Setting Up AskVAVA for Your Organisation

Supervisor vs Admin

Supervisor is designed for team leads who need full operational control — HR, scheduling, documents — but shouldn't be able to change org-wide settings like billing or company details. Use it for department heads and line managers.

Finance role

Finance is scoped exclusively to financial data. Assign it to bookkeepers or accountants who need full access to invoices, payroll, and reports but should not see employee records, HR workflows, or org settings.

• Payroll grouping — run payroll for a single department or all at once
• Document visibility — the Department tier restricts document access to members of the same department
• Roster scheduling — departments define which employees are shown in the weekly roster planner
• Reporting — filter financial and HR reports by department

Create top-level departments (e.g. Operations, Finance, Sales) with optional sub-departments beneath them (e.g. Operations → Logistics, Operations → Fulfilment). There is no depth limit.

• Go to Settings → Departments → Add Department
• To create a sub-department, select a parent when creating it
• Rename or archive departments at any time — archiving hides them from dropdowns but retains historical data

Supported categories: Full-time, Part-time, Contract, Internship. Categories affect:

• Leave entitlement rules — e.g. interns may not accrue annual leave
• Payroll calculations — part-time and contract workers may have different statutory contribution rules
• CPF/EPF eligibility — full-time vs contract distinction matters for statutory contributions

Upgrading your plan

Go to Settings → Billing → Upgrade. You will be redirected to a Stripe checkout page. Upgrade takes effect immediately after payment confirmation.

Usage limits

When you reach a plan cap — for users, documents, or queries — new creation is blocked with an upgrade prompt. Existing data is never deleted when you hit a cap. Downgrading may hide records from view, but they are not removed.

Stripe customer portal

Manage your payment card, download past invoices, or cancel your subscription from Settings → Billing → Manage Subscription. This opens the Stripe customer portal in a new tab.

Two-way sync with Xero and QuickBooks. Invoices, bills, and journal entries flow in both directions — changes in AskVAVA appear in your accounting platform and vice versa.

• Sync invoices from AskVAVA to Xero automatically on approval
• Pull in supplier bills from QuickBooks for matching in AskVAVA
• Journal entries created in AskVAVA can be pushed to your accounting platform at month end

Accept payments from customers via HitPay or Stripe Connect. Payment links are embedded in invoices automatically once connected.

• HitPay supports PayNow, credit cards, and BNPL in Singapore
• Stripe Connect supports global card payments and local payment methods
• Payments received are marked against the invoice automatically

Connect Shopify or WooCommerce to automatically convert orders into AskVAVA invoices.

• New orders in your store appear as draft invoices in AskVAVA within minutes
• Customer records are created or matched automatically
• Useful for reconciling e-commerce revenue in your accounting module

What is logged

All CRUD operations across employees, payroll, invoices, documents, settings, and more. Each entry shows the user, action type (created / updated / deleted), timestamp, and the before/after values where applicable.

Searching the audit log

Filter by user, action type, date range, or resource type. Useful for investigations — e.g. finding out who changed a payroll setting or deleted a document.

Retention policy

12 months of audit history on Core Team. Unlimited retention on Core Business.

Upload PDFs, Word documents, and plain text files. Each document is processed through RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) — split into chunks, embedded, and stored in your org's vector index.

• HR policies, employee handbooks, SOPs, and process guides all work well
• Large documents (100+ pages) are supported but take slightly longer to process
• Re-uploading a document with the same name replaces the previous version

Structured question-and-answer pairs. Ideal for policy questions, process guides, and HR rules where you want a precise, consistent answer.

• Examples: “How do I apply for annual leave?”, “What is our work-from-home policy?”
• FAQs are searched first before documents — keep answers concise and direct
• Bulk import FAQs from CSV using AI Import

MFA enforcement

Org owners can require all members to enable two-factor authentication. Go to Settings → Security → Require MFA. Once enabled, users who have not set up MFA will be prompted on their next login before accessing the dashboard.

Session management

View all active sessions for your account from your profile settings. Revoke any suspicious session immediately — the user is logged out within seconds.

Data residency

All organisation data is stored on Supabase's Singapore region. No data leaves the Singapore jurisdiction unless you explicitly export it.

GDPR / PDPA compliance

Employee data can be exported or deleted on request to comply with PDPA subject access requests. Contact support@askvava.com for a full data export or deletion request. AskVAVA processes data as a data processor on behalf of your organisation.

Some modules — including SECT (corporate secretary), Roster, and advanced reporting — require specific subscription plans or feature flags.

• Check your current plan under Settings → Billing — confirm it includes the module you expect
• If you recently upgraded, try a hard refresh (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + R) to clear the cached plan state
• Some modules are enabled per-org by the AskVAVA team — contact support@askvava.com if you believe you have access but the module is not visible

If a team member says they didn't receive an invitation email:

• Ask them to check their spam or junk folder — invite emails come from noreply@askvava.com
• Resend the invite from Settings → Members → click ... next to the pending invite → Resend
• Verify the email address is spelled correctly — a typo creates a phantom pending invite
• Invites expire after 7 days — if it's been longer than that, delete and re-send

If an employee's WhatsApp messages to the bot are being ignored or returning errors:

• Check that the employee's phone number is set in the Employees Hub — go to Team → Employees → open the employee record → verify the Phone field is populated
• Phone numbers must be in international format: +65xxxxxxxx for Singapore, +60xxxxxxxx for Malaysia, and so on
• The phone field on the employee record takes priority over the whatsapp_phone_numbers table — always set it there first
• If the number looks correct but the bot still doesn't respond, contact support with the employee's phone number and the time of the failed message