Who can do what
The permissions matrix: what each staff role can see and do, area by area.
Every person you invite to Meridian gets one of seven roles. The role decides what they can see and do. This page is the full map.
The seven roles, in one line each:
- Owner — everything, including a master key that opens any door.
- Manager — runs the shop day to day: orders, people, money, settings.
- Advisor — the front counter: writes orders, quotes work, takes payments.
- Technician — works jobs: orders, time, inspections, parts lookup.
- Parts — the parts counter: inventory, purchasing, receiving, counter sales.
- Accounting — the books: AR, statements, reconciliation, exports. No wrench-side access.
- Viewer — read-only: sees orders, customers, inventory, and reports; changes nothing.
There is also a narrow Driver role for fleet drivers who only fill out daily vehicle inspection reports (DVIRs) on the field portal — nothing else.
Some abilities can be set per person, and two per role
Most access follows the role, but a few things can be granted or withheld for one individual without changing their role, among them reopening closed orders, seeing cost & margin and seeing customer balances. Set them from Settings → Users & Access, using the sliders icon on someone's row. See fine-tuning one person's access.
An owner can also open cost & margin or customer balances to a whole role (Advisors, Counter staff, Technicians) in Settings → What each role can see. The ✓ and — below are Meridian's defaults before that. See what each role can see.
A role is not the only thing that can stop you
This page covers permissions — what your login is allowed to do. Your shop's edition is a separate gate: it decides which features exist for the whole shop, regardless of role. If you're told your plan doesn't include something, no role will fix it. See your edition and what's included.
Orders and service work
| Ability | Owner | Manager | Advisor | Tech | Parts | Acctg | Viewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| See orders | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Write and edit orders (incl. status moves) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Delete orders | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| Reopen a closed order | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| Use the field portal and clock time on jobs | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Mark a labor line done | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Edit anyone's time entries | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — |
| Change labor auto-billing settings | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| View the mobile dispatch board | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — |
| Work field jobs on a service truck | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Manage DVIR templates and driver assignments | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| Clear an out-of-service DVIR defect | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
Customers and the customer portal
| Ability | Owner | Manager | Advisor | Tech | Parts | Acctg | Viewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| See customers and vehicles | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Add and edit customers | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | ✓ | — |
| Manage a customer's portal logins | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
| Configure the customer portal | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
| Triage customer service requests | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — |
Inventory and parts
| Ability | Owner | Manager | Advisor | Tech | Parts | Acctg | Viewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| See the parts catalog and stock levels | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| Adjust inventory | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | ✓ | — | — |
| Manage service kits | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | ✓ | — | — |
| Issue stock to a service truck | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | ✓ | — | — |
| See cores and core aging | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Charge and credit customer cores | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
| Ship core returns to suppliers | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Reconcile core money / forfeit expired deposits | ✓ | — | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
| Edit core supplier policies, scrap, adjust | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
Purchasing
| Ability | Owner | Manager | Advisor | Tech | Parts | Acctg | Viewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| See purchase orders and vendors | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ | — | — |
| Create and receive purchase orders | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | ✓ | — | — |
| Search partner-network inventory | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — |
| See what a partner shop charges you (others see your price) | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| Order from a partner shop | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| Configure partner sharing | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — | — |
Vendor returns
Deliberately split so the person who sends parts back isn't the person who agrees what the vendor pays for them. See return parts to a vendor.
| Ability | Owner | Manager | Advisor | Tech | Parts | Acctg | Viewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| See vendor returns | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Create a return, request an RMA, cancel | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | ✓ | — | — |
| Ship a return to the vendor | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | ✓ | — | — |
| Record the vendor's settlement | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
| Set return policies and write off denied claims | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
Cost and margin
What the shop paid, and therefore what it made. This is the most commonly misunderstood row on the page, because there are two different levels of it.
| Ability | Owner | Manager | Advisor | Tech | Parts | Acctg | Viewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| See cost, profit and GP% across the app | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
| See what a vendor charges us (purchasing only) | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | ✓ | — | — |
| Change burden rates, GP targets and cost rates | ✓ | — | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
The parts counter carve-out: a parts clerk can see what a vendor charges — you can't buy parts sensibly without it — but that's purchase price only, never selling-side margin. Full cost visibility, the kind that shows profit and GP% on a ticket, is a separate thing that parts clerks don't get by default.
Pages that are entirely margin reports don't blank their columns for someone without cost access; they send them back to the dashboard instead. And it works in both directions: someone without cost access can't type a cost onto an ad-hoc line either, because cost in plus price out reveals the margin anyway.
Both "see cost & margin" and "reopen a closed order" can be set per person.
Payments and accounting
| Ability | Owner | Manager | Advisor | Tech | Parts | Acctg | Viewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Take a payment | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ | — | — |
| Void a payment | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| Open a cash drawer | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ | — | — |
| Reconcile a cash drawer | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| Change billing and payment settings | ✓ | — | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
| Manage factoring billing | ✓ | — | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
| See the books (GL, AR, aging) | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
| Post and edit accounting entries | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
| See backdated entries and export them | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
| Close an accounting period | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
| Reopen a closed period | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| View the QuickBooks Desktop export | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
| Run a QuickBooks Desktop export | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
| Change QuickBooks export mappings | ✓ | — | — | — | — | ✓ | — |
Reports and insights
| Ability | Owner | Manager | Advisor | Tech | Parts | Acctg | Viewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Run standard reports | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| View custom AI reports | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | ✓ | — |
| Build custom AI reports | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| See Foreman briefings and insights | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | ✓ | — |
| Ask Foreman questions | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — |
| Use the Foreman command bar | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — |
| Configure Foreman | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| Share fleet scorecards with customers | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
Team and settings
| Ability | Owner | Manager | Advisor | Tech | Parts | Acctg | Viewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| See and manage employees | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| Link an employee record to a login | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| View and change shop settings | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| Transfer stock between your own companies | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| Configure AI providers | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Configure automated agents | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| Approve automatic agent actions | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| The master key (everything, always) | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — | — |
Customer portal roles are separate
Your customers' portal logins have their own role system (fleet admin, accounting, manager, driver, viewer) that never overlaps with staff roles. A staff login can never open the customer portal, and a customer login can never open the shop side.