Access, Roles & Permissions

Univents has three levels of access: Owner, Admin and Crew. Anyone who needs no access at all simply stays a staff record. On top of that, roles control which modules an admin sees — from "no access" to "full access", per module and per action. A role with Kind: Read only turns an admin into read access: they see whatever their role shows but cannot save anything. Details and prices are in Read access and rights per operation.

Admin used to be called Manager, Crew used to be called Helper or Temp. The levels themselves are unchanged; only the wording is now the same everywhere — in Staff, in Settings, in emails and on the pricing page.

The video shows the two member types, admin and crew, how you set visibility for individual crew members, and how you create your own admin roles with the permission matrix.

Play video4:10

You’ll find the individual steps written out below as well.

The three levels

No access does not mean invisible: the person appears as usual in shift planning, in payroll, on kitchen sheets and packing lists. You can also send them a portal link (no sign-in) — that shows their shifts in the portal without an account of their own. Pay, leave, files and messages stay out of it; those need a login, so they start at the Crew level.

How many admin seats your plan includes depends on the plan — Core includes 1, for example, Growth 3, Scale 6; for Enterprise the number is negotiated individually (see the pricing overview). If you need more, an extra admin seat costs €79 per month. Univents always names that amount before you confirm. Admins are free during your trial — you can add as many as you like and no price appears. Only when you activate your workspace does Univents show, before payment, how many admins you have and what the extra seats cost; at that point you can still change admins to crew or remove them. Crew is unlimited and free — every person who works shifts can have their own portal login. Read access starts with Scale: one read seat is included per admin seat, every additional one costs €19 per month or €190 per year. Growth and Core have no read access.

Granting access while creating someone

The shortest route runs through Staff: you create the person and decide in the same form what access they get.

1. Open Staff, the Members tab, and click Member in the top right.
2. Enter first name, last name and — required for Crew or Admin — the email address.
3. In the Access section, pick one of the three levels: No access (preselected), Crew or Admin.
4. Click Create member.

What the three options say in the form:

Picking Admin unfolds two more lines: the Permissions picker (default Full access (no restriction), with your own roles below it) and the Admin seats line. That line reads either 2 of 3 used, included in your plan or 3 of 3 used, next seat costs €79 per month. So you see the price before you click — and you confirm it explicitly when saving. If you cancel at that point the person is still created: with No access and without an invitation. You can add the access later at any time.

Without an email address, Crew and Admin cannot be selected, with the hint "Portal or admin access needs an email address." Add the address and the options become available immediately.

For both Crew and Admin, Univents sends an invitation. The person clicks the link, sets up their login and then lands in the right place automatically: Crew in the staff portal, Admin in the admin area. Until they accept, the list shows Crew · Invited or Admin · Invited.

Signed in with the wrong account. If the invited person opens the link while a different account is already signed in in the browser, the page shows which email address the invitation is for. With Sign out and continue they sign out and return to the invitation with the right address. The invitation still only applies to the invited email address.

Changing a person's access

Open their staff file. The Access section shows the current label and, next to it, a single button: Change access. The button opens a dialog with the same three levels — nothing changes until you confirm in there.

If the step costs money the dialog names the monthly amount and you confirm it separately. Make crew is not a deletion: the person still signs in but lands in the portal instead of management, and the admin seat is free immediately. If you grant admin access again later, pick the role again.

Remove access is the only step that really breaks the link to the login — and therefore the prerequisite for archiving the staff record or deleting the contact later. Note: it breaks the link on all staff records belonging to that person, including archived duplicates. If somebody accumulated two records over the years, neither one is attached to the login afterwards.

For the owner there is no button, only the note "Owner access changes only via Transfer ownership." In your own staff file it says "Only another owner can change your own access." — both on purpose: nobody should be able to lock themselves out or promote themselves.

Inviting several people to the portal at once

When service, kitchen and tech should all get a portal login, you can do it in one pass.

1. Open Staff and switch to the Access tab.
2. Click Invite to portal above the list.
3. Search by name or email address in the dialog and tick the people — up to 50 per run.
4. Click Invite … people to the portal.

Only people from Staff who have neither a login nor an open invitation are listed. Rows without an email address cannot be selected and carry the reason no email. After the run you get a summary such as 14 invited, 3 skipped — with the name and reason for every skipped row. A single person is still easier to invite from their staff file.

Access & invitations at a glance

Staff › Access is the overview of everything login-related. The top shows how many admin seats are taken, below it three sections: People with a login, Pending invitations and Expired invitations. People without access are deliberately not listed — they are in the staff list.

Depending on their state, the three-dot menu in a row offers these actions:

What you confirm is always exactly the amount shown in the dialog. If your allowance has changed in the meantime, Univents asks again instead of billing quietly.

