Role structure
Every member of your firm has a role, and that role decides what they can see and do inside Journey. Roles exist so that sensitive controls (billing, firm settings, filing, money, and client identity data) stay with the right people, while everyone still has what they need to do their own work. This page explains the five roles, how they stack up, and exactly where the line falls between them.
Roles are ranked. A higher role can do everything the roles beneath it can do, plus more, so promoting someone never takes anything away: it only adds. That also means you rarely have to think about permissions on a case-by-case basis: pick the role that matches a person's responsibility and the right access follows.
The five roles, from most to least privileged
- Owner
- General Manager
- Manager
- Lead (Supervisor)
- Staff
Most firms use Owner for the principal(s), Manager for whoever runs a department or office, and Staff for preparers and bookkeepers. General Manager is there for larger teams that need an operational second-in-command, and Lead (Supervisor) is there for someone trusted with filing, money, and client identity data who doesn't need to run a department. You don't have to use every rung, and most firms today don't: it's entirely normal to have only Owners and Managers.
Using your own role names
If those five words aren't the ones your firm uses, you can rename them under Settings, then Firm, then Role names. Whatever you type appears everywhere roles are shown: the staff list, each person's record, the invite screen and the role filters.
Renaming changes the wording and nothing else. Someone you rename from Lead to Team Lead has exactly the permissions Lead had, no more and no less, and the ladder above stays in the same order. Clear a box to go back to Journey's name.
There are always five levels. You can rename them and you can decide who sits at each one, but you cannot add a sixth, because every permission in Journey is written against these five and a new level would have no defined powers.
Renaming is per firm. If you work across more than one firm, each keeps its own names, and the rest of this page uses Journey's defaults throughout.
What each role can do
The table shows which abilities each role unlocks. Read down a column to see everything a role can do.
| Ability | Owner | General Manager | Manager | Lead (Supervisor) | Staff |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Work the returns, requests, and tasks assigned to you | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Manage a ticket's own checklist and upload documents | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| See your department's full queue, not just items assigned to you | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Mark a return Filed or Completed | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Create and send client invoices | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Invite a client to the client portal | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Add a bank account to a client's tax profile | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Reveal a client's full SSN, date of birth, bank account number, or EIN | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Change the numbers on, or remove, a stored bank account | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Auto-assign tickets within your department(s) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| See every department's work, including work with no department yet | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Reassign a ticket to a specific person from Queue Management | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Run a department: manage its clients and returns, archive returns, manage Communications | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Bulk-invite staff from a spreadsheet | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Full operational control across the whole firm, including most firm settings; appoint department heads | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Billing and subscription, transfer ownership, appoint General Managers, and a few firm identity settings (branding, contact details, email integration, legal documents) | Yes | No | No | No | No |
A couple of things the table can make look more connected than they are:
- Filing, billing, portal invites, and revealing full identity numbers are one bundle, and it's the bundle Lead (Supervisor) adds over Staff. It has nothing to do with running a department; a Lead has no admin pages and no firm-wide view.
- Approving a return out of review isn't part of that bundle. Any Staff member working the ticket can move it from In review toward client signature. Lead (Supervisor) is specifically about filing, money, and identity data, not about who signs off on review quality.
- Revealing a full number requires extra verification (a second authentication step) on top of the role check, the same way it would for an Owner or Manager.
The roles in plain terms
Owner. Runs the firm and is the only role that touches the things that affect the whole business: the Journey subscription and billing, ownership itself, and a handful of firm identity settings (branding, contact details, email integration, legal documents). An Owner can also appoint a General Manager. There's usually one or a few Owners (the partners).
General Manager. The Owner's operational second-in-command. A General Manager has full operational control across every department, can invite and manage staff firm-wide, appoint department heads, and reach nearly all of firm settings, but stops short of the handful of Owner-only controls (billing, ownership, appointing another General Manager, and the firm identity settings above). This is the role for someone who runs day-to-day operations firm-wide without owning the business.
