--- title: "Shared SMS inbox for operations teams — cover every shift" description: "Supplier portals and booking systems text a code to one phone. How operations teams keep company accounts reachable across shifts, leave and staff turnover." canonical: "https://sharedsmsinbox.com/use-cases/operations-teams" --- # Keep company accounts reachable, whoever is on shift > Supplier portals and booking systems text a code to one phone. How operations teams keep company accounts reachable across shifts, leave and staff turnover. Supplier portals, booking systems and logistics accounts text a login code to one number. Rotas change, people take leave, people move on, and that number stays on one person’s phone. - [Get your number](https://app.sharedsmsinbox.com) - [Create free account](https://app.sharedsmsinbox.com) _No credit card required. Pay only when you choose your number._ ## Where the rota and the phone stop matching Operations does not run nine to five, but the accounts it depends on were set up by one person on one weekday afternoon. - **Sunday, and the pallet is still at the depot** — The carrier’s portal wants a code before anyone can rebook the collection. James opened that account and works Monday to Friday. The pallet waits until Monday, and so does the customer. - **Handover ends at six, the code arrives at seven** — The late shift needs into the booking system to move tomorrow’s slots. The verification text goes to the day manager’s phone, which is now in a coat pocket on a train. - **Priya is away for two weeks and holds three logins** — The supplier portal, the fuel card site and the maintenance system all text her mobile. Before she goes, somebody has to decide whether she takes work calls on holiday or the team does without. - **The site phone nobody has charged** — The workaround was a spare handset in a drawer at reception, kept for exactly this. It is flat, the supervisor who knew the PIN transferred to another site, and nobody is sure the SIM still works. ## How coverage actually works ### How can our team get into a company account when the person it texts is off shift? Put a company-owned phone number on the account instead of an individual’s mobile, and let whoever is on shift read the code themselves in a shared inbox. ### How do we cover shared accounts while someone is on annual leave? Move the account onto the company number before they go. Their colleagues then receive the same codes directly, so there is nothing to hand over and nothing to ask for while they are away. ### Will the code still work when the night shift opens the inbox? Only if the night shift asked for it. The message lands in the inbox and stays readable there, but the code inside usually expires within minutes, so whoever is signing in should be the one who triggers it. The supplier portal does not know whose phone is on the other end. It texts the number recorded on the account. Change that number to one the company owns and the code lands in an inbox that your evening supervisor, your weekend cover and the coordinator standing in for somebody on leave can each open in a browser. Nobody has to be at a desk, in a particular building, or awake in a particular time zone. **The account stops depending on a person and starts depending on the shift.** Because access is a named list of people rather than a password, putting the whole rota on it does not mean circulating a credential you would have to change every time the rota does. The usual handover is an arrangement rather than a plan: “text me and I’ll send you the code.” That relies on somebody on a beach having signal and goodwill, and it leaves a trail of codes in a chat that stays there long after the holiday ends. With the number on the company account, leave is only leave. Nothing about the account changes when Priya goes, and nothing has to change back when she returns. The same is true on her last day if she resigns instead — see [what happens when someone leaves](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/security). > Do the switch a week before the leave starts, not on the last afternoon. If a service refuses the number you want to find out while the person who knows the account is still in the building. This is the one habit worth teaching the team. Whoever needs to get in asks the service for the code themselves, then reads it in the inbox. A day manager who requests a code at 5pm so the night shift has one ready at 11pm will have handed them an expired code, and that is the service’s rule rather than ours. What the inbox is genuinely useful for after the fact is the record. Your team can look back at what arrived overnight and when it arrived, which is often the missing piece when you are reconstructing why a booking did not go through. > The text of a message, and any code inside it, is permanently erased a set time after it arrives — 72 hours by default, and an administrator can change that. The record that the message arrived stays. ## Four steps, done between shifts There is nothing to install, no handset to buy and nobody from our side to talk to. Start with the account that caused your last out-of-hours phone call. 1. **Create your account** — Sign up with your work email. Nothing is charged and no card is asked for. _(Free to look around.)_ 2. **Get your number** — Choose an available company number. It belongs to the company account rather than to a person, a site or a handset in a drawer. _($49/month starts here.)