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Understand roles and permissions

Get to know all roles and permissions on Spendesk and their specificities!

Updated this week

Exclusive Roles

There are two special roles, each of which can only be assigned to a single person:

  • Organisation Owner - has the unique permission allowing them to open new Spendesk entities

  • Account Owner - the super user for the entity, can effectively perform any action within Spendesk that Administrators or Controllers can do, along with some additional permissions:

    • Set up a secured phone number to approve wire transfers

    • Set up which users have the Admin role

    • Edit the assignee for a subscription card

Modifying these roles needs to be done by following this guide.

Assignable Roles

There are three assignable roles that can be managed for users (see this page):

  • Requester - any employee using Spendesk to make requests / payments

  • Controller - required by the finance team to perform bookkeeping/accounting tasks

  • Administrator - required to configure the system and manage users

The full list of permissions for these roles is as follows:

Requester

  • Create and view their requests

  • View their own payments

  • View their own subscriptions

  • Pause/report as lost their own cards

Controller

  • Download account statements and balance confirmations

  • View and manage wallet funding

  • Prepare and export payments/payables

  • View billing plan

  • Manage the invoice inbox

  • View subscriptions

  • Send receipt reminders

  • Manage suppliers:

    • View and edit supplier details

    • Download proof of payment for supplier invoices

  • Review and pay invoices (including via XML/CSV)

  • View all payments

  • View and manage budgets

  • Create and edit a custom analytical field

  • Manage accounting settings:

    • Accounting setup tab

    • Create custom export templates (if file-based)

    • Create a custom 'receipt file name'

    • Set up and manage native accounting integrations

Admin

  • Edit company information & billing

  • Enable/disable payment methods

  • Manage notifications & reminders

  • Invite new users

  • Update user roles and user information

  • Manage organisation settings:

    • Members (invite users, update roles and information)

    • Cost centres

    • Analytical fields

    • Set up HR integration

  • Manage spend control settings:

    • Approval policies

    • Approval workflows

    • Spend limits

    • Play by the rules

  • Manage physical cards:

    • View all

    • Order new cards

    • Update card budget

    • Pause/report a card

    • Activate cash withdrawal (if it is available)

All Roles

  • View and set up their own notifications

  • View and set up their own profile information

Virtual Roles

We also have a number of 'virtual' roles that are a result of other configurations and come with their own permissions. These are:

  • Approver - assigned as an approver via the approval workflows:

    • View the 'To approve' tab and approve/deny requests assigned to them

  • Cost Centre Owner - someone managing an area such as a department:

    • View payments in their cost centre

    • View budgets in the cost centre

    • View invoice inbox

    • View the 'To approve' tab and approve/deny requests assigned to them

  • Reporting Manager - a user marked as another user's manager:

    • View the 'To approve' tab and approve/deny requests assigned to them

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