The invitation table shows in the Access column whether the invitation is for Admin or for Crew. The same actions also live on the People & Access page (univents.app/home/<your-workspace>/settings/members) — which is not in any menu, because Staff › Access is the shorter route.

Which label belongs to whom

The list shows exactly one state per person — identically in Staff › Access, in the staff list and in the staff file.

What counts is always the access to the workspace. That is why this information lives in one place only, and no longer as a picker in the staff file or on the contact: there it is read-only and links back here.

Who may grant what

An admin does not see the menu items for admin access at all; triggering the action by another route returns "No permission". The reason: whoever may grant admin access turns a second person into an admin with full access — and reaches, through them, everything their own role denies them. Roles and admin access therefore stay in the same hands.

Crew is exempt from this, deliberately: a portal login grants no rights in the admin area, costs nothing, and is exactly the kind of job a service lead should be able to handle themselves. A read-only role such as Admin: read only still cannot invite — that needs the right to create staff records.

The owner of a workspace can only be changed by that owner via Transfer ownership — which is why they see no three-dot menu at all.

Inviting admins by email

People who don't exist in Univents yet can be invited without a staff record.

1. Open the People & Access page. It is not in any menu — you reach it via its address: univents.app/home/<your-workspace>/settings/members. For <your-workspace>, use the part that also appears in the address bar while you work in Univents. A bookmark saves you the typing next time.
2. Click Invite Members in the top right.
3. Enter the email address and pick the access: Admin (full app access, counts as an admin seat) or Crew (staff portal, doesn't count as an admin seat).
4. Click Add another to invite multiple people at once.
5. Finally, click Send invitations.

As long as an invitation has not been accepted it appears under Pending invitations — where you can manage it via Remove invitation and — once it has expired — via Resend invitation. Anyone who joins as Crew this way and has no staff record yet gets one automatically.

Join requests from colleagues

When someone signs up with a work email address whose domain matches your workspace, Univents offers them the option to join during setup. That creates a join request — nobody gets access until you approve it.

Subdomains are recognised as well: if someone signs up as first.last@external.company.com while your workspace runs on company.com, they belong to the same company and get the suggestion. Free email addresses (Gmail, GMX, Outlook.com …) never trigger a suggestion — there the domain does not stand for a company.

You will find open requests under Staff > Access tab in the Join requests section:

1. Open Staff and switch to the Access tab.
2. Click Approve on the request.
3. Pick Add as an admin together with the role, or Create as crew. Or click Decline if they should not get access.

Add as an admin shows the same seat line and the same price as the creation form before you confirm. Create as crew opens the staff creation form with prefilled data; the request stays open until the person is created.

The section only appears when there actually are open requests — and only for people who may also invite: the owner, admins and every role with the Invite members right. Those same people also receive the email and the bell notification about the request — after all, only they can approve it. Previously the notification went to every member of the workspace. A request expires on its own after 14 days. If someone gets no suggestion, because they use a private address for example, invite them by email as usual instead.

Assigning a role from the role matrix

You don't assign the granular roles from the role matrix (see below) directly on the People & Access list — that happens one level down, in the Advanced section:

1. On the People & Access page, scroll to the Advanced section and open the Members ⇄ Staff table.
2. For each person you'll see their linked staff record, access tier, and assigned role.
3. Pick the role you want from the dropdown in the Role column. The choice saves immediately.

Roles only apply to admins: they trim which modules are visible in the admin area. For Crew there is nothing to trim — the staff portal only ever shows a person's own data.

This requires two things: the person needs a linked staff record — created automatically when you invite them from Staff, or once an existing account is linked to its staff record. And your plan needs to be Scale or higher; below that, the column shows a note about the required upgrade instead of the dropdown.

Assigning an existing role only needs the management permission Change other people's roles. Creating, editing, or deleting a role itself is reserved for the owner — more on that in the next section.

Creating custom roles

Univents ships with system-level default roles. In addition, from the Scale plan upwards you can define your own roles with granular module permissions; on smaller plans this section shows a note about the required upgrade instead of the role list.

Only the workspace owner can create, edit and delete roles — the person who created the workspace or had ownership transferred to them. Anyone who is an admin can see the roles and their permissions but cannot change them. This is deliberate: whoever can edit roles could attach every permission to their own role in a single step. If you are not the owner, the Roles page shows a note naming the person who can do it for you, and the buttons are greyed out.

Assigning an existing role to a person is a different matter — that only needs the management permission Change other people's roles (see "Assigning a role from the role matrix" above).

1. Navigate to Settings and open the Roles page (URL: /settings/rollen).
2. Click Create role.
3. Enter a Name (e.g. "Service Lead") and optionally a short Description.
4. Click Create — the role appears immediately in the role matrix.

