01 · Roles & access

Manager role: runs daily operations

The Manager handles orders, inventory, intake, returns, invoicing, pricing and quotations end-to-end — but not voids, deletes, supplier archiving, or any tenant-admin power.

5 min read · updated 28/05/2026
Who can do this
RoleCreate order draftConfirm / dispatch orderPack orderRecord paymentVoid invoiceEdit pricing
OwnerAllowedAllowedAllowedAllowedAllowedAllowed
ManagerAllowedAllowedAllowedAllowedNot allowedAllowed

Overview

The Manager is the person who runs the shop floor while the Owner runs the business. A Manager takes orders from WhatsApp to dispatch, runs stock, raises invoices, sends quotations, and clears returns — the full daily grind, end to end. What a Manager does not touch are the few irreversible or money-sensitive levers: voiding an invoice, deleting a price list, archiving a supplier, blacklisting a customer, or anything to do with team, billing, and tenant settings. Those stay with the Owner.

Where to find it

The Manager has their own home dashboard at /home-manager (web). From the sidebar a Manager sees almost the whole spine: Intake, WhatsApp, Orders, Customers, Inventory, Suppliers, Warehouse, Shipping, Returns, Invoices, Pricing & Quotes, Approvals, Notifications, Reports and the Audit log.

On mobile, the Manager gets the admin app (/m/admin/home) — approvals, credit, insights — and can also drop into the sales, warehouse-pack and delivery field screens, because the Manager oversees all of them.

What's hidden: the whole Settings area (/settings/*) and team management are Owner-only and do not appear in the Manager sidebar.

Key concepts

  • Role binding — the list of permission keys a role holds. The Manager is seeded with three wildcard globsorders.*, returns.* and intake.* — plus an explicit list of keys across customers, inventory, invoicing, pricing, suppliers, notifications and WhatsApp. A glob like orders.* means the Manager holds every permission that starts with orders..
  • Glob — a wildcard pattern such as orders.*. It auto-grants every current and future key under that prefix, which is why the Manager covers the entire order and return workflow without each action being listed one by one.
  • Owner-only key — a specific permission deliberately left out of the Manager binding. Voiding an invoice, deleting pricing records, and changing tenant settings are examples. A Manager who tries one of these is blocked at the door.

Common workflows

1
Clear the intake tray

Open Intake (/intake), review the parsed WhatsApp / voice / photo cards, edit or resolve any unmatched line, then confirm a card into an order. The intake.* glob lets you confirm, reject, edit, ask the buyer to clarify, and approve a credit-override or a new-buyer activation — the whole tray.

2
Take an order all the way to dispatch

From Orders (/orders) create or open a draft, confirm it, generate the packing slip, and mark it dispatched. The orders.* glob covers create, confirm, cancel, pack, parse, dispatch and status transitions.

3
Raise and finalize an invoice

On the order or in Invoices (/invoices), generate the invoice, finalize it, download the PDF, and record payment. You can also create a customer payment link and trigger or cancel an e-invoice IRN.

4
Send a quotation

In Pricing & Quotes (/pricing-quotes) create a quotation, send it, and convert an accepted one into an order. You can also edit price lists, items, assignments and discount rules.

5
Process a return

Open Returns (/returns), initiate, approve or reject the request, receive the goods back, and cancel an in-flight one if needed. The returns.* glob also covers purchase returns to suppliers.

Role notes

Both roles below see the same operational screens. The difference is the short list of irreversible and admin-level actions that stay with the Owner.

RoleRun orders / intake / returnsGenerate & finalize invoicesVoid an invoiceEdit HSN-rate overridesArchive a supplierToggle customer blacklistDelete price list / quotationTeam, billing & settings
ManagerApprovalAllowedNot allowedNot allowedNot allowedNot allowedNot allowedApproval
OwnerApprovalAllowedAllowedAllowedAllowedAllowedAllowedApproval

What the Manager Manager can do: the full orders, intake and returns workflow; manage customers and their addresses; run inventory day-to-day (receipts, adjustments, batch write-off / QC / transfer, UOM, variants); generate, finalize and mark invoices paid, create payment links, and trigger or cancel e-invoices; edit price lists, quotations, assignments and discount rules; create and update suppliers; send and retry notifications; run WhatsApp conversations; and read reports and the audit log.

What the Manager cannot do — these belong to the Owner Owner:

  • Void an invoice (invoicing.void), edit or delete HSN-rate overrides, or run counter-sale tendering.
  • Toggle a customer's blacklist.
  • Change axis-labels for a product category.
  • Archive or reactivate a supplier.
  • Delete a price list, price-list item, discount rule or quotation, or read the pricing audit log.
  • Create or delete notification templates (preview only).
  • Anything tenant-admin: invite teammates, edit roles, install Packs, or change settings. GST returns export (GSTR-1/3B) is also not in the Manager's default binding.

Tips & time-savers

Tip
A new tenant can hand a Manager more power without code. Because the Manager is just a list of permission keys, the Owner can grant any Owner-only key — say, invoicing.void — to the Manager from the role editor. The defaults are the safe starting point, not a hard wall.

The orders.*, returns.* and intake.* globs mean a Manager never waits for a permission to be wired up: any new action added under those prefixes is available the moment it ships. For a busy shop, that's the whole order-to-cash loop covered out of the box.

Gotchas

Warning
A Manager cannot void an invoice. If a finalized invoice is wrong, the Manager has to get the Owner to void it — there is no Manager workaround, and voiding is irreversible once done. Same story for deleting a price list, archiving a supplier, or blacklisting a customer: the Manager is blocked, and the action is one the Owner does deliberately.

One more trap: the Settings area is invisible to a Manager. If a Manager needs a new HSN rate, a notification template, a new teammate, or a billing change, that request goes to the Owner — the Manager has read access to HSN rates but cannot edit them, and cannot reach team or billing at all.

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