Best user scenario to create a company account

@shaungbhone I'm a freelancer, but for the app, no matter whether I have a team or I am a freelancer.

Why do you think the first scenario could be the best one ?

I specify that in the last scenario, I only create the company admin account and then the company creates all the collaborators accounts itself.

@vincent15000 Asking him to make the account himself(collaborator) doesn't make you busy. And you can use 2nd scenario as well.

Like :

Not you ! The boss creates the collaborators and assign them roles and the collaborators receive automatically an email.....

@shaungbhone But the second scenario means that I need to display some message after the account has been created. Like I mentioned above.

Hey, thank you for using the app, you have no roles in the app. Either you can pay to use the app with your collaborators, or you can ask your boss to add you in the company group.

Is this really a good idea ?

I'm afraid that some users could find the user experience too difficult doing something like that.

@shaungbhone Sure not me ... it was like a dialog. The boss speaks : "I create ..." (the boss, not me) ;).

@shaungbhone Ok so you suggest me to let the companies subscribe themselves. For the moment I won't integrate any payment system inside the app, so the companies will necessarily need to ask me to pay.

Well ... not easy all this ;).

@shaungbhone Why do you say "company calls you each user" ? why each user ? I don't understand.

@vincent15000 Good luck 🤞

@shaungbhone Thank you ;).

@vincent15000 i mean The company must call you every time they create an account for user. Sorry for my English.😃

@shaungbhone Oh no ... you can read my post again ... the last scenario would be this one : the company who wants to use the app calls me and I create the admin account for this company, then the admin can create all the needed accounts (collaborators, trainers, students, ...) he needs by himself.

I saw an advantage with this scenario that is to control who is using the app.

But a disadvantage would be that if a user wants to connect to test, he can't do that and this can discourage some people to use the app.

@vincent15000 Oh yeah. So admin can busy. This approach is so many steps. I'm not change my recommend. 😃

@shaungbhone That's not false, the admin will be busy, but the admin will necessarily need to attach the different users to the company.

It's easy to let it work automatically by importing an Excel list.

@Zuzuesque Nice idea ... just one precision : I don't have said that a user can have only one role ... a freelance trainer can for example work for two different companies and an admin can for example also be a trainer for its own company.

@vincent15000 How about asking the user to login/create an account during the onboarding process? The company owner sends out a link (or shares it on premise) to sign up. When visiting the link, the app asks people to either create an collaborator account or log in—once they are successfully registered/logged in, the form forwards them to a new page with a button to join the Company as a collaborator (and give them a chance to review what company they are applying to.)

@Zuzuesque Your idea is very good ... I could do something like what you suggest me ... I have to think about all advice.

The only thing which disturbs me a bit is that a collaborator could choose to create an account directly on the app without using the link sent by the admin. Then the collaborator would be in the case of an admin with its own company environment. Same thing for a trainer.

These users could then be inside a sort of chamber where they couldn't do anything until they have paid a subscription (for their own companies) or they have been attached to a company by an admin. This is like your suggestion to let people choose the type of account (admin or collaborator) : if admin, they can test the app, if collaborator, they have to wait to be attached to a company. And if they have used the link sent by their company, they are directly registered as collaborator attached to the company.

I have reformulated, essentially to be sure I have well understood what you suggest me ;).

@vincent15000 No, you got it correctly! Essentially you would have two ways to sign up. One for company owners and one for collaborators. I would even go so far as to only make the company sign-up available up front. I don't think you want collaborators to sign up when there is no company they are attached to, exactly for the reason you mentioned—they couldn't do anything on the site. I wouldn't want to sign up for a service on the off chance my employer might start using it someday.

What it will come down to is to communicate up front that people are registering not just a free user account but a paid company account. I can't imagine a lot of people will sign up for a paid account when they don't mean to evaluate its features from the perspective of a company owner.

@Zuzuesque I often think about a frequent case : a boss says to his collaborators : hey can you please test this app, and if it's ok for you, I will pay to use it in our company. In such a case, it would be perhaps possible to let every new account test the app.

Otherwise, a good solution would probably be to let any new company test the app with 3 or 4 collaborators so that they can check if the app is ok for them.

That's not easy for me, I never had to build this type or scenario.

@vincent15000 Wouldn't they want to test a company account in this case though? Like even if an employer asked a collaborator to test the app... if the collaborator had no company space to work in they couldn't do much testing. Maybe something like a trial plan would work, where they can onboard a limited amount of collaborators to test out basic features. Since there wouldn't be a technical difference between a collaborator account and the account of the company owner, it wouldn't be hard to switch around what account owns the company either.

I don't have much experience programming pure SaaS apps (my current project has some project-scoped multitenacity but is otherwise very different from your use case), but I use a couple. Many, if not all I tested, offered a free plan—whenever permanently free but with very limited amount of resource allotment/functionality or trial deals where you could access all/most functions but only for a limited amount of time. Products which don't offer free plans also sometimes give the option to request a trial account by contacting them, but won't allow creation of trial accounts on the fly (presumably to have less 'dead' accounts and save resources on their end).

@Zuzuesque That's was effectively my first idea to let free access with very limited amount of collaborators, trainers and/or students.

I have thought about what I could do, your advice, ... and I think the better way could probably be :

• everybody can create an account and will be asked to choose if he wants to create a company account or a collaborator account

• each user has the possibility to create a company to test the app

• the admin can create and/or attach collaborators accounts to his company

• the admin and the collaborators can import a list of trainers / students from an Excel file, thus create / attaching the accounts to the company with a many to many relationship

• when a user connects to the app, if he is attached to multiple companies (his own company, the company of the admin, ...), he can choose to work on one or another company and he will be able to delete his own company if he doesn't need it (this will essentially concern the collaborators)

I need to think about a bit more, but I have now a much better visibility ... thanks to you ;).