Staff roles: what each one can see and do

A role is a set of permissions, and every staff member holds at least one. This article explains the three built-in roles every store starts with, including who can see your sales and profit, every permission and what it opens, and what a staff member sees when their role does not allow something.

Roles are listed on the Roles page. In the sidebar, under Administration, open Staff, then Roles, or open your roles (opens in a new tab) from here. Seeing the page needs the View roles permission, which only the Store owner role has out of the box.

Can my staff see my sales and profit?

It depends on the role. The figures on your Dashboard, such as Net sales and Gross profit, need the View analytics and reports permission.

Sales staff still see what their work needs: the orders, with each order’s items and total. They can also view products, and a product’s page includes the cost you entered for it. If you do not want someone to see any of that, a custom role without View products is the way, on Business and up.

See understand your sales, profit and inventory for what the figures mean.

The three built-in roles

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At the top, three cards count your roles: Roles (all of them), System (the built-in ones) and Custom (your own). Each role’s row shows its name, its description and how many staff members hold it.

Store owner: everything

The Store owner holds every permission, including staff, roles, settings and your subscription. The account that created the store has this role.

Only someone who holds every permission can give this role to another person, so in practice only a store owner can make another store owner. Give it only to someone who co-owns the business.

Store manager: everything except Settings, Subscription, Staff and Roles

A Store manager runs the store day to day. They can:

• add, edit and delete products, categories and collections, and adjust stock;
• handle every part of an order: status, cancelling, refunding, payments, shipments and returns;
• manage shipping rates and delivery providers;
• view, edit, block and unblock customers;
• manage discount codes and gift cards, reviews and messages;
• design and publish your storefront in the Storefront Studio;
• write your policy pages, FAQ and Journal posts, and your search synonyms;
• manage newsletter subscribers, and write and send campaigns;
• see your sales, profit and inventory figures;
• use the AI translation buttons, such as Translate to other languages.

They cannot add or change staff or roles, see or change your subscription, or see or change your store’s settings, card payments or domain. They cannot open the audit log either. In Settings they see two tabs: Operations, with your search synonyms only, and Account, where they change their own password.

What Settings covers

The Settings permissions guard the store-wide setup that belongs to the owner:

The Storefront Studio is not part of Settings. It has its own Storefront section with one permission, Edit storefront design, which allows the same AI translation as Edit settings. That is how a Store manager can design and publish your storefront without touching your settings. See save a draft and publish your storefront.

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AI translation of policy pages and the FAQ is different: Translate to other languages on your policy pages, and the FAQ’s translate buttons, need Edit content.

Sales staff: orders and customers

Sales staff work the orders and look after your customers. They hold:

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So they can confirm and prepare orders, create shipments with your delivery providers and update them, cancel and refund orders, record payments such as the cash collected on delivery, handle returns, look up products and categories, update a customer’s details, answer your messages and read your reviews. They can open Shipping rates and Delivery providers to read them too.

They cannot change products, categories, shipping rates or delivery providers, approve or reject reviews, answer product questions, block customers, see your sales and profit, or open any other section. In Settings they see the Account tab alone, to change their own password.

Every permission, section by section

The role dialog groups permissions into sections, in the order of the sidebar. Ticking a role gives all of its ticked permissions.

The Store owner has every permission in every section.

Actions that need a second permission

A few actions reach into another section, so they need that section’s permission as well. This matters when you build a custom role; the three built-in roles already hold what they need.

When one of these is refused, the message names the permission, for example Cancelling orders needs the permission to cancel orders. Ask the store owner to add it to your role.

Support has no permission of its own, so it is not in the dialog: every staff member, whatever their role, can open your store’s support tickets, start a new one and reply to us. See open a support ticket.

System roles cannot be changed

The three built-in roles carry a System badge. Their permissions are fixed, so they stay the same in every store and you always know what they mean:

• Their button reads View, not Edit: you can look but not change.
• Their bin button is greyed out: system roles cannot be deleted.

If a built-in role is close to what you need but not quite, make a custom role with exactly the permissions you want. Custom roles are on Business and up. See add a custom role.

View a role’s permissions

A system role opens as Role details, with the line This is a built-in system role and cannot be changed. Its name and description are greyed out, and the ticked boxes show its permissions, section by section. The only button is Close.

On Free, Starter and Growth, your own roles open the same way: their button reads View too, and Role details says Custom roles are not included in your plan. Staff with this role keep every permission it gives. See on plans without custom roles.

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Find a role

Type in the search box above the list. It matches role names and descriptions, and the count beside it shows how many roles match.

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When nothing matches, the list shows No matching roles and Try a different search term.

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What a staff member sees when their role does not allow something

A staff member’s sidebar shows only the pages their role can open. A page their role holds no permission for is left out: Sales staff, for example, see no Discount codes, Gift cards or newsletter pages, nothing under Storefront, and no Staff, Audit log, Subscription or Card payments. Within what they can open, the role decides what loads and what saves:

• A page their role does not cover, opened from a link or a bookmark, does not load, and they see You do not have permission to do this.
• The Dashboard is in every sidebar, but its figures need View analytics and reports: a Sales staff member’s Dashboard shows Could not load analytics.
• Settings opens on what they may use. A role without the settings permissions sees the Account tab alone, to change their own password. A Store manager also sees Operations, with your search synonyms. A role with View settings but not Edit settings sees the settings with no save button: in its place, You can view these settings. Changing them needs the Edit settings permission.
• A page they can read but not change, such as Shipping rates or Delivery providers for Sales staff, shows the same buttons as for you. A change they try to save is refused.
• A change their role does not allow is refused when they save, with You do not have permission to do this. Nothing is changed. Where a second permission is missing, the message names it. See actions that need a second permission.
• Some buttons are hidden. Cancel order, Cancel selected and Refund return are not shown at all to a role that cannot use them.

Trying again does not help. If they need that page or that change for their work, give them a role that includes it. See change their roles. Changing someone’s roles signs them out at once, and they sign in again with the new ones. Taking a permission off a role stops it working at once for everyone who holds it. A console they already have open takes them to the sign-in page the next time it loads or saves anything. If they reload the console or open it in a new tab instead, it carries on without a new sign-in, with only what the role now allows.

When you need a custom role

The built-in roles cover most stores. Make your own when a job needs a different mix, for example:

• a packing team that prepares and ships orders but never refunds;
• customer care that answers messages and reviews but does not touch products;
• a content editor who adds products and writes pages but never sees orders.

Custom roles are on Business and up. On other plans, Add role shows a padlock, and roles you made before you moved down keep working, read-only. See plans and what each includes.

Next, add a custom role, or add a staff member and give them a role. To see who changed what in your store, see the audit log, on Business and up.