grants: an administrator can also change company settings and edit the whole employee roster. If your front desk is covered by rotating or temporary staff, consider who holds that role. A narrower reception-only permission tier is a known gap and is on our roadmap.

Frequently asked questions

Can I change the account from company to housing society later? No. The organisation type is locked once set. Create a new account if you chose wrongly.

Do employees need to be invited or given a password? No. Add them to the roster, and they claim their own record by signing in with the same mobile number.

Can I import employees from a spreadsheet? Not yet. This is the top item on our roadmap for this feature. Contact us if you have a large roster.

Can one account cover several offices? Yes. Add each entrance or site as a gate location within the same company account, and sign each guard tablet in to its own location.

What happens if the guard tablet loses internet? The app keeps recording entries and exits locally and syncs when the connection returns.

Does this track when employees arrive and leave? No. The gate module tracks visitors. Employee attendance is a separate module for rostered staff, and the two are deliberately kept apart.

Related: Reception: approve walk-ins · Employee: pre-approve a visitor