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Adding Your Team

Culinary Key keeps two separate lists of people: the staff who appear on your records, and the people who can log in. They are not the same list, and mixing them up is the most common setup mistake.

Last updated 2 min read training, culinary key

Adding Your Team

Before your team can start recording checks, the site needs to know who they are. There are two lists, and they do different jobs.

The Two Lists

Your staff list is everyone who works at the site. These are names on your records — the person who signed off the opening checks, the person who took a fridge temperature, the person who completed a training module. Staff do not need a login and do not cost anything. Add everyone.

Your site logins are the people who sign in to Culinary Key with their own email and password. This list is much shorter, and it is limited.

A chef who records twenty temperature checks a week belongs on the staff list. They only need a login if they personally need to sign in.

Adding Staff

  1. Go to Site Management and open the site you want.
  2. Select the Staff tab.
  3. Add each person by name. Email and role are optional.
  4. Save.

Every site needs at least one staff member before it will save — a site with no staff cannot attribute a record to anyone.

Once saved, those names appear in the "who did this" dropdown on checklists, probe checks, training records and everything else that asks who carried out a task.

Adding Logins

Logins are covered properly in the next module, but the short version:

  1. In the same site, select the Site Login tab.
  2. Invite by email address, choosing Staff or Manager.

Each site allows three logins. That is usually enough for an owner, a head chef and a manager. If you hit the limit, remove someone who has left before inviting a replacement.

A person can be on the staff list and have a login. Adding a login does not add them to the staff list — do both if they also need to appear on records.

Keeping the List Current

When someone leaves, remove them from the staff list. Their historical records stay exactly as they were — removing a name does not delete the checks they completed, and it does not alter a training certificate already issued. It only stops them appearing in the dropdowns going forward.

This matters at inspection. A staff list full of people who left two years ago suggests records are being filled in without much thought, which invites questions you would rather not answer.

Next in this series

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