Members and roles

Every project has members, and every member has one role in that project. The role decides what they see and what they can do: your team works on everything, a client adds and completes tasks without seeing your hours or rates, and a restricted member sees only the sections you share with them.

Roles are per project. Somebody can be a team member in one of your projects and a client in another.

The six roles#

Role	In short
Owner	Manages everything, including members, settings, rates, budget and invoicing.
Manager	Everything a team member does, plus rates, budget and invoiced hours.
Team member	Works on tasks and sections, logs time and sees all hours. No rates or budget.
Client	Creates, edits and completes tasks and comments. Sees no hours, rates or budget.
Reader	Reads along and comments. Can complete tasks assigned to them, nothing else.
Restricted	Only sees the sections you share, with view or edit access per section.

A project always has exactly one owner: whoever created it, or whoever it was handed to.

What each role can do#

This is the same table the project shows under What can each role do? on the Members page.

	Owner	Manager	Team member	Client	Reader	Restricted
Sees every section and task	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Comments on tasks	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Completes tasks assigned to them	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Creates and edits tasks	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Manages sections and labels	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Logs time and sees all hours	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Sees rates, budget and invoiced hours	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Invoices hours	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Members and project settings	Yes	No	No	No	No	No

A few things follow from this:

• Clients, readers and restricted members see nothing about time. No timer, no hours, no estimates, no Hours page.
• The Code page (commits from a linked GitHub repository, issues from Sentry) is for the owner, managers and team members only. See GitHub.
• A restricted member with edit access creates, edits and completes tasks, but only inside the sections shared with them. With view access they read and comment.
• Money needs a paid plan as well. Rates, budgets and the invoiced state of hours only show when the plan of the project owner includes them. See Time and invoicing.

The Manager role needs Pro#

You can only pick Manager when the project owner is on Pro or Business (or still in the free trial). On a smaller plan the role shows greyed out in the table and is missing from the role picker.

If the owner's plan drops below Pro later, a manager keeps the role but no longer sees rates, budget or money totals. It comes back by itself when the plan does.

Invite someone#

Only the owner of a project can invite people.

1. Open the project and click the gear icon (Project settings).
2. Go to the tab Members.
3. Type the address under Invite by e-mail, pick a Role and click Invite.

The line under the form explains the role you picked. The person gets an e-mail. If they already have an account, the button reads View the invitation; if not, it reads Create your account.

An invitation is a question#

Nobody becomes a member without saying yes themselves. The invitation waits on the Invitations page of the person you invited, and they answer it there with Accept or Decline. When several are waiting, the button Accept all 3 (with the real number) takes them in one go.

• Invitations appears in the sidebar, with a count, as long as something is waiting. After signing in, somebody with a waiting invitation lands on that page.
• To answer, the e-mail address of the account has to be verified. That way nobody can answer an invitation meant for someone else. An unverified account still sees what is waiting, with a button Resend verification email.
• Somebody without an account who creates one through the invitation link is a member straight away: creating the account for this invitation is the answer.
• The invitation is for the address you typed. It only works for the account with that e-mail address.

Waiting invitations#

Open invitations are listed under the members, with the role and the date until which they are valid. An invitation is valid for 14 days.

• Send again mails a new link and starts a new period. The link in the earlier mail stops working.
• Revoke withdraws the invitation. The link in their mail stops working.
• When an invitation runs out, you get a message and can send it again from the same page.

Inviting somebody who is already a member is refused.

Share a section with a restricted member#

A restricted member sees the name of the project and only what you share. Sharing works per section.

1. Invite the person with the role Restricted first.
2. On the project page, click ... next to the section name (Section options) and choose Share....
3. In Share section, pick for each restricted member No access, Can view or Can edit.

Access to a section covers all its tasks and subtasks, including tasks added later. A section that is shared shows a small people icon next to its name, and the Members page shows per restricted member how many sections they can reach.

A restricted member never sees the names of other sections, the member list, the project status, rates, budget, invoicing or anyone's hours.

Changing a restricted member to another role removes their shared sections: every other role already sees the whole project.

Change a role#

On the Members page, pick another role in the dropdown next to the person. It takes effect straight away. The owner's role is not in the list; to change that, hand the project over.

Hand a project over#

The owner can make another member the owner:

1. Open Members in the project settings.
2. Click ... next to the person and choose Make owner.

What happens:

• The new owner gets the settings, the members and the invoicing. You stay on as Manager.
• The project moves onto the plan of the new owner. It has to fit within their limits on projects and people, or the handover is refused.
• If their plan does not include rates and budgets, those go out of sight for everyone on the project. What is filled in stays.
• If the new owner already uses the same task key in another project, the key of this project changes, and older references in commit messages stop matching.

Remove a member#

On the Members page, click ... next to the person and choose Remove from project. Their access goes, their shared sections go, and tasks assigned to them are left to nobody. The hours they logged stay on the project, because they may still have to be invoiced.

The owner cannot be removed.

Leave a project#

Every member except the owner can leave a project on their own. Click ... (More) at the top right of the project and choose Leave project.

• You lose access to its tasks, and tasks assigned to you are left to nobody.
• A timer you had running on that project is stopped. Your logged hours stay.
• The owner gets a message that you left.
• This also works on a completed or archived project.

The owner cannot leave. Hand the project over to somebody else first.

How people count toward the limit#

The number of people in the plan of the project owner is counted across all their running projects together, not per project.

• The owner counts too.
• Somebody in four of your projects takes one place.
• Every role counts, Reader and Restricted included.
• An open invitation already takes the place it is about to fill. Revoking it gives the place back.
• Completed and archived projects give their people back.

When the limit is reached, inviting is refused with a message that names the way out. The numbers per plan are in Plans and limits.

Closed projects#

On a project with the status Completed or Archived, members cannot be invited, removed or given another role. Reopen the project in its settings first. Leaving a closed project is always possible.