Questions and answers

Synhelm is one place to run a contracting or field-service shop: your crew clock in from their phones, every job keeps its own time, tasks, safety sheets, photos, files, notes, and chat, and estimates turn into jobs and invoices without retyping.

It's built for small shops — owners who still go to site — and grows to bigger crews with Synhelm Pro and Synhelm Enterprise.

Each business has one crew link and a QR code (Settings → Crew & time clock). Crew open it on their phone, tap their name, and enter their PIN. No app store, no email accounts.

A PIN only signs in the person it belongs to. After too many wrong PINs the portal pauses for about 15 minutes.

Once signed in, a phone stays signed in — closing the browser or locking the phone doesn't sign them out. Changing someone's PIN or archiving them signs out their phones.

No QR handy? Crew can open synhelm.ca/crew and type the business name. After that, that address and "Add to Home Screen" open straight to your crew app. The office signs in at synhelm.ca/app.

On crew home: Clock in → pick the job → answer the safety sheet → done. Switch job moves them to another job in one step; breaks pause the clock.

The time lives on Synhelm's server, not on the phone. If the phone locks, the app closes, or the battery dies, they're still on the clock. When they come back, crew home shows the job they're on.

Tapping twice never makes two shifts.

If a punch can't reach the office, it's saved on the phone with the time they tapped and sent by itself when the signal comes back. Crew home shows "punch is saved on this phone" until it's sent.

Photos taken without signal wait on the phone the same way and send when the signal is back. If a send fails three times with signal, it waits for Try again or Remove, so nothing is lost silently.

Any screen already opened on the phone opens again with no signal: crew home, the job's scope, tasks, photos, files, and chat as last seen.

Blueprints: open the job's drawings and tap Save for offline, and every current sheet opens with no signal. Sheets opened once are kept too. Synhelm keeps at most about 60 MB of drawings per phone and drops the oldest first.

Until a saved punch sends, the office still sees the shift as it was.

With location stamps on (Synhelm Pro, Settings → Crew & time clock), Synhelm records where the phone was at the moment of clock-in, clock-out, a job switch, or a photo — only if the phone allows location.

Synhelm does not track anyone in between. Crew don't see coordinates; the office sees a map link on the entry.

Books → Estimates → New: pick the client (or + New client… at the top of the list), add categories and lines, discount, deposit, tax, and terms. Totals update as you type.

At the top: Send emails it, the download button saves the PDF, and the printer prints that same PDF — exactly what the client receives. When the client says yes, the Won the work? bar turns it into a job, an invoice, or both — no line is typed twice.

On Synhelm Pro, clients can approve an estimate online with their name and signature.

Settings → Accessibility (office) or Accessibility on crew home. They're saved on that device, so each person can set up their own phone or computer.

• Text size: Standard, Large, or Larger — words, buttons, and spacing all grow.
• Reduce motion: turns off sliding and fading. If your device already asks for less motion, it's off automatically.
• Stronger contrast: darker secondary text and borders, underlined links, and a thicker keyboard outline.
• Vibration: a short buzz when you clock in or out, save a photo, or finish a task. iPhones and most computers don't let websites vibrate; the message on screen is always there too.

Every request is checked on Synhelm's server: who is signed in, which business they belong to, and what they're allowed to open. A business can never see another business's clients, jobs, crew, photos, files, or paper, and hiding a button is never the only protection.

Office admins only reach the areas the owner turned on for them. Crew only see their own hours and the jobs they're on.

Synhelm staff can't see your password and can't sign in as you. When Synhelm support opens a business to help, it's view-only unless they turn on a time-limited edit mode with a reason, and every step is logged.

Your records are yours. Export a client as a ZIP, timesheets as CSV, and paper as PDF any time — on every plan.

Settings → Data → Delete our information: everything for the business is removed after 30 days. You can cancel until then.

Synhelm Free: up to 5 crew and 1 GB, with the core app. Synhelm Pro: up to 25 crew, 25 GB, office admins, and automation. Synhelm Enterprise: up to 100 crew, 100 GB, locations, payroll periods, and crew-lead approvals.

One price per shop, not per person, in US or Canadian dollars, euros, pounds, or Australian dollars. The full comparison is in Settings → Your account and on the pricing page.

If you cancel or move down, you go to Synhelm Free. Nothing is deleted: jobs, hours, photos, paper, and history stay, and you can export them. Everyone already on the crew keeps working; you just can't add more than the plan allows.