Support/getting started

Getting Started

Welcome to Kinabase!

By choosing Kinabase for your business, you can look forward to managing your data intuitively and effectively. Not only does Kinabase help you to manage your business processes, it has an easy to use and responsive interface that's fully accessible through your browser. Supported by the software consultancy experts at Cambridge Kinetics, you can rely on an award-winning, friendly and reliable customer experience.

If you're thinking of setting up Kinabase for an organisation of 10 or more people, or if you've followed this guide and still have questions about how to get started, we encourage you to get in touch with us directly on hello@kinabase.com or call us on (+44) 01223 626261.

Getting Started with Kinabase

We know how complex it can be switching to a new system, so we've made sure that getting started with Kinabase is simple enough for anyone to do themselves in only a few hours. The Getting Started support articles will walk you through some of the first steps you might want to take in your new Kinabase environment - each will point to more in-depth articles throughout our support library that you might find useful and interesting as you get set up.

These articles will cover:

This article, however, will start with what you'll see when you first open Kinabase on a new account, in a new environment.

Creating a Kinabase Account

If you're new to Kinabase, your first step will be to create an account and a new Kinabase environment for your organisation. You can do this by going to kinabase.com, then selecting Sign In in the top right of the screen, where you will be taken to the login screen, pictured below:

Here, you will need to select the Sign Up option in the bottom right, and enter your name, your organisation's name, your primary email address, and a secure password

You will next be sent an activation code to your primary email address, copy this over to activate your account. If you still haven't received this email after a few minutes, double check your email address and resend.

Once successfully activated, you will be brought to the Kinabase start page. Congratulations, you're now a Kinabase user!

Setting up your new Kinabase Environment

Now that you've activated your account, you'll see Kinabase's start page:

The Setup Guide will walk you through creating your first Collection, creating Records, Inviting your Colleagues, and connecting your Kinabase environment to your Microsoft 365 organisation if you have one already.

Finish your Organisation Profile

The first step in setting up your organisation's Kinabase environment is to make sure that all of your Organisation's Details have been completed - this allows Kinabase to automatically fill in certain entry fields, and enables smoother integrations with third-party apps and platforms.

You can access and edit your organisation's details at any time through the Organisation Details page:

Select the Settings button at the bottom of the navigation sidebar
Choose Organisation Details page from the list near the centre of the screen

From here you can set your organisation's name, website, contact details, and size, and optionally add a company logo that will appear in the Kinabase app.

Create a Collection

Collections are data tables, a bit like Excel Spreadsheets, that are comprised of Fields (columns) and Records (rows). Collections can be used to represent anything like contacts, organisations, colleagues, projects, or inventories. As you start out, you may create Collections that act only as standalone databases, but as you begin to explore more advanced use-cases, you can link Collections together with Linked, Calculated, Aggregated and Lookup fields.

See the Creating your First Collection support article for guidance on how to get started with collections.

Adding Data

Records are the building blocks that comprise Collections - they represent individual items that can carry information relating to the Fields that you set up when you created your collection, but they can also store Tasks, Activities, Files and more!

See the Adding Data to Kinabase support article for guidance]on how to get started with records.

Invite your Colleagues

Kinabase is, by design, a collaborative platform. To unlock all the potential that Kinabase has to offer your organisation, Invite your Colleagues to join the Kinabase environment that you've just set up. From there, you will be able to collaboratively create and configure Collections, add Records, create and assign Tasks, and share Files.

Each new Kinabase User will have their own login. You, as the administrator, have the ability to add, remove, and change the permissions for each of these users.

See the Inviting your Colleagues support article for guidance on how to invite your collegues to join your Kinabase environment.

Signing In and Out

Now that you've created your account and set up your organisation within Kinabase, you can sign in and out at will using your primary email address and password, directly from your browser. By linking to a Microsoft 365 account or organisation you can also log into Kinabase directly through Microsoft for added security and more options in how you manage your Colleagues within Kinabase.

See the Signing In and Out support article for guidance on how to log in and out of Kinabase through your browser, and how to recover a lost password.

Upgrading your Plan

When you first set up your Kinabase environment, you are automatically enrolled on a 15-Day Free Trial. After the end of this trial you will no longer have access to your Kinabase environment, but it hasn't been deleted! Get in touch with us for a pricing guide and switch to a paid monthly or annual plan.

See the Upgrading your Plan support article for guidance on how to get in touch and upgrade your plan.

Getting Support and Giving us Feedback

At Kinabase we put a high value on user feedback and input. It's our mission to empower businesses to focus on what matters to them, through software that takes the time-consuming and repetitive admin out of day-to-day business management. Everything we do and build serves to save you and your organisation time.

We highly encourage you to spend some time with the Support Article Library as there may be many questions that are answered here.

If there's anything about Kinabase that you think isn't working right, or could work better for your organisation then you can provide feedback directly within Kinabase by following these steps:

Click the User Menu on the bottom left-hand side of the screen
Click Send feedback. This will open up a separate Send Feedback menu with a drop-down list of Feedback Titles (pictured below).
Select the most relevant title, type your query in the field below and click OK.
A message will then briefly pop up to confirm the feedback has been successfully sent - we aim to respond to all support requests within one hour!

Alternatively, you can get in touch with us directly on hello@kinabase.com or call us on (+44) 01223 626261 with anything from support questions, feature requests, or just to give some feedback on Kinabase or our support article library.