# Roles & permissions

> Give every teammate exactly the access they need — six ready-made roles for common jobs, or custom roles you tailor permission by permission, with sales and purchases kept separate.

Source: https://www.accountfun.com/docs/guides/roles/

When you invite someone to your organization, you give them a **role**. The role decides what they can see and do — from drafting invoices to approving bills to reading your financial reports.

AccountFUN ships with six ready-made roles that cover most teams. If none of them is quite right, you can build your own: pick a name, switch on exactly the permissions that person needs, and assign it like any other role.

## The six ready-made roles

| Role           | Best for                  | What they can do                                                                                                                                                              |
| -------------- | ------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Admin**      | Owners                    | Everything — all of the below, plus organization settings, members and roles, imports and data management, and the subscription                                               |
| **Accountant** | Bookkeepers & accountants | Everything except organization administration — full document work, approvals, banking, chart of accounts, manual journals, projects, fixed assets, files, templates, reports |
| **Standard**   | Day-to-day team           | Create, submit, approve, and void documents across sales and purchases, record payments, manage contacts, projects, file their own expense claims, view reports               |
| **Sales**      | Sales reps                | Sales documents only — invoices, quotes, customer credit notes, customer prepayments — plus contacts                                                                          |
| **Purchase**   | Purchasing                | Purchase documents only — bills, purchase orders, supplier credit notes, supplier prepayments — plus contacts                                                                 |
| **Employee**   | Everyone else             | Personal expense claims only — file and submit their own claims for reimbursement                                                                                             |

The Admin role is built in and **always has every permission** — including any new permission added to AccountFUN in the future. You can rename it or tweak its description, but you can’t strip its permissions or delete it — every organization needs at least one full-access role.

## Sales and purchases stay separate

The two document areas are walled off from each other. A role with **Sales Documents** but not **Purchase Documents** (like the ready-made Sales role) never sees your bills, purchase orders, or what you owe suppliers — and a Purchase role never sees your invoices, quotes, or what customers owe you. That applies everywhere the documents show up:

* the document lists and the documents themselves, including printing, emailing, sharing links, and attachments,
* the dashboard’s **owed to you** and **you owe** figures,
* a contact’s activity page, payments, and recurring templates.

Credit notes and prepayments follow the side they belong to: **customer** credit notes and prepayments are sales documents, **supplier** ones are purchase documents. A role with both areas (Standard, Accountant, Admin) sees everything.

**Reference data is shared.** Anyone with either document area can *look up* your **Chart of Accounts**, **Products & Services**, **Tax Rates**, and **Tracking Categories** — they need them to code their documents. Changing them still takes the matching permission below; without it those pages are read-only.

## Custom roles

**Settings → Roles.** Ready-made roles not quite right? Build your own:

1. Go to **Settings → Roles** and click **New Role**.
2. Give it a name and description — e.g. *“Bookkeeper — reconciles but doesn’t approve”* or *“Sales rep — invoices and reports, no banking”*.
3. Switch on the permissions that role should have (see below).
4. Save, then assign it to members from [Settings → Members](https://www.accountfun.com/docs/guides/settings/).

Editing a role later applies to everyone who has it — change the permissions once and the whole team updates instantly. Custom roles can be deleted once nobody is assigned to them; the six ready-made roles can be edited but not deleted.

## The permissions you can mix and match

**Documents** — which document areas the role reaches, and what it can do there:

* **Sales Documents** — invoices, quotes, customer credit notes, and customer prepayments.
* **Purchase Documents** — bills, purchase orders, supplier credit notes, and supplier prepayments.
* **Create Drafts**, **Submit For Approval**, **Delete Documents**, and **Record Payments**.
* **Payment Schedules** — view [payment schedules](https://www.accountfun.com/docs/guides/payment-schedules/) and split sales into scheduled payments. Needs **Sales Documents**; creating one also needs **Create Drafts** and **Approve Documents**, because payments that are already due are invoiced and approved straight away.

A role without either document area (and without any of the other areas below) is limited to [expense claims](https://www.accountfun.com/docs/guides/expense-claims/) — like the Employee role.

**Approvals** — the sign-off levers:

* **Approve Documents** — approve documents (this posts them to the books).
* **Void Documents** — void approved or submitted documents.
* **Approve Expense Claims** and **Void Expense Claims**.