Role kind: Edit or Read only

Every role has a kind. Edit is the default and the familiar role. Read only turns every admin with that role into read access: they see what the role shows but cannot save anything. Once a role is set to Read only, Create, Edit and Delete are locked in the matrix — a read role carries no edit rights. You can switch back to Edit at any time and the permissions stay as they are. What read access may do and costs is in Read access and rights per operation.

Creating a role from a template

Instead of starting from scratch, click the Template button next to Create role in the top right. The Create role from template menu offers five ready-made role templates with a pre-filled permission matrix:

Clicking a template immediately creates a new role with that matrix — you can then fine-tune it like any other role in the role matrix, or rename it under Edit role. Read only immediately creates a real read role: it shows the admin area and the whole catalogue but cannot save anything, and counts as a read seat instead of an admin seat. The free Crew level is something else — it has no access to the admin area at all.

Assigning permissions in the role matrix

Click a role in the list to expand it. You'll see a table with all modules as rows and four actions as columns: View, Create, Edit, Delete. Click a checkbox to turn that action on or off for that module.

Turning on Create, Edit, or Delete automatically turns on View as well — there's no write access without read access. If all four checkboxes are off for a module, that module is completely hidden for admins with this role, and it disappears from their left navigation.

What “Delete” covers: The checkbox applies to every deletion in that module — in the app, in the AI assistant and through the Claude connection. In the Staff module it also covers archiving staff members. Removing line items from a quote or invoice, on the other hand, is part of Finance: Edit, and removing a booking position from an event is part of Events: Edit. Deleting a file on a location needs Locations: Edit, deleting a function sheet template or one of your own email templates needs Settings: Delete. If the permission is missing, Univents hides the delete buttons or tells you so when you try.

The role matrix covers nine modules:

Knowledge Base, Booking Pages, Contacts, Team Activity, and Roadmap currently don't have their own access level in the role matrix — they're visible to every admin, regardless of the role assigned to them.

Two exceptions for the Knowledge Base: anyone with crew access only cannot reach it at all — neither the documents nor the AI chat in the back office. And sharing a document with the crew or with customers, editing an already shared article, or changing the card AI assistant in the portals requires the access level Settings: Edit. Withdrawing a sharing option is never blocked. See Knowledge base: share documents and write your own articles.

You can also set which events a role sees at all: under Event visibility (tags) in the expanded section, select one or more event tags. Without a selection, the role sees all events. Every change is saved immediately.

The same restriction applies to inquiries: an admin with such a role sees an inquiry if it carries one of their tags, if its venue carries one of their tags, or if the linked event is visible to them. Inquiries they created themselves are always visible to them. The owner is never restricted — the tag selection only affects admins with that role.

Administration rights next to the modules

Below the module matrix every role has an Administration section. It holds five switches that belong to no module:

Without roles, everything is allowed. As long as your workspace has no role at all, every member may open administration, invite, assign roles, export and approve. Once the first role exists, members with a role get exactly what that role switches on.

Approving is a right, not a badge. Anyone with Grant and reject approvals decides on approvals and needs no approval for their own quotes, invoices and inquiries. Which items need an approval is set under Settings → Approvals — see Approvals for quotes, invoices and inquiries. Newly created roles start with this right switched off.

Who may always export. The owner, admins without an assigned role and every member in a workspace without roles may export. A crew member never sees the export buttons. If Export data is off in the role, Univents hides the export buttons; a direct call is refused with “You don't have permission for this export. Ask the owner of your workspace.” Print views and single PDFs keep working.

New roles start without the right, existing roles keep it. Every role created before 14 October 2026 has Export data switched on, so nothing changes for anyone. Newly created roles start with it off; the Administrator and Accounting templates have it switched on.

Set the modules first, then assign the role. Assigning a role applies its whole module matrix right away — including areas that were open before. So set the modules first and assign the role afterwards. If someone should not see revenue reports at all, take Finance: View away in the role; Export data only controls the download.

Check automations after changing rights. Rules with the monthly export to your accountant that were created before the right was taken away keep running. Go through the existing rules after every change and switch off what should no longer run.

Only your own events

In a role's expanded section, choose under Which events whether the role sees all events or only events where the person is set as project planner. You pick the project planner when creating or editing an event. Events the person creates themselves are always visible to them.

The restriction also applies to inquiries (only their own inquiries and those whose event is visible), to reports, counters and comments. If the role also has tags selected, both conditions must match. The owner is never restricted.

What else a restricted role sees

If a role only sees some of the events (through tags or “only your own events”), the same applies to everything attached to an event:

• Documents: quotes, invoices, delivery notes and credit notes of an event the role cannot see do not appear in the document list and cannot be opened or changed. The same goes for their line items and for the event's booked items.
• Tasks: the task overview leaves out tasks of events the role cannot see.
• Shifts: the shift plan and “All shifts” leave out shifts of events the role cannot see.
• Reports: the “Top customers” and “Top products” rankings only count documents of visible events.

