Understanding Roles and Permissions

Four built-in roles cover the needs of most hospitality businesses, from single-location cafes to multi-site chains.

3 min read
Mar 15, 2026
NOWAITN

Roles are organization-wide, but app seats control which apps each person can access.

A manager without a Reservations seat cannot see reservation data

How Roles Work

Every person in your organization has exactly one role. The role determines their base level of access across the platform. Roles are hierarchical — each level includes everything the level below can do, plus additional capabilities.

Roles apply at the organization level, not per app. A manager is a manager across all apps they have seats in. This keeps things simple and predictable — you do not need to configure permissions separately in each app.

Owner

Owners have unrestricted access to everything in the organization. This includes all apps, all settings, billing, team management, and data.

Every organization has at least one owner — the person who created it. You can have multiple owners, but use this sparingly. Owners can delete the organization, change billing, and remove other owners.

Owner is the right role for business principals, franchise owners, and anyone who needs full control without restrictions.

Admin

Admins can manage apps, team members, and most organization settings. They cannot access billing or delete the organization.

Admins can invite and remove team members, assign roles up to and including admin, and configure app settings. They are the day-to-day technology managers who keep the platform running.

Admin is the right role for IT managers, operations directors, and senior staff who need to configure and manage the platform without needing billing access.

Manager

Managers can manage operations within the apps they have access to. They can configure queues, manage reservations, review certifications, and create knowledge base content.

Managers cannot invite or remove team members, change organization settings, or access apps where they do not hold a seat. Their scope is operational, not administrative.

Manager is the right role for location managers, shift leads, and department heads who run day-to-day operations.

Staff

Staff members have operational access — they can use the apps they have seats in but cannot change settings or configurations.

In the Queue app, a staff member can view the queue, mark customers as served, and add walk-ins. They cannot change queue settings, notification templates, or hours of operation.

Staff is the right role for hosts, servers, front-desk personnel, and anyone who uses the tools without needing to configure them.

App Seats and Access

A role defines what someone can do. A seat defines which apps they can access. Both are required — a manager without a Queue seat cannot see the Queue app, even though their role would permit full operational access if they had the seat.

This separation is intentional. It lets you control costs by only purchasing seats for the apps each person actually needs, while keeping role management simple with a single organization-wide assignment.