Pre-Session 1 Homework Follow
(01) Admin → Departments (Employees)
The Departments table is used to create and manage the departments that employees are assigned to within Midnight. Departments should represent the functional areas of your business where employees work.
View the training recording here: ▶️ Departments
Important: Departments are assigned to employees and should not be confused with Service Types (also known as Production Departments). Departments are used for employee tracking and reporting, while Service Types are used to categorize services for estimating, production, and job costing.
(02) Admin → Employees
The Employees screen is used to manage employee records within Midnight. Employee records are utilized throughout the system for scheduling, reporting, ShopFloor data collection, job tracking, security, workflow assignments, and labor-related activities.
Administrators can add new employees, edit existing employee information, deactivate employees who are no longer active, assign security permissions, and configure employee-specific settings.
Keeping employee records up to date helps ensure accurate scheduling, reporting, workflow management, and system security.
View the training recording here: ▶️ Employees
Please Note: As part of the Midnight Access process, the 02) Midnight_Employee_Import template was imported with your employee list; however, all employees except the implementation champion were imported as Inactive. This approach allows the implementation champion to learn and test the employee activation process, verify employee information, and ensure employees are prepared to receive the automated Midnight Access email that is sent when the Midnight Access option is enabled. All employees should be reviewed, activated, assigned the appropriate security roles, and granted access before Go-Live.
For additional information see the Midnight Knowledge Base article: Employees.
Admin → Security
This menu contains two setup options used to control user access and permissions within Midnight.
View the training recording here: ▶️ Security
Security is a critical component of configuring Midnight and determines which areas of the application each user can access.
Together, Create Roles and Create Role Rights provide the foundation for Midnight's security structure, allowing organizations to control user access and ensure employees only have access to the tools and information required for their job responsibilities.
Best Practice: Start by assigning users to one of Midnight's pre-defined roles, then customize the role's permissions through Create Role Rights as needed. This approach simplifies security management while ensuring users have appropriate access throughout the system.
Admin → Create Role
The Create Roles screen allows administrators to create and manage security roles within the system. Roles are used to group users with similar job functions and security requirements, making it easier to manage permissions across the organization.
Each role can be assigned to one or more employees and determines which modules, screens, and system functions users can access. Common examples include CSR, Estimator, Production Manager, Accounting, Warehouse, and Administrator roles.
Using roles helps ensure consistent security settings, simplifies user administration, and allows access to be managed at a role level rather than individually for each user.
Note: Creating a role only adds the role name to the system. The new role will not have any permissions until they are configured in Admin Settings > Security > Create Role Rights. After creating a role, you should immediately configure its security permissions before assigning it to users.
Admin → Create RoleRight
- Select the role you want to edit.
- Choose the desired Security Level:
- Module: Controls access to entire modules or areas of Midnight.
- Page: Controls access to specific screens or pages within a module.
- Field/Control: Controls access to individual fields, buttons, and controls within a screen.
After selecting the security level, you can grant or restrict access by checking or unchecking the appropriate permissions.
For example, a Sales Representative may need access to the CRM, Estimates, and Orders modules, but may not require access to Admin, Accounting, or other system configuration areas. By configuring the role's permissions appropriately, administrators can ensure users have access only to the functions necessary for their job responsibilities.
The Page and Field/Control security levels provide additional granularity, allowing administrators to restrict specific screens, fields, buttons, or actions without removing access to an entire module.
Best Practice: Start by configuring permissions at the Module level, then use Page and Field/Control permissions only when more detailed access restrictions are required. This approach makes security management easier while maintaining appropriate access controls throughout the system.
Assigning Security Roles to Employees
Once Security Roles have been created and configured, they can be assigned to employees through the Permissions tab of the Employee record.
Assigning a Security Role grants the employee access to the modules, screens, and functions defined by that role's associated Role Rights. This allows administrators to manage system security consistently across multiple users without having to configure permissions individually.
(03) Admin → Estimate/Order → Terms
The Terms table maintains the payment terms available for estimates and orders. Payment Terms define when payment is due and communicate payment expectations to customers.
View the training recording here: ▶️ Terms
Common examples include Due Upon Receipt, Net 15, Net 30, Net 45, Net 60, and other organization-specific payment arrangements.
Payment Terms are commonly assigned to customer records and flow automatically to estimates and orders, helping ensure consistency in billing and collections.
The following fields are available:
- Code – The payment term code.
- Description – A description of the payment term.
- Days Till Due – The number of days before payment is due.
- Active – Indicates whether the payment term is available for use.
Terms are assigned to a customer record in the CRM.
Terms are assigned to a vendor record in the Purchasing / Vendors tab.
View the training recording here: ▶️ Tax Codes and Tax Jurisdictions
(04) Admin → Estimate/Order → Tax Codes
In Midnight MIS, taxes are configured using two core components:
- Tax Codes – Define individual tax rates, such as state, county, city, or special district taxes.
- Tax Jurisdictions – Group one or more Tax Codes together to determine the total tax applied to an estimate or order based on the Tax Jurisdiction assigned to the customer.
This structure allows organizations to support locations where multiple tax rates must be combined to calculate the total tax due.
A Tax Code represents a single tax rate. One Tax Code should be created for each individual tax rate, and the Code value must be unique for each Tax Code (maximum 10 characters).
