Setting Up Your First TheDeskMonitor Tenant: 15-Minute Walkthrough

Before You Start: What You Will Need

• A business email address (personal Gmail/Outlook accounts work for trials but use a business email for production)
• The number of employees you plan to monitor (determines which plan to select)
• Your employees' email addresses (for invitations)
• 15 minutes

TheDeskMonitor is a multi-tenant SaaS platform — your company's data is isolated in its own "tenant," a secure container with its own settings, users, and reporting. This walkthrough covers setting up a new tenant from scratch.

Step 1: Register and Create Your Tenant (2 minutes)

1. Go to thedeskmonitor.com/register
2. Enter your business email, create a password (12+ characters, at least one number and one special character), and enter your company name
3. Verify your email — you will receive a verification link immediately. If it does not arrive in 60 seconds, check your spam folder.
4. After verification, you are taken to the TheDeskMonitor dashboard. Your tenant is created and you are the first administrator.

Your tenant ID (e.g., DSKV2-000099) is shown in the top-right menu. This ID identifies your company's data and is used in support requests.

Step 2: Configure Basic Tenant Settings (3 minutes)

Before adding employees, configure your tenant settings at Settings > Company Settings:

• Timezone — critical for accurate shift reporting. Set this to your main office timezone (or your team's primary timezone for fully remote teams).
• Currency — used for payroll calculations and cost reporting
• Standard working hours — the default daily hours target (e.g., 8.0). This is the denominator in utilisation calculations.
• Week start day — Monday is the default; adjust if your payroll period uses a different start day.
• Monitoring notice — GDPR/compliance: TheDeskMonitor provides a default monitoring notice template. Review it, add your company name, and confirm it is accurate for your jurisdiction before inviting employees.

Step 3: Set Up Your Subscription (1 minute)

Your 14-day trial includes all features and supports up to 10 employees. After the trial period, or when you want to add more than 10 employees, go to Billing > Subscription and select a plan based on your employee count.

Plans are priced by employee count (not per-user per-feature). Switching between plans takes effect immediately; no data is lost when upgrading or downgrading. See full pricing details.

Step 4: Add Your First Employees (3 minutes)

Go to Users > Invite Users and enter the email addresses of your team members. You can add them one at a time or paste a comma-separated list. For each user, assign a role:

• Employee — can view their own data and clock in/out
• Manager — can view their team's data, approve timesheets, and run reports
• Administrator — full access to all settings, all employee data, and billing

Each invited user receives an email with a secure onboarding link. The link expires in 48 hours. When they click it, they create their own password and are taken through the employee onboarding flow — including the monitoring notice confirmation step (required for GDPR compliance).

Step 5: Install the TheDeskMonitor Agent (4 minutes)

The TheDeskMonitor desktop agent is the lightweight background application that captures activity data. Employees install it from the link provided in their onboarding email, or from the Download page at thedeskmonitor.com/download.

Windows (most common):

1. Download the DeskAgent Windows installer (.exe)
2. Run the installer — it requires administrator privileges for the first install only
3. When prompted, log in with your TheDeskMonitor credentials
4. The agent appears in the system tray. A green icon means it is connected and tracking.

macOS: Coming Soon

macOS DeskAgent is not yet available. Check /download for current platform status.

Mobile (Android APK):

Download the TheDeskMonitor Android APK directly from /download. Log in with your TheDeskMonitor credentials. iOS App Store and Google Play listings are coming soon. For mobile-only teams (field service, delivery), the mobile app is the primary agent — desktop agent is not required.

Step 6: Configure Schedules (2 minutes)

For shift-based teams, set up schedules at Scheduling > Shifts. You can create named shift templates (e.g., "Morning Shift 8am–4pm") and assign them to employees by day. Schedules enable:

• Automatic attendance alerts (late arrivals, absences)
• Overtime calculation (hours beyond scheduled shift)
• Shift-based payroll calculation

For fully flexible remote teams without fixed schedules, you can skip this step and rely on clock-in/out times directly.

Step 7: Verify Your First Clock-In (1 minute)

Ask one of your invited employees (or test yourself by switching to an Employee role account) to clock in via the TheDeskMonitor agent. On desktop: click the system tray icon and select "Clock In." On mobile: open the app and tap the clock-in button (or say "Hey Google, clock me in to TheDeskMonitor").

After clocking in, check your administrator dashboard — you should see the employee listed as "Active" with a green status indicator. The real-time attendance view updates every 60 seconds by default.

What to Do Next

After your first successful clock-in, explore these features in your first week:

• Reports > Timesheets — review the daily timesheet report. This is the view you will use most frequently for payroll preparation.
• Reports > Productivity — set up role productivity profiles for your team to enable the Productivity Ratio metric (see our guide to the Productivity Ratio)
• Settings > Monitoring — review screenshot and activity capture settings. All non-default monitoring features require employee notification before enabling.
• Payroll > Export — review the payroll export format and map it to your payroll system. Test with a short pay period before your first live export.

For further setup guidance, visit the TheDeskMonitor Help Center or contact support from within the dashboard.