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A role in Beebole is a named set of permissions that controls what its holders can see and do. Every person has exactly one role, and each permission in a role sets two levels — View and Edit — scoped to targets such as Me, Managed people, or Managed projects. This page explains how roles work and what every permission controls.
Roles control what a person’s role lets them do — view or edit data. Which projects, time off types, and expense types are available to each person is a separate system, covered in Assignments.

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How roles work

Roles live in Settings > Person Roles — click the button with your initials at the bottom of the sidebar to open Settings. Each role is a grid of permissions with three pieces:
  • Permission — the area of Beebole it controls, such as Timesheet entries or Billing rates.
  • Edit — the targets whose data the role can create, change, or delete.
  • View — the targets whose data the role can see.
A permission with nothing selected shows Not allowed: people with that role don’t see that area at all. Two permissions — Timesheet entries and Reports — are simple on/off checkboxes instead of target selectors.
Beebole Person Roles screen with the Project manager role open, showing the Admin role (full access) checkbox, the Search field, and permissions such as Apply tags and Assign project managers with Managed projects and Owned tasks targets under Edit and View, and Not allowed on others

The permission grid of the Project manager role, with the Edit and View targets of each permission

Custom roles exist on the new Beebole platform only. If your Settings screen has no Person Roles entry and you sign in at beebole-apps.com, you are on the Legacy platform, where user groups are fixed — see organizing people in the legacy documentation. Which Beebole am I using? explains how to tell the two apart.
Edit access always includes view access. When you add a target under Edit, Beebole adds it to View automatically; when you remove a target from View, it is removed from Edit too. At the top of the grid, the Admin role (full access) checkbox grants everything at once. Checking it replaces all individual permissions with full access; unchecking it clears the role so you can build it permission by permission.
A few permissions — such as Billing rates, Costs, Project budgets, and Time off balance — correspond to features included in higher-tier plans. If your subscription doesn’t include the feature, the permission has no effect, even for admins.

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Creating and managing roles

1

Open the roles page

Click the button with your initials at the bottom of the sidebar, then go to Settings > Person Roles.
2

Add a role

Click Add Role and type a name — for example Editor, Staff, or Project Lead.
3

Set the permissions

For each permission, pick targets under Edit and View, or check the Admin role (full access) box for full access. Use the Search… field to find a permission by name.
There is no Save button — every change to a role is saved automatically and applies to everyone holding that role. To manage an existing role, open its ⋯ action menu in the roles list: Duplicate copies the role with all its permissions, Rename changes its name, Archive hides it (Unarchive brings it back), and Delete removes it. A role that is still assigned to anyone can be neither archived nor deleted. Beebole refuses with “This role is still assigned to one or more people and cannot be deleted or archived.” Give those people another role first (see Assigning a role to a person), then archive or delete it.
Beebole Roles page listing Admin, Employee, People manager and Project manager, with the Project manager action menu open on Duplicate, Rename, Archive, Unarchive and Delete

The roles list with a role's action menu open

Start from a role that is close to what you need and use Duplicate, then adjust the copy. It is faster than building a role from scratch and you are less likely to miss a permission.
Every new Beebole account starts with four roles: Admin (full access), Employee, People manager, and Project manager. You can edit them, duplicate them, or add your own.
Creating roles, with Add Role or Duplicate, requires the Advanced plan, or the Custom fields, custom roles & advanced configuration add-on on the Essential plan. On other plans, Add Role is unavailable and an upgrade button sits next to it. Every plan can edit the permissions of existing roles, and roles you created stay fully editable after a downgrade: you can still rename, archive, unarchive, or delete them.

