Team Roles & Permissions: Control Who Sees What in Your Workshop

When it's just you and one mechanic, everyone knows everything. You both see every order, every invoice, every client note. It works because there's nothing to hide and no one to confuse.

Then you hire a third person. Then a fourth. Suddenly the new apprentice can see what every customer paid. Your service advisor accidentally deletes an order the mechanic was working on. Someone changes an invoice that was already sent. And you spend your evenings checking whether anything went wrong during the day instead of going home.

This is the point where most workshop owners realise they need roles and permissions — not because they don't trust their team, but because the right boundaries let everyone work faster and with fewer mistakes.

The Four Roles That Cover Every Workshop

Garage Manager provides four staff roles, each designed for how that person actually uses the system day-to-day:

• Administrator: Full access to everything — settings, billing, team management, reports, all data. This is the workshop owner or operations manager.
• Manager: Access to orders, clients, vehicles, invoices, inspections, and reports. Can manage day-to-day operations but cannot change account settings, billing, or team roles.
• Service Advisor: Works with appointments, orders, inspections, clients, and invoices. Sees what they need to manage customer interactions and coordinate work — but not business-level reports or account settings.
• Mechanic: Sees assigned orders and inspections. Can update order status and complete inspection checklists. Doesn't see invoices, financial reports, or client contact details they don't need.

Each role is designed around a simple question: what does this person need to do their job well, and nothing more?

Why the Mechanic Doesn't Need to See Invoices

This isn't about secrecy. It's about focus and error prevention.

A mechanic's job is to fix cars. When they open the system, they need to see:

• Which jobs are assigned to them today
• What work each order requires
• The inspection checklist for the vehicle on the lift
• Where to mark a job as complete

They don't need to see the customer's payment status, the invoice total, or last month's revenue chart. Those screens are clutter at best and a source of awkward conversations at worst — nobody wants a mechanic mentioning a customer's outstanding balance during a handover.

Limiting visibility isn't a punishment. It's a cleaner, faster interface for the person using it.

Why the Service Advisor Needs to See Everything About the Customer

The service advisor is the bridge between the workshop and the customer. When Mrs. Weber calls about her appointment, the advisor needs instant access to:

• Her full vehicle history — last service, known issues, previous recommendations
• Open orders and their status — is the car done yet?
• Invoices — has she paid? Is anything overdue?
• Notes from previous visits — "prefers morning appointments", "always asks for OEM parts"

Without this access, the advisor puts the customer on hold, walks to the back, asks the mechanic, walks back — a 30-second lookup becomes a 5-minute interruption for two people.

The service advisor role gives full client and order visibility without exposing business-level settings or reports that don't help them serve customers better.

The Real Cost of "Everyone Can Do Everything"

Workshops without role boundaries tend to accumulate a specific kind of damage over time:

• Accidental edits: A staff member changes a finalised invoice while looking for something else. Now the numbers don't match the customer's copy.
• Status confusion: Two people update the same order because neither knew the other was working on it. The customer gets conflicting information.
• Information leaks: A new hire mentions pricing details to a customer during casual conversation. The customer now negotiates based on internal margins.
• Audit trail gaps: When everyone has the same access level, it's impossible to trace who made a specific change — and "it wasn't me" becomes the default answer.

None of these are malicious. They're the natural result of a system without boundaries. Roles prevent them by design.

"I resisted adding roles because I thought it would slow things down and make people feel like I didn't trust them. The opposite happened. My mechanics said it was easier because they only saw their own jobs. My advisor stopped accidentally editing orders she shouldn't have touched. And I stopped checking everything at the end of the day." — Workshop Owner, 6-person team

Setting Up Roles Takes 5 Minutes

Configuring team roles in Garage Manager is straightforward:

1. Go to your account settings and open the team section
2. For each team member, select their role: Administrator, Manager, Service Advisor, or Mechanic
3. Save — permissions take effect immediately

There's no complex permission matrix to configure. Each role comes with sensible defaults that match how that person actually works. If someone's responsibilities change, updating their role is a single dropdown change.

The Delegation Benefit

The hidden value of roles isn't just preventing mistakes — it's letting the owner step back.

When you know your service advisor can handle client communication and order management without accidentally touching billing settings, you stop hovering. When you know the mechanic's view is focused on their assigned work, you stop spot-checking every screen they open.

Roles create trust through structure. Instead of hoping everyone is careful, you design a system where being careful is the default. That's the difference between a workshop where the owner works 12-hour days and one where they can take a Friday off without anxiety.

Getting Started

If your team is still sharing a single login or everyone has admin access, start here:

1. Create individual accounts for each team member — this alone gives you an audit trail of who did what
2. Assign the role that matches their actual daily work
3. Ask them after a week: "Is anything missing from your view?" Adjust if needed

Team roles are available on all plans, including the free plan. There's no reason to wait until something goes wrong — set them up before it does.