There is a version of Tuesday morning that every store administrator knows. You have a new staff member starting, which means a record to create. Someone's contact details changed last week, which means a spreadsheet to update. The owner wants to know who was working in March, which means digging through a second spreadsheet, or a folder, or possibly an email thread. And all of this happens before the first customer walks in.

The honest answer is that Daviah does not make all of that go away. Inventory counts, payroll runs, compliance paperwork and supplier invoices are outside what it does — and this guide will say so plainly in a moment. But the part that is about staff records: who is on the list, what changed, who has access to what, and how you move data you already have into one place — that part it does address, and the rest of this guide walks through it concretely.

What Daviah does not cover — say this plainly first

The full weight of store administration includes things Daviah does not touch. Inventory spreadsheets, payroll checks, compliance documents and vendor relationships are not addressed by the platform. If those are the parts of the pile that are breaking you, this guide will not fix that.

The seven roles available in the office describe who can access which parts of the system — Administrator, Management, Office Manager and so on — but having named roles does not, by itself, reduce how much work you are carrying. Distributing access can help with that, but the roles alone are not a solution to admin overload.

What the rest of this guide covers is narrower: keeping staff records clean, tracking what changed and when, and getting existing records into the system without retyping everything.

One record per staff member, with a history behind it

When you sign up as a store, the office uses your words throughout: the people section is called Staff, not Members or Congregation. Each person has their own record, and every change to that record is dated and kept.

That dated history is what makes the difference when the owner asks a question about the past. You are not reconstructing things from memory or cross-referencing two spreadsheets to work out what changed and when — the record shows it.

Changes are written to an append-only audit trail, which means nothing in the history can be quietly edited out. What happened is what the record shows.

Bringing in records you already have

If your staff records already live in a spreadsheet — even a messy one — you do not have to retype them. You can import from a CSV file: columns are matched automatically, and before anything is saved, the system shows you any problems or duplicates it found.

That preview step matters. It means you are not discovering an error after the fact; you see it before it becomes part of your records. You confirm the import only when you are satisfied with what it will create.

After the import, each person has a record in the office that you can update, correct and add to over time.

Who can see what — and who cannot

Not everyone who helps run the store needs access to everything. An administrator can invite other people to help, each with a role that controls what they can reach. Someone given the Website Editor role can update the store's public site without being able to open the staff records or the takings.

That separation means you are not choosing between giving someone too much access and doing everything yourself. You can bring in help for the pieces they need without handing over the whole office.

Each person has their own login. When someone leaves, closing their account removes their name from the records going forward — the organisation's records themselves stay intact.

What the audit trail shows — and why it matters

Manual record-keeping is expensive to fix not just because errors happen but because, by the time you notice one, you cannot always tell when it crept in or who made it. The audit trail addresses that directly: every change is recorded with a timestamp and is written to a log that cannot be altered after the fact.

This is not a report you have to generate — it is a continuous record. When a question comes up later about what a record said at a particular point in time, the answer is there.

What a practical week looks like with these tools in place

A new staff member arrives. You create their record in the office — or if you are onboarding several people at once, you import from the CSV your previous system exported. Either way, there is one place where that person now exists, not three.

Details change: a phone number, an address, a role. You update the record. The previous value and the date of the change are both kept. Six months later when you need to know what the record said in March, it is there.

The parts of your week that involve inventory, payroll, compliance and suppliers will still need their own tools. But the staff records piece — the part that used to mean maintaining a spreadsheet nobody fully trusted — is now one place, with a history, that more than one person can access appropriately.

Questions

Do I have to re-enter all my existing staff records by hand?

No. You can import from a CSV spreadsheet. The system matches columns automatically and shows you any problems or duplicates before anything is saved, so you confirm the import only when you are happy with what it will create.

What happens to the record history if someone corrects a mistake?

Changes are written to an append-only audit trail, which means the previous value and the date of the change are both kept. The history cannot be silently edited after the fact.

Can I give the owner access without giving them my login?

Yes. You can invite other people into the office and give each person a role appropriate to what they need to do. They each sign in with their own account.

Does Daviah help with payroll, inventory or compliance documents?

No. Those are outside what Daviah addresses. This guide covers staff records, record history and importing existing data — not payroll calculations, inventory counts, compliance paperwork or supplier management.

What plan do I need to use the staff records and import tools?

The staff records, audit trail and CSV import are part of the Website and Members plan, which runs month to month at $79.99 per month, or $819.99 per year. There is no contract. Signing up is free and asks for no card.

If someone leaves and I close their account, what happens to the records?

The organisation's records stay intact. That person's name is removed from them going forward, but the records themselves — including the history — remain.

Read next