| Role | Create order draft | Confirm / dispatch order | Pack order | Record payment | Void invoice | Edit pricing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Owner | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed |
| Manager | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed | Not allowed | Allowed |
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, clears customer returns, and handles purchase returns after the Owner approves them — the full daily grind. What a Manager does not touch are the few irreversible or money-sensitive levers: approving a purchase return, 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 two wildcard globs —
orders.*andintake.*— plus explicit keys across returns, customers, inventory, invoicing, pricing, suppliers, notifications and WhatsApp. The explicit returns list excludes purchase-return approval while retaining customer returns and other purchase-return steps. - 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 intake workflow without each action being listed one by one. - Owner-only action — an operation protected by both a permission and an Owner role gate. Purchase-return approval is one: granting
returns.purchase.approveto a Manager does not bypass the Owner check.
Common workflows
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.
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.
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.
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.
Open Returns (/returns). For a customer return, initiate, approve or reject the request, receive the goods back, and cancel an in-flight one if needed. For a purchase return to a supplier, initiate it and continue the workflow after the Owner approves it; the Manager can still complete the return and record the supplier credit note.
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.
| Role | Run orders / intake / customer returns | Complete an approved purchase return | Approve a purchase return | Generate & finalize invoices | Void an invoice | Edit HSN-rate overrides | Archive a supplier | Toggle customer blacklist | Delete price list / quotation | Team, billing & settings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manager | Approval | Allowed | Not allowed | Allowed | Not allowed | Not allowed | Not allowed | Not allowed | Not allowed | Approval |
| Owner | Approval | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed | Approval |
What the Manager Manager can do: the full orders, intake and customer-return workflows, plus every purchase-return step except approval; 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:
- Approve a purchase return. This remains Owner-only even if the Manager is explicitly granted
returns.purchase.approve. - 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
invoicing.void — from the role editor. Absolute role-gated actions are the exception: purchase-return approval still requires an Owner even when returns.purchase.approve is granted to a Manager.The orders.* and intake.* globs mean a Manager never waits for a permission to be wired up under those prefixes. Returns use an explicit list instead, so new return actions are reviewed before they reach the Manager role.
Gotchas
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.