Getting started with Helia: from sign-in to first invoice

What you need before you start

Ten minutes, a work email, and — optionally — the spreadsheet where your people data lives today. That's it. The trial runs 14 days with every module switched on and no card, so you can evaluate the whole product, not a crippled demo.

If you keep people in Excel or Google Sheets, export it as CSV before you start — any column layout works, you'll map columns during import.

Step 1 — Create your workspace

Go to the sign-in page and continue with Google or a magic link to your work email (no password to invent; you can add one later in settings if you want a fallback).

On first sign-in Helia asks for the basics:

• Company name — how your workspace and documents are titled.
• Country and currency — drives public-holiday calendars and how money is displayed (EUR and USD supported for client invoicing).
• What kind of company you are — services (you bill clients for people's time) or product. Services mode switches on the Delivery pack: projects, the capacity matrix, timesheets and client invoicing. You can change this later in Settings → Organization.

You land on a dashboard with a setup checklist that tracks the remaining steps — you don't need to remember this guide.

Step 2 — Import your people

Settings → Employees → Import CSV (or the setup checklist's import step):

1. Upload or paste your CSV — any reasonable column names work.
2. Map columns — Helia guesses (name, email, role, hire date, department) and shows a preview; fix anything it guessed wrong.
3. Review the preview rows and confirm. Import is idempotent by email — re-running it updates instead of duplicating.

Two fields worth getting right on day one:

• Manager — builds your org chart automatically (you can also drag people around later).
• Billable — for services companies: engineers, designers and QA are billable; HR, sales and admin are overhead. This flag drives utilization math and the $9 Delivery price (overhead people ride free).

No CSV? Add people one by one — the form takes ~20 seconds per person.

Step 3 — Switch on your packs

Settings → Modules lists every pack with what it contains and its price. During the trial everything is on; before paying, switch off what you don't need — the sidebar updates instantly, and the pricing calculator shows exactly what your selection will cost.

Helia Base (directory, org chart, time off, search, notifications) is always on — it's the $3/employee core everything else builds on.

Step 4 — Set your time-off policy

Settings → Time off: vacation quota, sick-day rules, who approves what, and carryover. Public holidays for your country are pre-loaded (UA · PL · RO · EE and others) and excluded from working-day math automatically.

Approvals are relationship-aware out of the box: managers approve their own team, HR approves anyone, and nobody approves their own request.

Step 5 — Invite the team

Each employee card has Invite — the person gets an email and signs in with Google or a magic link. Roles decide what they see:

• Owner / Admin — everything, including billing.
• HR manager — people data, PII fields, time-off approvals, reports.
• Manager — their team's requests, 1-on-1s, reviews.
• Employee — their own profile, time off, timesheets, and the company directory.
• Accountant — payroll exports, invoices and reimbursements without the HR surface.

PII stays role-gated (salary and personal fields are HR-only and access-logged), so inviting everyone is safe by design — that's the point of not running HR in a spreadsheet.

For services companies — projects, capacity, timesheets

If you chose services, three more steps turn Helia into your delivery cockpit:

1. Customers and projects — create a client, add a project, set the currency and rates, assign a delivery manager.
2. Assignments — put people on projects with an allocation percentage. The capacity matrix (Projects → Capacity) becomes your live who-does-what: bench row, over-booking flags, a 12-week forecast.
3. Timesheets — people log hours per project per day, or you connect Jira and logged work arrives as drafts. A manager reviews and locks the week.

The first invoice

Invoices → Bill a month drafts an invoice for every active billable project from its locked hours — or open one project and generate just its invoice. Each draft shows the lines (hours × rate, or fixed amounts), VAT handling and due date; you can edit lines before sending.

Send it as a PDF download or email the client a secure link directly from Helia. Paid/overdue status then feeds the receivables view, so chasing late invoices stops being a memory exercise.

Where to go next

• The guides cover the deeper topics: capacity planning, billing from timesheets, utilization benchmarks.
• The glossary defines every term you'll meet in the product.
• Stuck or unsure whether Helia fits your setup? Write to the founder directly: hello@heliahr.com — real answers, no ticket queue.