Getting Started 2 ~ Create Your User Profile

Even if you’re the only team member in your business, you’ll need a “user” account for yourself so you can accurately configure things like your calendar availability, email signature, and more.

And, because Fern CRM is designed to grow as your business grows, this sets you up for an easier transition when you do hire team members and give them their own login to your CRM account.

But one of my favorite ways to use your user accounts is to tame the overwhelm that some users feel when they’re new to Fern CRM. It’s easy to get lost in the sea of features when you’re trying to find the one thing you’re interested in right now.

So let’s tackle all of this and more with a few easy steps.

---

User Accounts In Fern CRM

Every CRM plan ~ Sprout, Tree, and Forest ~ comes with at least 2 user accounts.

The Sprout plan comes with exactly 2 user accounts with the idea that both are intended to be used by you, the account owner. One for your admin account that you’ll only log into as needed, and one for the user who will engage with your audience (also you.) This is the one you’ll normally be logged into and use on a regular (maybe daily) basis.

When your business is successful enough to hire team members like a VA, social media manager, sales page designer, funnel builder, etc., you can upgrade to the Tree plan to unlock more user accounts. We did it this way to keep the Sprout plan as affordable and accessible as possible so we can change the world together.

And when your business outgrows the Tree plan, you can upgrade to a Forest plan and get unlimited user accounts.

If you want to know why you need 2 separate user accounts for yourself, then keep reading. Otherwise, you can skip ahead to Step 1 and just get to it.

There’s 2 reasons for having a separate user and separate login from your main admin account:

1. I’m going to show you a cool trick for hiding the features you’re not ready to use, so that your CRM account doesn’t feel so overwhelming. (Optional of course, not everyone feels the need to tame the overwhelm!)
2. When you start emailing people from your Fern CRM account, the second user account becomes super important for inbox deliverability and email marketing success.

So let’s dive in and create your 2 user accounts!

---

Step 1 ~ Go to “My Profile” in the Settings side

---

Step 2 ~ Add Your Admin User Account

The “My Profile” page looks something like this:

This is your admin account owner information, the one you’re currently logged in as.

The minimum needed to add a user is First Name, Last Name, and Email.

Name

For the name, add something to your name that let’s you know this is your admin account. I recommend using something that you wouldn’t mind your audience seeing, just in case you email someone while logged into your admin account. But also something that’s plain enough that you won’t get to 2 accounts confused.

For example, I might use “Mollie” for the first name and “Founder of Fern CRM” as the last name. That to me would be very clear that this is my admin account because I don’t usually go around calling myself “Founder” when I chat with my audience, but I also wouldn’t cringe if they saw that name.

Email

Use the same email for this user that you use to log into your Fern CRM account. This is the email where verification codes will be sent when you log into your Fern CRM account. If you’d prefer them to be sent via text, add your phone number to the phone field and you’ll have the choice of email or text when logging in.

Profile Image

I’d leave the profile image as the default as a 2nd reminder to me that this isn’t my normal account for engaging with my audience. But feel free to upload an image if it helps your brain!

You don’t need to fill out anything else for the admin account since you’re the only one who will interact with this account. Your followers, customers, clients, and email subscribers will interact with your second user instead so we’ll go into more detail with that one.

Email Signature

I recommend filling out your email signature just in case you accidentally engage with users while logged into this account. (It’s hard to resist sometimes before you realize who you’re logged in as!)

When you’re ready, click the “Update Profile” button which will show up as bright blue once you’ve filled out the minimum requirements. Make sure to click this button when you’re done, this is the official Save button for the name, email, etc. fields.

---

Step 3 ~ Add The User Who Will Engage With Your Audience

Because you added your admin account in the steps above, you’ll see that user in your list of staff members:

Click on the big blue button that says “+Add Employee” to get to the new user profile settings:

Profile image

This is the user account that will regularly engage with your audience, so give it a profile image that helps you remember this is your engagement account. For example, a photo of your lovely face would be best!

Name

Enter the First Name and Last Name you’d want your audience to see. Most of the time, you can choose to add whatever name you want in each individual feature, but this is the name they’d typically see when choosing you from a list of team members to book a call with or when you’re engaging with them in your communities, and things like that.

Email

When it’s time to set up your Fern CRM email engine (for amazing inbox deliverability), we’ll come back here and change the email address to match your email engine email address.

So for now, just enter any email you don’t mind your audience seeing, that’s different from the email you use to log into your admin account. For example, this would be a great time to use your support email address if you have one!