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Permission scopes

For permissions with target selectors, the targets you pick under Edit and View define whose data the permission covers. Each permission only offers the targets that make sense for it. The targets separate what the person manages from their colleagues — and, for tasks, what they own from what they manage:
Beebole Access Rights panel filtered on People details, the Edit selector open on the targets All, Managed people, Me, Project colleagues, Task colleagues and Team colleagues, with Managed project members already selected, and View set to Me and Managed project members

The Edit targets offered for People details, with Managed project members already picked

For example, a team leader role could have People details set to Edit: Managed people and View: Managed people, Project colleagues — they can maintain their own team’s profiles and see, but not change, the profiles of project colleagues. Tasks on managed projects and Tasks of managed people reach tasks through the projects or people someone manages, rather than through the task itself. Existing roles whose People details or Project details already reached managed people or managed projects received the matching task target automatically, under View on Tasks. Roles with Tasks at Not allowed or All were left unchanged. In a new Beebole account, the built-in People manager role sees both targets and Project manager sees Tasks on managed projects.
Beebole Access Rights panel of the Project manager role filtered on Tasks: Edit set to Managed tasks and Owned tasks, View set to Managed tasks, Owned tasks, Assigned tasks and Tasks on managed projects, and the View selector open on the targets still available, All and Tasks of managed people

The View targets of the Tasks permission, with Tasks on managed projects picked and Tasks of managed people offered

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Time entries on someone else’s timesheet

On another person’s timesheet, only what you manage counts. Beebole lets you see, add, or change a time entry there when you reach it through the person (Managed people), one of the entry’s projects (Managed projects), or its task (Managed tasks, or a project you manage that the task is linked to). Tasks you own or are assigned to, and projects you are only assigned to, don’t count for someone else’s timesheet: an entry you could reach only that way is refused. A target of All still covers every entry, and on your own timesheet your role’s targets apply as usual.

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Timesheet, time off, and schedule permissions

These permissions control day-to-day time tracking data. Timesheet and planning settings governs who may change that panel, not what it contains. Which plannings a person may record time on is one of its settings — Record time on these plannings — and it applies per person rather than per role. See Which plannings a person can book.

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Approval permissions

Only the people who design the sign-off process need Approval workflow. Approving and rejecting timesheets isn’t a separate permission — it follows the stages of the approval workflow itself, so whoever a stage resolves as an approver can act, and administrators can always step in.

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Billing, cost, and budget permissions

Financial data is hidden from anyone whose role has these set to Not allowed — they don’t see billing or cost amounts anywhere in Beebole, including reports.

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Expense permissions

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People permissions

Be deliberate with User account edit access: whoever holds it can change other people’s roles. Who manages whom is a separate permission, Assign people managers, in the assignment permissions below.

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Project and task permissions

Which tasks a role sees depends on its Tasks targets alone. A task the role lets you see is shown even when you can’t see its owner or the projects it is linked to.

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Assignment permissions

Assignment permissions separate changing data from deciding who works on what. A role can be allowed to edit projects without being allowed to assign people to them — or the reverse. When a role lacks an assignment permission, the matching controls simply don’t appear for its holders.
The permission list is long. Use the search box at the top of the role’s permission panel to jump straight to the permission you’re looking for.
Beebole Access Rights panel of the Project manager role with Assign typed in the Search field, listing Assign custom fields, Assign expenses, Assign people managers, Assign schedules, Assign tag managers, Assign time off and Schedule assignment as Not allowed, Assign project managers on Managed projects, and Assign task managers and Assign task owner on Managed tasks and Owned tasks

Searching for Assign narrows the Project manager role to its assignment permissions

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Custom field permissions

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Journal and report permissions

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Account and visibility permissions

These permissions cover account configuration and the access-control settings themselves. Show or hide by default sets the account-wide defaults described in Assignments. The per-item Who has access? panels and the per-person Show or hide panels follow the assignment permissions above instead — a role needs the matching Assign … permission to change who has access to what.
Some account-wide definitions are not role-configurable and so have no row in the grid — creating time off types, expense types, custom fields, and work schedules, for example, along with the tag and single sign-on configuration, which are reserved for administrators.

