Work with subcontractors

A subcontractor joins WorkWing as an external worker. They sign in with their own account, see the jobs you assign them and nothing else, and their access ends on a date you set. This guide takes you through one engagement from invitation to finish. External workers is the reference for every setting.

Inviting and removing external workers needs the Tenant Admin role.

How the access works

There are three pieces, and it helps to keep them apart.

Their login belongs to them, or to their employer. You never create it, see its password or reset it. One login can serve several WorkWing organisations, and they switch between them in the app.
Their access to your organisation is the part you control. It covers one brand, it has an end date, and it can require two-factor authentication. Removing it ends their access to your workspace without touching their login anywhere else.
Their resource record is your record of them: on the resources board, in the assignment picker, with the notes, skills and tags you add. It stays in your organisation after their access ends, along with every job they worked.

They hold the External Worker role, which is given out automatically and can’t be given to anyone by hand. It reaches assigned jobs only.

Before you invite anyone

Check your seats. External workers use a seat pool of their own, separate from your team members. Free has none, so you need Basic or above. The invitation dialog shows how many you’ve used.

Decide the arrangement. The dialog asks whether the arrangement is With this person or With their company.

With this person suits a sole trader or a freelancer. They connect with an email address they own, and only you or they can end the access.
With their company suits a firm sending you its engineers. They connect with their work login and you record the Company name. If their login is managed by their employer and they leave, their sign-in stops working and your access to them ends with it, without warning. That’s useful: you don’t have to track who still works at the firm.

Pick the brand. Each invitation is for one brand. If they’ll work under two, send a second invitation for the other brand once they’ve accepted the first.

1. Invite them

Open Settings > Team Members and click Invite external worker.
Enter the email address they’ll sign in with. They have to accept with that same address.
Choose the arrangement, and enter the company name if it’s with their company.
Pick the Brand.
Set Access ends. WorkWing suggests 30 days out, and the date can be up to a year ahead. Set it to the end of the engagement, not the furthest date allowed.
Turn on Require two-factor authentication if they’ll handle anything sensitive. It applies to this connection only.
Click Send invitation.

The invitation shows under Pending external invitations until they accept, and the link in the email works for seven days. Revoke cancels it.

2. They accept

They open the link, confirm their email address with a six-digit code, and accept. WorkWing creates their resource record and their access to the brand in one step. If you asked for two-factor, they have to set it up before they get in.

They then sign in to the WorkWing app on their phone, usually with Email me a code. See The mobile app.

3. Assign them work

They appear on your resources board like anyone else, with an External badge and the company name in your members list. Assign and schedule them the same way you would a member of staff. See Assigning resources.

To keep a firm’s people together, give them a shared tag or put them in a team. The assignment picker can be narrowed to a team.

What they can see

On a job you’ve assigned them, they see the job, the customer and the site for that job, the job’s notes, the job type’s form, and the parts they record. They can raise an observation about something they spot on site.

They don’t see your customer list, other jobs, customer notes or customer attachments, reports or settings, and they can’t connect an AI assistant to your workspace.

What you record about them stays yours. The notes, skills, tags and job history on their resource record are visible to your organisation, not to the other organisations they work for. In the other direction, you see what they did on your jobs and nothing about their work elsewhere.

Extending an engagement

Access lapses at the end of the Access ends date. To keep them on, send a new invitation with a later date and have them accept it. Their record and history carry straight over.

A new invitation sets the terms for their whole connection to you: its end date, two-factor setting and company name replace the earlier ones.

Ending it

Access ends by itself on the date you set. To end it sooner, open the actions menu on their row in Settings > Team Members and choose Remove Member. Their access to your workspace stops at once, and their seat is free again.

Ending access doesn’t unassign anything, so look at their open jobs. However the access ended, by date, by removal, or because their employer closed their login, WorkWing blocks new assignments to them and lists their open jobs on your dashboard under Needs reassignment. Someone whose login stops working while they’re still connected is also badged Can’t sign in in your members list. Work through the list so nothing waits on someone who can’t get in.

What stays in your records

Everything they did on your jobs stays: status changes, form answers, signatures, attachments, parts and notes. Their resource record stays too, so old jobs still show who did the work, and reports still count it.

If they come back, invite them again. They pick up the same record and history. If they join your staff, remove their external access first if you haven’t already, then invite them as a colleague from the same screen and their history as an external worker stays where it is.

Security checklist

Keep the window short. Set Access ends to the end of the job, and extend it if the work runs on. Don’t leave a contractor connected for a year because the calendar allowed it.
Turn on two-factor for anyone who’ll see customer addresses and phone numbers. It’s set per connection, so it’s a cheap requirement to add.
Prefer the company arrangement for firms. When an engineer leaves the firm and their work login is closed, their access to you closes with it.
Your sign-in rules apply to them. Whatever your organisation requires at sign-in is checked every time they enter your workspace, whichever other organisations they work for. See Security policies.
Remove people when the work ends, rather than waiting for the date, and reassign their open jobs at the same time.
Review the list. Settings > Team Members shows every external worker with their company, end date and two-factor setting. A look at the end of each month catches anyone you forgot.

What’s next

External workers: the full reference
Team members: invitations, removals and seats
Roles and permissions: what the External Worker role compares with