This is the email you’ll use to login to your Fern CRM account on a regular basis, but you can change it at any time. This is also the email where verification codes will be sent when you log into your Fern CRM account. If you’d prefer them to be sent via text, add your phone number to the phone field and you’ll have the choice of email or text when logging in.

Phone Number

Ok, this one is optional now, but will become important later, when you set up your email engine. Add your phone number to this user account if you want to get login verification codes sent via text instead of email. If you don’t want to use your actual phone number, you can always sign up for a free Google Voice number and use that. Again, it’s optional for now. But if you’re planning to use the email features right away, then add it now and you can always change it later.

Password

Click on “Advanced Settings >” under the email field to open a submenu where you can create the password for this user. This is the password you’ll use to log into your Fern CRM account on a regular basis, but you can change it at any time.

Signature

We’ll skip the Calendar setting for now and come back to it if/when you start using the Calendar features. Instead, scroll down to the email signature section.

Start by toggling the switch on to “Enable signature on all outgoing messages.” (It’s on in the screenshot.)

Then add whatever email signature you like. In many regions, there are legal requirements about what’s included in the footer of every email (like your business address and an unsubscribe link.) You can use this signature feature to add those things here and include them in every email. We already set up your unsubscribe link in your business settings (Step 1), so just add the other stuff for now.

---

Roles & Permissions

When you’re ready, click on the “Roles & Permissions” link in the left menu (not the left sidebar, just the list of links that’s to the left.)

Where it says “User Role” you can either change it by clicking on the dropdown menu and changing “Admin” to “User” if you like or you can keep it as an admin role. (The only real difference is what it says in your “My Staff” listing.)

Ok, this is where we’re going to get clever and hide as many features as you want until you’re ready to see them/learn them/use them. This will make navigating your CRM account so much easier and calmer.

If you don’t want to hide any features and “tame the overwhelm” then click here to jump to the steps for being able to see/use everything: Show Me Everything!

Go through the list of permissions and uncheck any you don’t want to see/learn/use right now. (You can always come back here and turn them back on, so go crazy!)

Here’s what I’d recommend:

1. Choose the features that are most important to you right now. Start with just one or 2 like maybe the Social Media Planner and getting DMs in your all-in-one inbox.
2. Keep the Account Settings turned on (all of them) plus all of Contacts, Conversations, Integrations, and Medias.
3. Turn off ALL of the following unless they fall into the few features you want to use right away:
   • Account Tools
   • Automations
   • Blogs
   • Calendars
   • Certificates
   • Communities
   • Dashboard
   • Funnels
   • Marketing (keep Social Planner if that’s one of the features you want to use right away)
   • Memberships
   • Opportunities
   • Payments (unless you want to use Fern CRM to accept payments right away, then keep all of this one checked.)
   • Reputations
   • WordPress

When you’re done making your selections, click the blue “Save” button at the bottom of the list.

Skip to this section to continue: Additional Settings

---

If You Don’t Want To Tame Your Account

Here’s what you need to know if you’re choosing to keep your visibility and access to everything:

A few notes about specific permissions:

• “View & manage eliza” is turned off by default. This is an AI feature that you’re welcome to turn on and use if you like. Additional charges may apply. (See the pricing Help Doc for specifics.)
• Under “Automation,” the options for “View campaigns” and “View workflows” is shaded out by default and not clickable if “View and manage campaigns/workflows” is clicked on. In other words you can either choose view-only or view-and-manage, not both.
• Under “Dashboard,” check the box for “View attribution” (to turn it on.)

Everything else should already be selected, so you’re good to go!

If you made any changes, the Save button in the bottom right will become bright blue and be clickable. Click Save to save your changes.

---

Additional Settings

You don’t need to fill out anything in the following sections until later when you’re setting up your phone integrations and/or calendars. We’ll tackle those sections when it’s time:

• Call & Voicemail Settings
• User Availability
• Calendar Configuration

---

Next Steps

That’s it! You made it through the introductory steps to setting up your Fern CRM account for success!

I recommend logging out of your current admin account and logging into your engagement user account using the email and password you set up just now.

If you run into any issues logging into the new user account, simply log back into your admin account and open the user’s profile in “My Staff” and change whatever needs changed. Then try logging into your engagement user account again.

Get in the habit of being logged into your engagement user instead of the admin account until you need to make changes that your engagement user doesn’t have access to. (Like adding more features back via the Permissions checklist.)

Congrats! Enjoy your new streamlined Fern CRM experience!

---