Understanding roles and permissions
Every person you add to your Accupe workspace sits in one of three internal tiers: Staff, Manager, or Admin. Above those sits the Super Admin, the person who originally signed up and owns the firm's account. Clients are a separate category altogether, they log into their own portal and never see your firm's internal navigation.
The tiers, from the top down
What's in the sidebar for everyone
Staff, Managers, Admins, and the owner all share the same core navigation: Dashboard, Triage, Messages, Clients, Company Docs, Pipeline, Calendar, Smart Board, All Jobs, All Tasks, Timesheets, Documents, AI Chat, eSignatures, Team Directory, and KYC Verification appear for every tier.
What's limited to Manager and above
A handful of firm-wide items only appear in the sidebar once you're a Manager, Admin, or the owner:
How strictly each of these is actually enforced varies by screen. Team Heatmap and Reports re-check your role once you land on the page and show a plain "Access Restricted" message to anyone who isn't a Manager, Admin, or the owner, so a Staff member can't reach them even by typing the address directly. Templates, Compliance Radar, Profitability and Invoices currently rely on the sidebar hide alone, the pages themselves don't re-check your role, so a Staff member with the direct link can still open them today. Settings sits in between, the hub page itself is reachable by anyone, but the sensitive tiles inside it (below) each re-check your role.
Settings is more restrictive than the sidebar suggests
Even a Manager who opens Settings from the sidebar sees a stripped-down page, only Firm Details, Team & Roles, Billing & Subscription, Integrations, and Security are hidden from a Manager's view of the hub. All five of those are also blocked if you try to open them directly by address: each one re-checks your role and shows an "Access Restricted" card to anyone who isn't an Admin or the owner. The tiles you see depend on your tier:
Staff don't have a Settings link in their sidebar, but the account menu in the top bar (click your name, top right) always includes a Settings option. That badge shows your internal role in lowercase followed by "View", for example "staff View" for a Staff member, or "company View" for the firm owner. Clicking Settings takes Staff to the same reduced page a Manager would see, there's no separate personal-settings area today.
Fine-tuning access beyond the tier defaults
Admins and the owner can adjust individual permissions per person from the Granular permissions window (the gear icon next to a team member in Settings > Team & Roles). A toggle that's been switched away from its role default is marked "Overridden" so you can spot exceptions at a glance.
By default, Managers can view financials, manage invoices, approve KYC, run AML checks, manage clients, manage signatures, and view the audit log, but cannot manage the team, manage billing, edit automation rules, manage compliance requirements, delete clients, export data, or manage API keys unless you switch those on individually. Admins default to full access everywhere except billing: "Manage billing & subscription plans" (the permission that also covers closing your Accupe account entirely) is switched on by default only for the firm owner. An Admin can still open the Billing & Subscription page itself, they simply won't have that specific toggle enabled unless the owner grants it to them.
Where clients fit in
Clients aren't part of this tier system at all. When you invite someone to your client portal, they get a completely separate navigation built around their own workspace, Workspace Home, Documents, Task Status, Messages, and eSign History, several of which you can turn on or off per client from that client's portal settings.
Note: Internally, Accupe tracks a role and a separate access level for each person. A Manager or Admin invited from Settings > Team & Roles keeps the underlying role "staff", with their real tier held in access level instead. The Access Level column on Team Directory is meant to show whichever value actually governs someone's access, but if a member's tier ever looks out of step with what they can actually see, opening Manage Staff and re-saving their role will bring the two back in sync.