When you log in to Plinth you land on your dashboard. This guide covers what is there, and how the sidebar gets you everywhere else.
The sidebar was redesigned in 2026. If it does not look the way you remember, a fresh look for the sidebar explains what changed.
Your dashboard
The dashboard is your home screen. It gives you a quick view of what is happening across your organisation:
Upcoming events — your next scheduled sessions and activities.
Recent activity — a feed of recent changes, such as new registrations or completed surveys.
Quick actions — shortcuts to common tasks such as adding a person or creating an event.
Unfinished forms — a reminder if you have application forms part-completed.
The sidebar
The sidebar is how you move around Plinth. Rather than one long list, related pages are grouped into shelves under named headers: People & Casework, Activities & Operations, Impact & Reporting, Fundraising, Portfolio, Grant Making and Community. You only see the shelves your organisation uses. Click a header to collapse or expand what sits under it.
If your organisation only uses a few features, you may see a simpler flat list instead of shelves. Either way the sidebar shows only what your organisation has switched on, so two organisations rarely see the same thing.
There is no longer an Organisation/Funder switch. Funder tools now sit in the sidebar alongside everything else, under Grant Making.
Pages every organisation has
People — view, search and manage everyone your organisation works with. This is your central database. See searching and filtering your people.
Calendar — your events, sessions and activities, and where you record attendance. See calendar and events and recording attendances.
Tags — group and categorise people and events. See what are tags and how to use them.
Surveys and outcomes — build forms, send them out and record what changed for people. See surveys and how to send them out and recording outcomes.
Reporting — build reports from your data, for funders or for your own understanding. See insights and reporting on your data.
Everything else
Depending on how your organisation is set up you may also see bookings, cases, referrals, partners, fundraising and more. These are modules, and an admin decides which of them appear.
Choosing what appears in your sidebar
Admins control which modules are switched on:
Go to Settings
Open Modules
Turn modules on or off
Use a Quick start preset for a common setup, or Search all modules to find one quickly. Modules are grouped the same way the sidebar is, and each group shows how many you have on, so Impact & Reporting 3/3 means all three are enabled.
A Sidebar preview beside the list shows how your sidebar will look as you change things, so you can check the result before leaving the page.
Changing the order
In Modules, select Sidebar order and drag the shelves into the order that suits your team. Choose For everyone to set your organisation's default, or Just for me for a personal arrangement. Reset to default restores the standard order.
Settings
Go to Settings from the sidebar. From there you can:
Edit your organisation name and details
Manage admins, users and restricted users — see adding or editing admins and restricted users and how they work
Turn modules on and off
Customise the fields you hold about people — see how to add or edit fields
Connect Stripe so you can take payments — see connecting to Stripe
Getting help
Use the chat widget at the bottom of the screen to ask a question, and the team will come back to you. You can also browse the rest of these help articles for detailed guides to each feature.