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Assigning a role to a person

1

Open the person

Click People in the sidebar and click the person’s name.
2

Open the Email & role panel

In the person’s details, open the Email & role panel.
3

Pick the role

Next to Role, hover over the current role and click the × on it, then choose another role from the Choose a role selector. The change is saved automatically.
Beebole Email & role panel of Marc Dubois with his email address and the Choose a role selector open, listing the Admin, Employee, People manager and Project manager roles

The Choose a role selector in a person's Email & role panel

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Common setups

The built-in roles cover the situations most teams ask about. Which time entries a role sees follows the people and projects it can view: Timesheet entries and Reports switch the features on, and the targets on People details and Project details decide whose time, on which projects, shows up.

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Project managers see every hour logged on their projects

Give project managers the built-in Project manager role, or a copy of it. It is scoped to their projects rather than to a team: Project details at View: Managed projects, Assigned projects, People details at View: Me, Managed project members, with Timesheet entries and Reports switched on. Whoever logs time on a project they manage — employee or freelancer — appears in their reports and in the Team pane of the timesheet, and time on other projects stays out of sight. Then make them manager of the projects, or of a whole project category at once, in the Manages panel of their profile — see Assignments.

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Freelancers and contractors see only their own time

Give them the built-in Employee role, or a copy of it: People details at View: Me, Project details at View: Assigned projects, and Timesheet entries on. They see their own timesheet and the projects assigned to them, and nothing about colleagues. If they must not see billing or cost figures either, keep Billing rates and Costs at Not allowed — the default on Employee.

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Both at once

The two setups combine without a third role: project managers hold Project manager, everyone else holds Employee. A freelancer sees only their own time, while the manager of the project they work on sees the freelancer’s hours next to the staff’s. A separate role is only needed when a group wants something different — a finance role with View: All on Billing rates and Costs, for example, built by duplicating Project manager.

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Best practices

  • Grant the least access that works. Start from Not allowed and add View before Edit, only for the targets each role really needs.
  • Name roles after responsibilities. Names like Project Lead or Finance make it obvious who should hold them.
  • Prefer few roles over many. Targets like Managed people and Managed projects adapt to each holder, so a single manager role can serve every manager.
  • Review roles when your structure changes. Targets follow manager and tag relationships — check that permissions still reach the right people after a reorganization.

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Related content

Assignments

Control which projects, time off types, and expense types are available to each person.

People

Add and invite team members, and manage their profiles and roles.

Tags

Group people and projects with tags — several permission targets follow tag managers.

Account Settings

Configure the organization-wide settings that several permissions gate.

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Frequently asked questions

Roles control what a person can do: view or edit timesheets, billing rates, reports, and so on. Assignments control which items are available to them: which projects they can log time against, or which time off types they can pick. Beebole applies both — a person needs the permission and the item.
No. Each person in Beebole holds exactly one role. If someone needs a mix of permissions from two roles, duplicate one of them and adjust the copy (creating roles requires the Advanced plan or the Custom fields, custom roles & advanced configuration add-on).
For each permission, View lets the role see the data and Edit lets it create, change, or delete it, each scoped to the targets you select. A permission with no targets selected shows Not allowed, and that area of Beebole is hidden from the role entirely.
Every new account starts with Admin, Employee, People manager, and Project manager. The Admin role has the Admin role (full access) box checked, which grants every permission. You can edit these roles or add your own.
No. Beebole saves every change to a role automatically — adding a target, unchecking a permission, or renaming the role. There is no Save button on the roles page.
Two things must both be true in Beebole: their role must reach the people who logged the time — People details at View: Managed project members, as on the built-in Project manager role — and they must actually be set as the project’s manager, in the Manages panel of their profile. A manager set only on a subproject sees that subproject; set them on the parent to cover everything beneath it.
On someone else’s timesheet, Beebole only counts tasks you manage. A task you own or are assigned to isn’t enough: the entry is refused unless you manage the task, a project the task is linked to, the person, or one of the entry’s projects. To fix it, ask someone whose role includes Assign task managers to make you a manager of the task.