Team and roles

Roles control what each person can open and change. Getting them right is how you keep salaries, bank details and identification numbers seen only by the people who need them.

The roles

Role	For	Scope
Owner	The business owner	Everything, including billing and plan changes
Admin	Operations or office manager	Everything except billing and plan changes
Finance	Accountant or bookkeeper	Money, filings and reports
HR / Payroll	HR manager or payroll officer	Employees and pay runs
Department manager	Team lead	Their own department only
Employee	Any member of staff	Their own records only
Viewer	Auditor, adviser, board member	Read-only

What each role can do

Owner

Everything. Uniquely can:

Change the subscription plan
Manage billing and payment methods
Remove other Owners
Close the organisation

Have at least two Owners. A single Owner who is unreachable leaves nobody able to change the plan or manage billing.

Admin

Everything an Owner can, except billing, plan changes and removing Owners.

All compliance work, including requesting submissions
All invoicing
All payroll, including sensitive employee data
All inventory
Invite and manage team members
Change organisation settings

Finance

Full invoicing: invoices, quotes, payments, customers, vendors
File statutory returns
View salaries and payslips
View employee bank details
Cannot see NRC, passport or TPIN
Cannot run a pay run
View all reports

HR / Payroll

Full employee records, including NRC, passport, TPIN and bank details
Run and approve pay runs
Manage loans, allowances and deductions
Generate and distribute payslips
Cannot file statutory returns

The separation from Finance is deliberate: the person who runs the pay run is not the person who files the returns.

Department manager

View employees in their own department only
View payslips for their own department
Submit monthly inputs for their team
Cannot see NRC, passport, TPIN or bank details
Cannot export data
Cannot run payroll

Employee

View their own payslips
View and update their own contact details
Nothing about anyone else

Viewer

Read-only across what they are granted. Cannot create, edit, approve or submit anything.Right for auditors, board members and advisers who need visibility without the ability to change anything.

Sensitive data — the reference table

Check this before assigning any role:

Data	Owner	Admin	Finance	HR / Payroll	Dept manager	Employee	Viewer
Names and departments	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Own dept	Own	Yes
NRC, passport, TPIN	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No
Bank account details	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Salaries and payslips	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Own dept	Own	Yes
Export employee data	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Run a pay run	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No
File statutory returns	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Request submissions	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Change billing	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No

Choosing a role

Ask two questions:

What do they need to do this month? Not what they might one day need.
What should they not see? Salaries and identification are the ones that matter.

If they	Give them
Own the business	Owner
Manage the office and everything in it	Admin
Post invoices and reconcile payments	Finance
Manage staff and run payroll	HR / Payroll
Lead a team and submit their attendance	Department manager
Just need their own payslips	Employee
Audit or advise without changing anything	Viewer

When in doubt, choose the narrower role. Widening access takes ten seconds when someone asks. Narrowing it after they have seen something is not possible.

Location assignments

If you operate from more than one location, assign staff to the ones they work at. Inventory figures and dashboards then show only their locations. An unassigned user in a multi-location business may see nothing at all in inventory — which is usually the intended behaviour, not a fault.

Changing a role

Open Settings, then Team

Find the person.

Choose Change role

Effective immediately.

Tell them

Bumara does not notify people about role changes. Someone who suddenly cannot see a page they used yesterday will report it as a fault.

Removing someone

Remove leavers the same day. Their work is not deleted — invoices they raised, payroll they ran, documents they uploaded all remain, and the timeline still records that they did it. Your audit trail must survive staff turnover.

Removing someone from your team does not revoke their authorisation to act for you with a regulator. If they were your authorised representative, replace that separately. See Authorised representative.

Separation of duties

For a business of any size, keep these apart:

Keep separate	Why
Running payroll and approving it	No single person both calculates and authorises pay
Running payroll and filing returns	Bumara enforces this by role
Recording payments and reconciling the bank	The classic control against misappropriation
Making stock adjustments and counting stock	The person who can make stock disappear should not verify it

In a very small business one person often does everything. If so, the compensating control is that the owner reviews — the audit trail is what makes that review possible.

Reviewing access

Check	How often
Everyone in the list still works here	Monthly
Roles match what people actually do	Quarterly
At least two Owners	Ongoing
External consultants still engaged	At each engagement end
Nobody has more access than they need	Quarterly

​The roles

​What each role can do

​Sensitive data — the reference table

​Choosing a role

​Location assignments

​Changing a role

​Removing someone

​Separation of duties

​Reviewing access

The roles

What each role can do

Sensitive data — the reference table

Choosing a role

Location assignments

Changing a role

Removing someone

Separation of duties

Reviewing access