You can invite new people if you want to add them as users to your account. Invite people by sending them an email or by providing a join link.
What is the Difference Between a User and a Contact?
In Productive, it’s important to distinguish between Users and Contacts:
Users (Employees, Contractors, or Clients) have login access and can participate in project collaboration, track time, and more.
Contacts don’t have login credentials. They serve as repositories for notes, contact details, and email filing. However, a Contact can be converted into a User at any time.
📌 Note: Adding Employees and Contractors requires available paid seats in your account. Clients are always free to add.
Ways to Add New Users
Once you’ve decided whether you’re adding a User or a Contact, you can invite them in several ways:
1) Inviting Users Directly via Email
Click your avatar in the upper right and select Invite people.
Then, specify their user type. They can be an Employee (paid seat), Client (free to add), or Contractor (paid seat).
📌 Tips for inviting multiple people at once:
Use a public join link to invite employees in bulk via Slack, email, or other communication tools.
Add multiple email addresses simultaneously to invite your entire team, multiple clients or contractors at once. Simply input the email addresses, press Enter after each one, and once you've finished, proceed to invite them all by clicking Invite.
The Company Field
When adding Client or Contractor users, you'll notice a Company field. It means something different depending on the user type.
For clients, this is the client company they belong to.
For contractors, this is the firm or agency that employs them on their end — not a client they'll work for, and not one of your own entities.
If the company doesn't exist in Productive yet, you can create it inline directly from the invite form, or add it first in CRM > Companies.
👉 Learn more about adding and managing contractors.
2) Adding Users Without Sending Invitation Emails
Navigate to Settings > Users and click + Add User, and fill in the user's details.
By unticking the Send invitation via email box, you can add them instantly without sending an invitation.
📌 Note: These users will appear in Resourcing > Employees just like active users. You can send the invitation later when needed.
You can also add new users through:
Resourcing > Employees > + Employee (for Employees and Contractors)
CRM > Contacts > + Contact (for Clients and Contacts)
3) Converting a Contact into a User
Visit the Contact's profile page in CRM > Contacts, and click "Invite" in the upper-right corner.
Choose between the user type (Employee, Contractor, or Client) and assign permission sets if needed. Then, invite them to join.
4) Importing Users and Contacts from CSV
In Settings > Data Import, use Productive's CSV data import templates to import your Contacts and Users.
Refer to this article for importing Contacts and Companies, and this one for importing Users (Employees, Contractors, and Clients) for detailed instructions.
