Customising employee and contractor permissions

Rolling out now

We're turning the Permissions page on for accounts a few at a time. If you don't see Permissions under Company in Settings yet, your account doesn't have it yet and uses the settings in Managing employee permissions. You don't need to do anything. The page appears once it's turned on for your account.

The Permissions page lets an administrator choose what employees and contractors can see and do. You set defaults for each role, then change single permissions for a person when they need something different. For example, you can let your office manager create invoices, hide prices from one crew member, or stop contractors seeing customer phone numbers.

Who can change permissions

Only administrators can open the Permissions page. Administrators can always do everything, so they don’t appear on the page and can’t be restricted. To give someone full access, change their role to Administrator (see Changing a person’s role).

Setting permissions for a role

1. Open Settings → Company → Permissions.
2. Under Set permissions for, choose Employees or Contractors.
3. Turn each permission on or off.

Each change saves straight away. The settings apply to everyone with that role, except people you’ve customised.

When the page first appears on your account, it starts from the way SortScape already worked for you, including the settings you used to change under Job settings and Time & materials settings. Nothing changes for your team until you change it here.

What each permission does

The permissions are grouped into sections. The app uses your own word for jobs, so you may see “visits” instead.

Schedule and jobs

• Schedule access: Everyone’s job runs shows the whole schedule. Only job runs they’re on shows a person only the job runs they’re assigned to. They can’t see other crews or the unscheduled jobs list, and older job runs drop off the same way they do for contractors. When they edit a job, the change applies to that job only, and they can’t move it to another job run. Contractors start with Only job runs they’re on. Give a contractor Everyone’s job runs and they see every crew’s job runs, including older ones, but still not the unscheduled jobs list, and their edits still apply to one job only.
• Move jobs and manage job runs: drag jobs to another day or job run and reorder them. For employees, this also covers adding, moving and deleting job runs. Contractors can only move jobs between job runs they can see, and can’t add, move or delete job runs.
• Edit jobs and notes: change the details of a job or schedule note. Employees can also add new jobs. Contractors can edit the jobs on the job runs they can see, but can’t add jobs.
• Delete jobs and notes (employees only).

Marking jobs complete, adding time and materials, and uploading photos don’t need any of these.

Timers

• Start and stop timers for the whole crew: shows Start for whole crew and Stop for whole crew on the job timer. See Job timer.
• Edit and delete time recorded by timers: lets people correct hours the timer recorded. Without it, only an administrator can change them.

Contacts

• Contact details: Phone, email and view contacts shows phone numbers and email addresses and lets employees open, add and edit contacts on the Contacts page. Phone numbers only shows the phone number on the job, so the crew can call ahead, but hides email addresses and the Contacts page. Hidden shows only the customer’s name. Property pages always show the name and address, whichever you choose.
• Send text messages, emails and service reports to customers: needs Phone, email and view contacts.

Money

• See prices on jobs: shows the prices of materials and other line items on jobs. Items with Allow non-admins to view and edit price on jobs? turned on in the Items catalogue always show their price, whatever this is set to. Cost and markup are only ever shown to administrators.
• See estimated job value: shows the job’s estimated value and the Value totals on the schedule.

Quotes and invoices (employees only)

• Create, edit and send quotes: open the Quotes list, create, edit, send and archive quotes. Deleting and exporting quotes stay with administrators.
• Create invoices and mark jobs invoiced: open Invoicing, create invoices and mark jobs as invoiced or not invoiced. Editing and deleting invoices, recording payments and exports stay with administrators.

Both are off by default. They need Everyone’s job runs, See prices on jobs and Send text messages, emails and service reports to customers, because a person who quotes or invoices needs to see the whole business.

Permissions that need another permission

A permission that needs another one shows Needs and the name of what’s missing under its name. Click Turn on beside it to turn on everything it needs in one go.

If you turn off a permission that others depend on, SortScape asks first and tells you what else will be turned off. For example, turning off See prices on jobs also stops employees creating quotes and invoices.

Customising one person

1. Open Settings → Company → Permissions and choose their role.
2. Under the permissions, click the person’s name. You can also click the pencil in the Permissions column on Settings → Company → Employees.
3. Change the permissions you want. A Custom badge shows beside each one that’s different from their role, and the line above the permissions counts them (for example “Sam has 1 custom permission.”).
4. Click Done.

Customised people are listed first, with a badge such as 2 custom. Everyone else shows Role defaults. The Permissions column on the Employees page shows the same, for example Custom · 2.

A person keeps following the role default for every permission you haven’t customised. If you later change the role default, they get the change too. Setting a permission back to the same value as the role removes the custom setting.

Seeing the app as someone else

To check what a person can actually see, look around SortScape as them. Like the rest of this page, View as is only available on accounts that already have the Permissions page. You stay signed in as yourself, and nothing you do is saved.

1. Open Settings → Company → Permissions and choose their role.
2. Under the permissions, find the person and click View as beside their name. On a computer, it shows when you point at the row. You can also open the person’s permissions, from here or from the Employees page, and click View as with their name at the bottom.
3. SortScape opens their home page, as they would see it. A banner across the top shows Viewing as, their name and their role.
4. When you’re done, click the button in the banner, such as Back to Permissions or Back to Employees. You go back to the page you started from, so you can change something and check again.

While you’re viewing as someone:

• You can open any page they can, but you can’t save anything. If you try, SortScape tells you nothing was saved.
• Their own account pages, such as their profile, password and notification settings, stay closed.
• It works in the mobile app too.

You can view as any active employee or contractor, but not as another administrator. Signing out also ends it.

Restoring defaults

• For a role: click Restore defaults beside “These settings apply to…” on the Permissions page. Every permission for that role goes back to its default. People you’ve customised keep their custom permissions.
• For a person: open the person and click Restore defaults. Their custom permissions are removed and they follow their role again.

Restore defaults only shows when there’s something to restore.

Changing a person’s role

Open the person from the Permissions page or the Employees page and choose a new Role. Changing someone’s role removes their custom permissions, so they start from the defaults of their new role. SortScape asks you to confirm first. You can’t change your own role.

What each role can access outside these permissions, such as Settings, reports and the dashboard, is in Managing employee permissions.