**Contacts & Claims** — **Manage Contacts** (create and edit customers and suppliers), plus **Create Expense Claims** and **Submit Expense Claims** for one’s own claims.

**Accounting** — the bookkeeping machinery:

* **Chart Of Accounts** — add and edit ledger accounts.
* **Manual Journals** — view, create, record, and void manual journal entries (voiding also needs **Void Documents**).
* **Products & Services**, **Tax Rates**, and **Tracking Categories** — manage each list.
* **Bank Accounts** — see bank balances and transactions, reconcile statements, manage bank feeds and rules, and spend, receive, or transfer money.
* **Find & Recode** — bulk-recode journal lines across documents.
* **Reports** — view the financial reports described below.
* **Fixed Assets** — register, depreciate, and dispose of assets.
* **File Folders** — organize the File Manager’s folders (needs **File Manager** too).

**Projects** — view projects and their profitability, and create or run them (together with Create Drafts, Approve Documents, Void Documents, or Delete Documents for each action). Linking a document to a project also needs that document’s area.

**Files** — **File Manager**: the central list of every file in the organization, plus Contracts.

**Email & Templates** — **Email Outbox** (delivery status of every email your organization sends) and **Templates & Reminders** (open the template library, design document and email templates, and manage automatic invoice reminders).

Record Payments vs Bank Accounts

**Record Payments** lets someone record a payment or receipt against an invoice or bill and choose which bank account the money moved through. It does **not** show that account’s balance or transactions — that’s the **Bank Accounts** permission. So your Standard team can pay bills without seeing your bank balances.

The editor keeps you honest

Some permissions only work together — approving expense claims needs the document and approval permissions, and File Folders needs File Manager. The role editor warns you live when a combination doesn’t work, so you can fix it before saving.

## Who can see the reports

Your [financial reports](https://www.accountfun.com/docs/guides/reports/) — balance sheet, profit & loss, trial balance, aging, and the rest — are governed by the **Reports** permission. Roles that have it see the **Reports** menu and can run any report; roles without it don’t see the menu at all, and the dashboard hides the profit figures from them too.

Of the ready-made roles, **Admin**, **Accountant**, and **Standard** include Reports; **Sales**, **Purchase**, and **Employee** do not — so by default your sales reps and buyers can’t read your profit numbers. Want a rep to see reports anyway? Give them a custom role with Reports switched on.

## Admin-only jobs

Some things stay with Admins no matter how a custom role is set up:

* organization settings, currencies, billing, and region add-ons,
* inviting members, and creating or assigning roles,
* **Import** and **Migrate from Xero** — the Xero migration replaces all of the organization’s existing data, so it’s never delegated,
* **Opening Balances** — they set the starting point of your whole ledger, so only Admins can post or void them,
* data export/import and audit history.

## View-only access

Every role has a **view-only** switch. Flip it on and the person can *see* everything their permissions allow — documents, bank accounts, reports — but change nothing. It’s designed for the people who should look, not touch:

* an accountant reviewing the books before year-end,
* a business partner or investor who wants visibility,
* a new hire learning the ropes before they get the keys.

## Assigning and changing roles

**Settings → Members.** (Managing members and roles is an Admin-only job.)

* **Inviting someone:** new invitations start on the **Standard** role — pick a different one from the dropdown before sending. The recipient must accept the invitation before gaining access. New teammates can sign up after receiving it; existing users must accept too.
* **Changing a role:** pick a new one from the dropdown next to the person’s name. It takes effect on their very next click — no re-login needed.
* **Removing someone:** click **Remove** next to their name to take them off the team entirely. Pending invitations are listed separately and can be revoked before they’re accepted.

See the [expense claims](https://www.accountfun.com/docs/guides/expense-claims/) guide for how roles affect who can see and approve each claim.

## Example: a small sales team

Acme has an owner, a bookkeeper, two sales reps, and a warehouse buyer.

1. The owner is **Admin**; the bookkeeper gets **Accountant**.
2. Both reps get **Sales**: they raise quotes and invoices and chase customers, but never see supplier bills, the bank balance, or the profit and loss.
3. The buyer gets **Purchase**: bills, purchase orders, and supplier credit notes — nothing from the sales side.
4. The owner wants the senior rep to see how sales are tracking against the plan, so they build a custom **“Senior sales”** role — Sales plus **Reports** — and assign it to that rep. The other rep keeps plain Sales.