Buyer roles

Every member of a company holds a role that decides what they can see and do when purchasing for that company. There are two roles, and you assign them — buyers never manage each other.

Role	What they can do
Buyer	Place orders for their location, see their own orders and balances, pay their own invoices, reorder, buy again, and quick-order by SKU.
Location admin	Everything a Buyer can do, plus see every order and unpaid balance at the branch they cover, reorder or file a return on a colleague’s order, and maintain the branch address book.

Both roles buy the same way, at the same prices, on the same terms. The difference is visibility and address management, not purchasing power.

What a Location admin adds

A Location admin is a Buyer with four extra abilities at the branch their grant covers:

• A branch orders tab. Their account gains a tab named after the branch (“Nashik orders”) listing every order placed for it, whoever placed it.
• Branch balances. In Invoices, a location-balances view shows every open invoice at the branch, not just their own.
• The address book. A Location addresses page lets them add, edit, remove and re-default the branch’s approved delivery addresses, and set the single billing address, without emailing you. Vinayak Infra’s office manager adds “Wakad Tower B, 411057” and makes it default herself.
• Branch-wide reordering. They can reorder or return a colleague’s order, and their Buy again list covers everything the branch has bought in the last year, not only their own purchases — see quick order & buy again.

Meera runs Nashik as a Location admin and sees all ₹11,80,000 of open branch invoices. Ravi, a plain Buyer at the same branch, sees his own three orders.

Two things a Location admin still cannot do

• Pay a colleague’s invoice. Only the person who placed an order may settle it online. A Location admin can see the whole branch’s debt and chase it internally, but the Pay now button belongs to the buyer who ordered. You can always record a payment yourself from the order page.
• See a colleague’s quote. Quote visibility is own-quote only, even for a Location admin. This is deliberately narrower than order visibility: a quote thread carries POs, negotiated rate sheets and messages, so widening it would expose a conversation, not just a number.

Who sees what

	Buyer	Location admin	You
Own orders	Yes	Yes	Yes
Colleagues’ orders at their branch	No	Yes (branch tab)	Yes
Branch unpaid balances	Own only	Yes	Yes
Pay a colleague’s invoice	No	No	Record it manually
Reorder or return a colleague’s order	No	Yes	Yes
Edit the branch address book	No	Yes	Yes
Quotes	Own only	Own only	All
Personal loyalty and store credit	Personal orders only	Personal orders only	—

The buyer’s Company page is read-only for both roles. Buyers cannot rename branches, change terms or credit, or manage teammates.

Assigning a role

You choose the role when you add a buyer, and can change it afterwards. Both live on the company’s page.

1. Open the company under Companies and, in the Buyers card, choose Add a buyer — or use the role dropdown next to an existing member to change theirs.

2. Set the Role — Buyer or Location admin.

3. Choose the scope:

   • Pick a Location for a grant scoped to one branch. This is the safer default and where a first contact should start.
   • Turn on Company-wide access to cover every location, including ones you add later. For a Location admin that means orders, balances and addresses across the whole company.

4. Confirm.

Grants are additive and each carries its own scope, so the same person can be a Location admin at one branch and a plain Buyer elsewhere. A company-wide Location admin is the closest thing to a company manager: one person who watches every branch’s orders, balances and addresses, with no ability to change financial policy.

Note

There are no other roles. No custom roles, no finance or accounts-payable role, no approver. Your customer’s branch manager cannot add, re-role or remove their own colleagues — every roster change goes through you at Companies → the company → Buyers.

Which of your own staff can manage companies

Access to the Companies area rides your staff access levels at Users → Access level.

• Administrator, Store manager and Operations include viewing and managing companies — and can view the storefront as a buyer where that module is on.
• Fulfillment, Marketing and Support do not see Companies at all.

Give two field reps Operations so they can open company pages and take phone orders; your content editor never sees a customer’s credit limit.

Caution

Company permissions ride whole access levels — you cannot tick them individually, and you cannot restrict a rep to only their own accounts. Any staff member who can manage companies can manage all of them.

Assigning Location admin does not change how a buyer signs in or checks out. It is the same account and the same company pricing; the extra views simply appear. See the buyer portal guide.