Manager. Runs a single department or office. A Manager handles that department's clients and returns, reassigns tickets between people, archives completed returns, and manages the firm's Communications (email templates and the email log). Their reach is their department, not the whole firm, but within it they have everything Lead (Supervisor) and Staff have too.
Lead (Supervisor). Sees the same work as Staff, nothing more, but is trusted with the firm's most sensitive day-to-day actions on that work: marking a return Filed or Completed, creating and sending client invoices, inviting a client to the portal, revealing a client's full SSN, date of birth, bank account number, or EIN, and changing or removing a stored bank account (Staff can add a new one, but not alter one already on file). A Lead can also auto-assign tickets within their department to spread out the morning's incoming work. What a Lead does not get is anything a Manager has: reassigning other people's tickets, archiving, the admin pages, or visibility into departments they aren't in.
Staff. The people doing the actual preparation and bookkeeping. Staff work the returns, requests, and tasks assigned to them, manage the document checklist on those tickets, and upload documents. Staff see their department's whole queue, not only what's assigned to them personally, so they can pick up unclaimed work in a department they belong to. What they cannot do is file, invoice, invite a client to the portal, or reveal full identity numbers; those need Lead (Supervisor) or above.
How departments shape what Staff and Leads see
Staff and Lead (Supervisor) are scoped to their department(s): they see every ticket assigned to them personally, plus everything in the departments they belong to. Manager and above see the whole firm regardless of department, including work that hasn't been routed to a department yet.
This has one consequence worth knowing before you invite anyone: a brand-new firm starts with no departments, and a Staff or Lead member who isn't in any department sees only the work already assigned to them, with no Returns or Requests queue to browse. If people at these two levels aren't seeing the work you expect, check two things: that a department exists (Settings, then Departments), and that the person is a member of it. This is also why many small firms, especially before they've set up departments, give everyone Manager just to get the sidebar working; once a department exists and people are added to it, Staff and Lead become usable again at their intended level.
Which role should I give?
A few examples, from the most common situations:
- A new preparer, joining to work returns inside a department. Give them Staff, in the department(s) they'll work in. They'll see that department's queue, work their assignments, manage checklists, and upload documents. They won't be able to file, invoice, or reveal full identity numbers, which is usually exactly right for someone still ramping up.
- A senior reviewer who's trusted to file returns and send invoices, but doesn't run a department. Give them Lead (Supervisor). They keep the same department-scoped visibility as Staff, plus the ability to mark returns Filed or Completed, create and send invoices, invite clients to the portal, and reveal full identity numbers when a client calls in. They still can't reassign other people's work, archive, or see outside their department.
- An office manager running a department day to day. Give them Manager. They get everything Lead and Staff have in their department, plus reassigning tickets, archiving completed returns, and the admin pages (Staff, Departments, Communications, Queue Management) for that reach.
If a role turns out to be too narrow or too wide for someone, change it; nothing about a role is permanent, and the new access takes effect immediately.
How roles are enforced
A member's abilities come only from their firm role. Because the same person can belong to more than one firm (and hold a different role at each), Journey always checks the role for the firm you're currently in, never a global one.
Just as important, these rules are enforced in the database itself, not only in the interface. Hiding a button is not the same as blocking an action; Journey does both, so a role can't be worked around by poking at the app directly. Your data is also isolated per firm, so no role at one firm can ever reach another firm's clients, returns, or documents.
Roles that aren't firm roles
Two kinds of people use Journey without holding any of the five firm roles above:
- Clients. The people you serve, using the client portal. A client isn't a member of your team and has none of the abilities above; they only ever see their own information.
- The Journey / Secord team. We operate the platform under separate platform-level roles used for support and maintenance. These are entirely distinct from your firm's roles and never grant one firm's staff access to another firm.
Changing someone's role
An Owner sets each member's role (and a General Manager can adjust the operational roles beneath them) when inviting a teammate or from the team settings later. Change a role there as responsibilities shift; the new access takes effect immediately.