Anything not attached to an event stays visible to the role as before: documents, tasks and shifts without an event. Contacts and the mailbox are not restricted — the role still sees the full contact list, and which mailboxes someone sees is controlled by the mailbox setting alone. The crew's staff portal does not change.

Separating several sites

If you run two sites, say Cologne and Düsseldorf, you don't have to tag every single event by hand:

1. Under Locations, give each venue the tag of its site, e.g. “Cologne” or “Düsseldorf”.
2. Create one role per site and pick the matching tag under Event visibility (tags).
3. Assign the role to that site's admins.

When an event gets a venue, it takes over the venue's tags automatically — also when more venues are added later. An inquiry with a venue takes over the tags as well. If you add a tag to a venue later, all ongoing and upcoming events there get it; past events stay unchanged. Tags are only ever added, never removed.

The same tag selection also separates editing: a role with tags only edits booking pages, products and locations of its operation — records that carry one of these tags themselves or through their venue. Shared records without an operation tag can only be edited with the May edit shared records switch; assign existing records via bulk editing with Add tags. Automations, by contrast, always apply to the whole workspace. More in Read access and rights per operation.

Editing or deleting roles

• Edit: Click the Edit role button in the role's row. A dialog opens where you can adjust the Name and Description. Click Save.
• Delete: Click the trash icon at the end of the row. A confirmation prompt appears — confirm with Delete. A role can only be deleted if it is no longer assigned to anyone.

Roles marked Set up by Univents were created for you by Univents. You can assign them to people like any other role, but you can't edit or delete them — the buttons are greyed out. If such a role needs to change, contact Univents support.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Crew and a portal link? Crew is a login of their own: the person signs in with their email address and a code and also sees pay, leave, files and messages in the portal. A portal link (no sign-in) is a link without an account — it shows only the operational areas (shifts, hours, tasks, kitchen, packing list) and can expire or be withdrawn. Both are free.

Does Crew use an admin seat? No. Crew is unlimited and included in your plan. Only the owner, admins and open admin invitations count against the admin seats.

Does read access count as an admin seat? No. Read access counts as its own read seat: on Scale one is included per admin seat, every additional one costs €19 per month or €190 per year. Growth and Core have no read access.

Can I customise a default role? No. The system-level default roles are fixed and cannot be edited. Create a custom role if you need a different permission profile.

What happens when I change a role? Permission changes to a role take effect immediately for all admins who have that role assigned.

I can't see the "Invite Members" button. You need the permission to manage invitations. Ask the account owner to grant you this permission or to invite you directly.

I see no three-dot menu at all for a person, or no access actions — why? Granting, revoking and repairing admin access belongs to the workspace owner alone, regardless of what other rights you have. Ask them to make the change for you. For the owner themselves no menu ever appears — their level only changes via Transfer ownership.

Why can't I archive or delete a staff member who has a login? Because they could otherwise keep signing in without appearing in the list. Only Remove access in the Access tab breaks the link between the login and the record — after that the staff record can be archived and the contact deleted under Contacts. Make crew is not enough: the person keeps their login and stays linked as crew with portal access, so the block remains.

The "Create role" button is greyed out — why? Only the workspace owner can create and change roles. The Roles page shows a note with their name, so ask them. Being an admin is deliberately not enough. If the page shows a note about your plan instead, that is the plan gate: custom roles are available from Scale upwards.

Inviting shows “An invitation to this email is already pending” — what now? An invitation is already on its way to this address and belongs to another staff record. The owner removes it under Staff › Access in the Pending invitations section via the three-dot menu with Remove Invitation; then invite the person again. When a staff record is deleted, Univents takes its pending invitation with it — it no longer blocks a new invitation, and its old link can no longer be accepted.

Read access

Read access is an admin login that may only look: it sees everything its role allows but cannot save anything. A role with the kind Read only turns every admin holding it into a read seat; the staff list then shows Admin · Read access.

To set it up, go to Settings → Roles, click Add role and switch Kind to Read only — the line below reads Read-only role — counts as a read seat. — or pick the Read only template (“See everything, change nothing · counts as a read seat”) under Template.

Saving then answers “With read-only access you can view, comment and export, but not change anything. Ask an account owner for an editing role.” Viewing, commenting and direct messages stay allowed; while viewing, Univents stores nothing in the background.

Read access starts at Scale: one is included per admin seat, every additional one costs 19 € per month or 190 € per year. Under Billing the Admin seats card shows the line Read access: 2 of 3 included.

A role with operation tags sees events, inquiries, documents, tasks and shifts only from its own operation; booking pages, products and locations it sees all of, but edits only its own. Foreign entries open read-only with Belongs to business … — read only, and the lists start with the My business filter; All entries keeps the whole catalogue reachable.

All details are in Read access and rights per operation.