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Understanding Roles and Permissions in Productive
Understanding Roles and Permissions in Productive

What does each role in Productive mean and which basic permissions are linked to it?

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Productive allows you to assign a different role to each person. And with permissions, each role has different access to your account. Permissions will allow each person to set up projects, and tasks, and manage time and financials (or prevent them from doing so).

First, the basic group of users consists of an Employee, a Client, or a Contractor.

EMPLOYEE

An employee is a full-time member of your team. He/she has a defined monthly/hourly cost and you can limit its access with different permissions.

An employee can be assigned to one of these five roles:

STAFF

Staff is an employee role with a basic set of permissions. Staff mainly uses Productive for time tracking, tasks, and requesting time off.

This role has permission to:

  • access projects that are a member of,

  • manage tasks and task lists and collaborate on those projects,

  • access time tracking and Resourcing, but only for themselves.

This role has no permission to:

  • access company settings, or

  • access any financial information.

Use case: Junior backend developer.

Staff can have access to contacts and/or access to time. These two permissions need to be added manually to a Staff member.

Staff with access to contacts is an employee role that can access and manage people and companies.

This role has an extended Staff role with permission to:

  • access Contacts (People, and Companies),

  • access worked time.

This role has no permission to:

  • access financial information,

  • access billable time.

Use case: Lead acquisition specialist who has a lot of contact with leads or clients but does not have access to financial information.

Staff with access to time is an employee role that can access other people worked hours and estimates on projects.

This role has an extended Staff role with permission to:

  • access the time entries, time off, and schedules of other people,

  • access budgets and times of projects that is a member of, but only data about time (estimated and worked time).

This role has no permission to:

  • access details of time entries, time off, and schedules of other people,

  • access the billable time of the projects that is a member of.

Use case: Team leader who works as a staffer, but also has to manage other people's time and care about time-consuming components of the budget.

COORDINATOR

A coordinator is an employee role that can manage projects and schedules without having access to any financial information.

This role has extended Staff with access to time entries with permissions to:

  • access everything project-wise and add people to projects,

  • access the time component of the budget,

  • approve time off,

  • access Contacts and Reports.

This role has no permission to:

  • access to financial information of the project,

  • approve time entries,

  • access the financial information of Contacts or Reports.

The Coordinator role can have Unlimited access or Restricted access. With unlimited access, the Coordinator can access all projects. With Restricted access can access all public projects, but only private projects that are assigned. Coordinator by default has unlimited access but you can change that anytime.

Use case: Operations assistants who plan and organize people's time on projects.

MANAGER

A Manager is an employee role who can manage projects and deals. That includes having access to all deals with relevant financial information except cost and profit. A Manager does not have access to cost rates and general organization-level settings.

This role has permission to:

  • access all and add new projects with financial information,

  • access Reports,

  • access billing and billable time.

This role has no permission to:

  • access cost and profitability of the project,

  • access Reports information about cost, profit, margin, and overheads.

The manager role can have Unlimited access or Restricted access. With unlimited access, the Manager can access all deals and projects. With Restricted access can access all public projects, assigned deals, and private projects they are a member of. Manager by default has unlimited access but you can change that anytime.

Use case: Account or project manager (Unlimited access), Junior project manager (Restricted access):

PROFITABILITY MANAGER

A profitability manager is an employee role that can manage projects and deals. That includes having access to all deals with relevant financial information. A profitability manager doesn't have access to cost rates and general organization-level settings.

This role has extended Manager's role permission to:

  • access the budget's profit and revenue information,

  • access the profit of the whole organization.

The Profitability Manager role can have Unlimited access or Restricted access. With unlimited access, the Profitability manager can access all deals and projects. With Restricted access can access all public projects, assigned deals, and private projects. By default, the profitability manager has unlimited access, but you can change that anytime.

Use case: Sales manager (Unlimited access), Junior sales manager (Restricted access).

ADMIN

An Administrator role can manage everything, create user accounts, manage salaries, and general organization-level settings.

This role has permission to:

  • see and manage everything,

  • buy extra seats,

  • change the billing plan.

Use case: General manager.


OWNER

The owner is the role that created the organization. It can be only one person as the owner of the organization.

This role has a full set of permissions, like:

  • access all billings,

  • make an upgrade,

  • transfer the ownership to another person,

  • deactivate the whole organization.

The owner role is not visible in the menu and the owner has its Owner tab in settings.

Use case: Owner or the company.


CLIENT

The Client is a role for a person that can communicate with your team on tasks, and also depending on permissions - access time entries, and other info about deals.

Clients can also get access to budgets and timesheets.

This is a global permission setting for a specific Client. To give a Client access to a specific budget, you need to go into the Project, select the Budget and turn Client access on from the Financials tab.

Note that clients will never see your Worked time in Productive.

However, clients with access to time and budgets will be able to see your estimates on tasks and other related data such as Variance at Completion and Time to complete.

Use case: Client you are developing a new mobile app for.


CONTRACTOR

A Contractor is a role for a person that sometimes works with your team but is not part of your company.

This role has permission to:

  • collaborate on projects,

  • manage tasks and task lists

  • track time for projects they are members of

Use case: Freelance designer that occasionally works on some projects.

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