_ 3. **Invite everyone who covers the account** — Put the whole rota on it: shift supervisors, weekend and evening cover, the coordinator who steps in during leave, and the manager on the other side of the world. Each gets their own login, and you choose who sees which number. _(No per-user charge, so the list can be complete.)_ 4. **Move one account across on a quiet weekday** — Sign in to the supplier portal, replace the mobile number with your company number, and send yourself a test code. If it arrives, move the next account. If it does not, that service has refused the number and you have lost nothing. _(Tuesday morning, not the day before a bank holiday.)_ ## When a shared number is the wrong answer for operations Coverage problems come in several shapes and this fixes one of them. Here is where we would tell you to do something else. Four situations where this is not the tool you want: - **If what you actually need is alerting, this is not it.** A shared inbox does not page anybody, does not follow a rota and does not chase a message nobody has opened. It receives texts to a number, and a person still has to look. If the real problem is that an alarm went off at 3am and nobody knew, you want the platform’s own on-call alerting instead. - **If you need to reply, this cannot.** The number receives text messages and never sends any. You cannot text a driver back, confirm a delivery window with a customer or answer a supplier from it. That is a different kind of product, and this one is deliberately not it. - **If the service can give each supervisor their own login, use that.** It is better than any form of sharing, and in operations it also answers the question you get asked after something goes wrong: who cancelled the booking, who released the order, who changed the delivery address. Keep a shared number for services that only ever issue one company login. - **If a named individual is required at the other end, leave the account alone.** Some site access systems, carrier accounts and regulated portals tie the code to a named contact on purpose. Sending that to an inbox several people read is not a workaround worth having on your file. What is left is the ordinary run of an operations week: **supplier and procurement portals, booking and scheduling systems, carrier and logistics accounts, fuel and fleet cards, maintenance and facilities platforms.** Accounts several people cover, at services that hold exactly one phone number. > One more limit worth saying plainly: this makes an account reachable by whoever is on shift. It does not make anyone available. If the real gap is that nobody is rostered on Sunday, a shared inbox will not fill it. ## Questions from operations teams ### Can we see older messages? Yes. Messages stay in the shared inbox so your team can look back at what arrived and when, and the inbox records activity so you can see who has been reading messages. Because these messages can contain login codes, the inbox does not keep them forever — see the security page for what is stored and for how long. ### How long does it take to set up? Minutes, and no technical work. You create an account, choose a number, invite the colleagues who need access, and then enter the number on the company account that sends the texts. There is nothing to install, no phone to buy and nobody from our side to talk to. ### How can multiple people receive SMS sent to one number? The number belongs to your company account rather than to a handset, so messages sent to it arrive in an inbox instead of on a phone. Everyone you invite and approve can open that inbox in a browser and read the same message. Nobody has to forward anything, and nobody needs to be holding a particular phone. ## Where to go next - [All use cases](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/use-cases) — The other teams in your company with the same problem, and how to tell which accounts are worth moving. - [Finance teams](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/use-cases/finance-teams) — The same problem against a fixed deadline, plus why banks tend to refuse a shared number. - [Login codes for teams](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/login-codes-for-teams) — The general version of this, and what to do about the codes already sitting in your group chat. - [Security and access](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/security) — How you add weekend cover, remove someone on their last day, and see who opened a message. - [How it works](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/how-it-works) — The four steps in detail, including what to do on the day you switch an account over. - [Pricing](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/pricing) — $49/month per phone number, whether four people cover the rota or forty. ## Make the account work when the person is not there Move one supplier or booking account onto a company number this week. The next time it comes up on a Sunday, whoever is on shift can deal with it themselves. - [Get your number](https://app.sharedsmsinbox.com) _$49/month per phone number. No credit card required. Pay only when you choose your number._ --- Canonical: https://sharedsmsinbox.com/use-cases/operations-teams Every page of this site is also available as Markdown. Site map: https://sharedsmsinbox.com/llms.txt