Exploring User roles
ExpensePlus is designed to streamline the financial process flow, remove duplication and inefficiency, and provide each team member with their own customisable, drillable, and up-to-date financial reports.
Everyone who performs part of this function, whether submitting expense claims or purchase requests, counting collections, taking care of gift aid, bookkeeping, or scrutinising the reports is able to have their own personalised permissions for signing in to ExpensePlus.
You can customize users access in 3 main ways
(1) Assigning a user to a user role - a user role determines which modules a user with that role will have either 'standard' or 'view' access to. There are 6 default roles, but you can add as many additional roles as you wish. Further information about user roles can be found in the next section. User roles can be customised here
(2) Setting individual user permissions - this enables you to specifically set things that typically may not be common between users that have the same role. For example, a budget holder who manages your building is likely to need to be able to submit and view reports that relate to the building, whilst other users and budget holders will need access to other categories. User settings can be customised here.
(3) Additional customisation options - there are also lots of other ways user permission can be further customised. For example, rather than giving a user access to all petty cash accounts, you can set this 'per account'. For a full breakdown of how ExpensePlus can be customised per module, click here.
More information about user roles
By default, Expenseplus is set up using the following user roles. A simple definition is given for each:
Admin Team - Admin team members can perform basic administrative functions such as issuing invoices, recording bank deposits, entering purchases, and using petty cash. They can usually add other users but can't change any other system settings. They have no default visibility of financial reports (other than set for their specific user) and no visibility of anything relating to donations or gift aid. They have no delegated approval responsibility.
Finance Team (AKA Super User) - Is the 'All-Access pass' for ExpensePlus. The Finance Team user role can do anything and everything in ExpensePlus. This role should not be given to a user simply because they are in what you may describe as your 'finance team' within your organisation, indeed we'd recommend you restrict the number of users who have Finance Team access to between 1-3 users. The role permissions of this role cannot be customised.
Budget Holder - Is a user profile with minimal access and functionality and by default is identical to the User role (see below). It allows a user to submit purchases, and where their specific user has been made a primary or secondary approver they can approve purchase requests and view the relevant financial reports. It exists as a different role to the user to allow you to easily customise the role of those with budget approval permissions, allowing you to extend their responsibilities as a 'group' if needed.
User (recommended for most users) - This is the most commonly used role for basic users of the system. The permissions by default are identical to the Budget Holder, submitting purchase requests only. (See above for guidance as to how to use this concurrently with the Budget Holder role.)
Independent Examiner or Auditor - This role provides full visibility of the data and workflow to your independent examiner or auditor for their audit purposes. They'll be able to 'see' everything they'll need but won't be able to change settings, Manage Donors or approve expenditure. The role permissions of this role cannot be customised.
Trustee - This role is designed to help trustees view and scrutinise a basic selection of financial reports without being able to change data in the system.
All the roles listed above (except for the 'Finance Team' and 'Auditor/Examiner' roles) can be customised. You can also add and customise your own roles using the 'Add role' button. For example, you may create a role called 'Offering Counter' (for entering bank deposits) or Invoicer (for someone generating room hire invoices as their sole involvement), or perhaps a 'Super Trustee' role for a member of your trustee team whom also takes care of Gift Aid. Within each role, you can specify whether users with that role have 'standard' or 'view only' access to each module / report.
NOTE: Always check that you are happy with the combination of permissions and visibility that a User's specific 'user settings' and 'role' settings bestow on them. If in doubt, you are best to grant fewer permissions and increase these later. Also do keep in mind that the more permissions you give to a user, the more options they will see, adding potentially unnecessary complication for them.