Why not to share users and passwords

Dec 17, 2012 | CounterGo Tips, JobTracker Tips

If you’re the main administrator of your JobTracker or CounterGo system, you should make sure that each person in your office is truly a separate user. Although it’s technically possible to share users, it’s a bad idea. Here are a few reasons why.

  1. Password reset. The most basic reason why it’s useful to have a unique user for each person is to make it easy to reset your password. When you’re configuring each user, you can (and should) enter their email address. This lets them reset their password automatically.
  2. Change log. Although you will closely supervise & train new employees, a unique login makes it easier to identify what each user is doing. And, although you never expect your users to maliciously change or delete information, the change log will let you know if that happens.
  3. Non-administrator users. We’ve seen (especially at smaller companies) that multiple people log in as the single “admin” user. To simplify what each person can see, you can create users that don’t have admin access. If there are too many cooks in the kitchen, your jobs and quotes might end up with a hodge-podge of custom fields.
  4. Security. Sharing passwords isn’t secure, especially if this is combined with admin access. If an employee leaves, they’ll have the “keys to the kingdom” and be able to log in. It’s usually safer to have only the user know the password and rely on automated password reset in case they forget.
  5. Login locations. Although it’s an advanced feature, it’s possible to limit which users can log in from which locations.
  6. “Myself” shortcut. For each user in JobTracker, you can create a shortcut so that it’s easy to make yourself the assignee on an activity or the salesperson for a quote or job.
  7. Inconvenience. In CounterGo, you can only be logged in as a user from one place at one time. If you’re causing your users to waste their time waiting for another user to finish working, you probably should consider what that lost productivity is costing you and compare it to the price of additional users.

Even though you might think that sharing usernames and passwords is convenient, it really adds a lot of risk.

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing and estimating software. JobTracker is job scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.