Create your workspace

An account gets you into Monument, but it doesn't give you anywhere to work yet. That's what an organisation is: your firm's actual workspace, the container every project, person and invoice lives inside. We'll build Northlight Architects as a fresh organisation. The separate demo company tutorial shows how to explore with sample data first.

Two ideas worth knowing before you click anything

You and your firm are different records. Your login is personal and stays yours; the organisation is shared. When colleagues join later, they're joining the organisation, so everyone sees the same projects and data, not a copy of yours.

One login, several organisations. Nothing stops a single account from belonging to more than one organisation, and switching between them is a menu click away. That's exactly how a real firm and a throwaway demo company coexist under the same login, and how a consultant working across two practices hops between both. Each organisation's data stays completely separate from the others.

Land on the setup wizard

A fresh account has nowhere to go yet, so Monument drops you straight into its setup wizard: choose demo company or start from scratch first, before anything is created.

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   After signing up, you land on the wizard's first step: Demo company or Start from scratch.

Try it first with a demo company

Before committing to your real firm, it's worth knowing this option exists: a demo company is a separate organisation, pre-populated with sample projects, staff, time and invoices, that you can poke around in without touching anything real.

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   Choose Demo company on the first wizard step.

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   Answer two short steps: your organisation's name and country, then a work profile, industries, how many people, and how many teams and offices.

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   Click Create demo company. The demo path stops there: it never asks for office or team names, roles, templates or staff.

A demo company behaves exactly like a real organisation. Explore it, break things, delete it later, and it never touches your firm's actual data.

Build your firm's organisation

For your actual practice, the same wizard continues past the work profile: it collects how new projects plan their financial target, names your offices and teams if you have more than one of either, asks which roles you use and their rates, offers project templates, then places every person, you included, on a team before creating anything.

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   Choose Start from scratch, then enter Northlight Architects as the organisation name.

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   Choose Architecture and set Number of people to one. Keep one team and one office.

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   Keep the twenty percent profit target and the Monday to Friday work week, eight thirty to five thirty with an hour for lunch.

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   Skip the suggested roles and project templates for this example. Later lessons add them explicitly.

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   On Add your team, confirm Sarah Chen is the only person, then click Create organisation.

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   Wait for Northlight Architects to open. Close the first-project dialog, return Home and confirm the organisation is active.

Regional formats, branding and financial-year start still wait for you in Settings, but the setup wizard itself now covers your practice defaults, roles, templates and team, not just a name.

You're not landing in a truly empty firm, either: Monument adds you as the organisation's first staff member automatically, tied to your login. Sarah is already on Northlight's staff list from this single step, schedulable and able to log time with no further setup. Building out the rest of the team comes later, in Set your team's availability and Invite your team.

Switching between organisations

Because one login can hold several organisations, moving between them is always available, whether that's a demo company alongside your real firm, or two firms you work across.

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   Click your initials at the bottom of the navigation rail.

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   Under Your Organisations, the one you're currently in is marked Active.

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   Click any other organisation to switch. Monument makes it the active workspace and takes you to Home; the app stays mounted, it doesn't reload.

The same menu also lets you spin up another organisation or another demo company whenever you like.

Troubleshooting

• Keep experiments in a demo company. If you want to poke around and break things, that's what it's for. Your firm's organisation isn't disposable the same way.
• Invited colleagues land on this same screen. Someone you invite signs up with the invited email, then returns to the secure invitation page to accept, rather than creating an organisation of their own.
• Deleting an organisation is permanent. It wipes that organisation's projects, people and history for good. Delete demo companies freely; think twice about anything real.

Where this fits next

You've got a workspace. Find your way around Monument next, to map out where things live. When you're ready to bring colleagues in, see Invite your team, and for firm-wide defaults, Organisation setup.