Money documents are where access control stops being paperwork. A quotation raised wrongly is embarrassing; an invoice deleted wrongly is a hole in your books.
Set it in Settings → Roles and permissions.
Two questions, always
- What may they do? — the actions.
- Whose records may they do it to? — the scope.
Both are needed. “May edit invoices” is not an answer until you say whose.
The ten actions
| Action | Lets them |
|---|---|
| View | Open and read it. |
| Create | Raise a new one. |
| Edit | Change one. |
| Delete | Remove one. |
| Print it or take a PDF. | |
| Share | Email it from its send window, or copy a share link. Sending a draft also marks it sent, which needs Edit as well. |
| Convert | Turn a quotation into an order, an order into an invoice. |
| Approve | Pass one that is waiting on approval. |
| Export | Pull a list out to a spreadsheet. |
| Import | Bring documents in from a file. |
The first four are tick boxes on the screen; the other six sit behind Advanced, because most roles only need the four.
Export deserves a thought. Somebody who can export your invoice list can carry your whole customer list and what each pays out of the door in one file. It is not the same risk as View, and it is a separate tick for that reason.
The four scopes
| Scope | Which records |
|---|---|
| Own | Records they own, are assigned to, or are watching. The default for every new user. |
| Team | Everything owned by anyone below them in the role tree, plus anyone in their groups. |
| All | Every record in the business. |
| None | Nothing. |
Where somebody holds more than one role, the highest scope across all of them wins. Adding a role can only widen access, never narrow it — so removing something means removing it from every role that grants it, not adding a restrictive one on top.
Each document type is separate
Proposals, quotations, sales orders, proformas, invoices, bills of supply, retainer invoices, credit notes and delivery challans each carry their own set. Proposals started with the rights each role already had on quotations.
Proposal templates are separate again: the organisation’s are changed by whoever holds the Settings permission for templates, and a person’s own template only by them. See Proposal templates.
A few proposal rights reach beyond the proposal itself:
| To | You need |
|---|---|
| Keep your own signature | Create on proposals |
| Keep the organisation’s signatures | Edit on Settings › Templates |
| Choose a proposal’s signature, list its products and services, ask a colleague to approve it, put an earlier version back | Edit on proposals |
| Convert a proposal to a quotation, sales order or invoice | Convert on proposals, and Create on that document; converting its lead on the way needs Convert on leads |
This is the point of the whole design. A salesperson gets create on quotations, scoped to own, and view on invoices. They can quote their own customers all day and cannot touch the money.
Three settings worth guarding
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
| Delete on invoices | A deleted invoice is a gap in a numbered series, and a numbered series with gaps is a question at assessment. Cancel instead. Very few people need this. |
| Approve | Somebody who can approve their own discount is not being approved by anybody. Keep it off the role that raises the document. |
| Credit notes | A credit note reduces what a customer owes. Treat it as seriously as a payment. |
A layout that works
| Role | Quotations | Invoices | Scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salesperson | View, create, edit, print, share, convert | View, print | Own |
| Sales manager | All, plus approve | View, print, export | Team |
| Accounts | View | View, create, edit, print, export | All |
| Owner | Everything | Everything | All |
Note what the accounts role does not have: delete. Almost nobody should.
Checking it
Do not reason about it — test it. Make a real user on the role, sign in as them, and try the thing you believe they cannot do. Permissions are the one settings screen where being nearly right is the same as being wrong.
Where to go next
Something missing or wrong here? Tell us. A question that needed asking usually means a page that needed writing.