Admin first-week checklist

A reading guide for the first admin (usually the Owner) inside a brand-new Onplana organization. Eight articles in the order that delivers a working org without surprises: roles set, access hardened, calendars and rates configured, plan understood.

Estimated reading + setup time: two hours, spread across the week as you wait for invitations to come back.

Day 1: name the organization

1. Set up your organization — name, logo, slug, default currency, time zone, working week. These show up everywhere so the few minutes here pay off forever.

Day 2: decide who can do what

2. Understand roles and permissions — Onplana has org-level roles (Owner, Admin, Portfolio Manager, Member, Guest) and a separate project-level role on every project. Read the model end-to-end before you invite anyone; the matrix is configurable per organization, but the defaults are sensible for most teams.

Day 3: harden access

3. Enforce two-factor authentication — the lowest-effort hardening with the biggest impact. Free on every plan. Set the org-level requirement to “required” and admins are forced to enable 2FA on their next sign-in.

4. Configure SSO — if your organization is on Enterprise and your identity provider supports SAML or OIDC. This is the right time to do it; later migration is more painful because every user has a password to migrate.

Day 4: customize the model

5. Create custom roles — the five default roles cover most teams, but Business and above can define their own (Finance Reviewer, Procurement Lead, Customer Success Manager). Define these before you invite people in those roles so the right permissions are in place day one.

6. Configure working calendars — the org-wide working week and holiday list that the Gantt and capacity planner respect. Free on every plan and worth the 10 minutes to align Onplana to your actual working week.

Day 5: get billing right

7. Configure rate cards — the cost and (optionally) billable rates that drive earned-value math. Three scopes: org default, role rate, per-user rate. Configure before the first timesheet week so historical data is priced correctly.

8. Compare plans and upgrade — close the loop on which features you actually need. The Free plan covers a surprising amount; upgrading is one click when you hit a feature gate.

What’s next

After this checklist your org is configured. Natural follow-ons:

• Plan the first project with the PM onboarding bundle.
• Tighten governance if you ship serious programs: Governance on Enterprise covers proposals, gates, and CCB workflows.
• Set up timesheet compliance if you bill for time: Monitor timesheet compliance on Pro and above.

FAQs

Do I need to be the Owner to do this? The Owner has the broadest access (the only role allowed to edit the permissions matrix). An Admin can do most of the checklist; some steps (compare-plans-and-upgrade, custom roles) are Owner-gated by default. The defaults are configurable.

My organization already exists — should I still read this? The checklist is most valuable on day one, but the role-clarity and hardening steps are evergreen. The two-factor and SSO steps in particular are worth a calendar reminder if your org skipped them during setup.

How do I bring on a second admin? Invite them as Admin in Invite your team, then ask them to read Understand roles and permissions so you share a mental model. Two admins in agreement on the matrix is a much calmer org than one admin trying to remember everything.