Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Administration.

If you’ve ever wondered how the system is configured from the ground up — who gets access, which features are turned on, and how payments flow in and out — then this episode is for you. Administration is the control room of the entire platform, and understanding it means understanding how everything else fits together.

So let’s start with the big picture. Administration covers four main areas: users and groups, module setup, multi-company configuration, and security and permissions. Think of these as the four pillars holding everything up. Get them right, and the rest of the system runs smoothly. Miss one, and you’ll find yourself debugging problems that could have been avoided on day one.

Let’s walk through the key tasks in turn.

First up is company details. Before you do anything else, you want to make sure the system knows who you are. That means entering your company information, setting your currency — in NZRT’s case that’s New Zealand dollars — and confirming your timezone, which is set to Pacific Auckland. You’ll also want to configure your fiscal year here. This matters because reports, invoices, and financial summaries all depend on the system knowing your financial calendar. Get this wrong early and you’ll be correcting dates and totals down the track.

Next, let’s talk about module setup. One of the things that makes this platform flexible is that you can activate only the modules you actually need. That might sound obvious, but it’s worth emphasising: keeping your module list tight keeps the interface clean and the user experience focused. Every module you activate adds menu items, configuration options, and in some cases additional permissions to manage. So the guidance here is simple — only turn on what you’re actually going to use. You can always activate more later as your needs grow.

Now, users and groups. This is probably the area you’ll return to most often, especially as your team changes. The system uses role-based permissions, which means you assign users to roles, and those roles define what they can see and do. You don’t manage permissions user by user — you manage them at the role level, and users inherit what they need based on the group they belong to. This keeps things consistent and makes onboarding and offboarding much easier. When someone joins, you add them to the right group. When they leave, you deactivate their account, and their access disappears cleanly.

Related to users is the security and permissions area. This is where you control what each role can actually touch. It’s fine-grained enough to let you say something like: this person can view invoices but not edit them, or this group can manage contacts but not access financial reports. Taking the time to set this up carefully at the start saves a lot of headaches later, especially if you’re working with contractors or part-time staff who need limited access to specific parts of the system.

If you’re running more than one company under the same installation, you’ll want to look at the multi-company setup. This lets you manage separate entities — each with their own settings, users, and data — from a single system. It’s a more advanced configuration, but if you need it, it’s all handled from the administration panel rather than requiring separate installations.

A couple of other practical items are worth calling out. First, email configuration. You’ll need to set up your outgoing mail server, and the standard approach here is Gmail SMTP. Once that’s configured, the system can send invoices, notifications, and automated messages on your behalf. Second, payment methods and bank accounts. If you’re going to be raising invoices and tracking payments, the system needs to know which bank accounts and payment methods are available. This feeds directly into how financial transactions are recorded and reconciled.

Finally, it’s worth knowing that Administration connects to two other important areas of the platform. One is the general configuration section, which covers deeper system-level settings. The other is REST API access control, which is relevant if you’re integrating with external tools or automating tasks programmatically. Both of those are worth exploring once you’ve got your core administration settings locked in.

To recap: start with your company details and make sure currency, timezone, and fiscal year are correct. Activate only the modules you need. Create your users, assign them to groups, and set permissions at the role level. Configure your outgoing email, add your bank accounts and payment methods, and if you’re running multiple entities, set up multi-company from the start.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.