Proper configuration of Tax Codes and Tax Jurisdictions helps ensure accurate tax calculations, reporting, and compliance with local tax requirements.
The following fields are available:
- Code – The tax code identifier.
- Description – A description of the tax code.
- Percent – The tax percentage applied when this tax code is used.
- GLID – The revenue account associated with the tax code.
- Inv Item – The accounting item code associated with the tax code.
- Payable Act – The payable account associated with collected tax amounts.
- Service Tax – Indicates whether service charges are taxable.
- Postage Tax – Indicates whether postage charges are taxable.
- Active – Indicates whether the tax code is available for use.
(05) Admin → Estimate/Order → Tax Jurisdictions
The Tax Jurisdictions table are collections of one or more tax codes that are grouped together and assigned to your customer records. Because sales tax may consist of a single tax rate or multiple tax rates (such as state, county, city, or special district taxes), jurisdictions provide a way to combine those tax codes into a single tax structure that can be applied automatically during estimating, order entry, and invoicing.
To create a new Tax Jurisdiction select the Select Tax Jurisdiction dropdown and choose Add.
The following fields are available:
- Name – The name of the tax jurisdiction.
- State – The state associated with the jurisdiction.
- Description – A description of the jurisdiction.
- Active – Indicates whether the jurisdiction is available for use.
(06) Purchasing → Vendors
The Vendors table is used to store and manage information about the suppliers, manufacturers, subcontractors, and service providers your company purchases from. Maintaining accurate vendor records helps streamline purchasing processes, support inventory management, improve job costing accuracy, and provide better visibility into vendor relationships.
Vendor records can be added, edited, or deactivated as needed.
View the training recording here: ▶️ Vendors
The Vendor Search screen provides access to all vendor records stored in Midnight.
The following fields are displayed on the Vendor Search screen:
- Vendor: The name of the vendor.
- Code: The vendor code used by Midnight to uniquely identify the vendor.
- Vendor ID: A unique, system-generated identifier assigned to each vendor record in Midnight.
- Address: The vendor's street address.
- City: The city where the vendor is located.
- State: The state where the vendor is located.
- Phone: The vendor's primary phone number or the phone number of the vendor contact.
- Active: Indicates whether the vendor record is currently active.
New Vendor
The following fields are available on the Vendor Details tab:
- Vendor Name:
- Contact Name: The primary contact person at the vendor.
- Address: The vendor's street address.
- City: The city where the vendor is located.
- St/Prov: The state or province where the vendor is located.
- Zip/Postal: The vendor's ZIP code or postal code.
- Country: The country where the vendor is located.
- Company: Identifies the company within Midnight that the vendor record belongs to. In multi-company environments, the appropriate company should be selected when creating or maintaining vendor records.
- Code: The unique vendor code used to identify the vendor.
- Phone: The vendor's primary phone number or the phone number of the designated contact.
- Fax: The vendor's fax number.
- Email: The email address of the vendor contact.
- URL: The vendor's website address.
- Terms: The payment terms associated with the vendor.
- Active: Indicates whether the vendor is active and available for use within the system.
- Vendor ID: A unique, system-generated identifier assigned to each vendor record in Midnight.
Extended Search
The Extended Search section provides additional filtering options that allow users to locate vendor records using custom vendor fields and more specific search criteria. This is especially useful for organizations that utilize Vendor User Defined Fields to track additional information that is not included in the standard vendor search fields.
Users can select up to three User Defined Fields and specify corresponding values to narrow the search results.
(07) Admin → CRM → Customer Types
The Customer Types table defines the categories used to classify customer records within Midnight. These classifications help distinguish between different types of organizations and track the relationship status of each account.
View the training recording here: ▶️ Customer Types
Common examples include Customer, Prospect, Reseller, or other business-specific classifications. Customer Types provide a way to organize and segment customer records based on how your organization interacts with those accounts.
When creating or editing a customer record, a Customer Type can be assigned to indicate the account's role within your organization. Consistent use of Customer Types can improve reporting, customer segmentation, and account management processes.
Note: Midnight's standard Customer List Reports are designed to report on Customer Types of Customer and Prospect. If additional Customer Types are created and reporting is required for those values, a custom report may be needed.
The following fields are available:
- Name – The name of the customer classification.
- Active – Indicates whether the Customer Type is available for use when creating or editing customer records.
(08) CRM → Customers
View the training recording here: ▶️ CRM
(09) Admin → Service Types
The fields on the screen are as follows:
- Code – two digit code to be used in linking services to the correct department or service type
- Name – display name of the department to be seen in estimates and orders and on reports
- Sort – order in which the department tabs will be displayed
- Icon – a way to visually identify service types easier
- Color – assign a color to easily find service types
- Kiosk Hide – flag to indicate services from this department will not be displayed on the kiosk for job costing purposes
- Active – flag to indicate whether or not the department/service type is currently in use
- Edit – Standard edit functionality
- Delete – Standard delete functionality
You can create as many or as few Service Types as needed. The structure of your Service Types should reflect how you want to organize your workflow and how information should be grouped on estimates, work orders, invoices, and management reports.
For optimal reporting, we recommend maintaining no more than 10 active Service Types whenever possible and assigning each a sort order between 1 and 10. The Sales: By Customer / Service Type report is designed to display up to ten Service Types.