Roles and permissions
The four roles Temponia has, what each one can reach, and why a manager's rights depend on the project.
Last updated 25 July 2026
Temponia has four roles: Owner, Admin, Manager and Employee. Three of them are picked from the Role field when you create or edit a user. Owner is not in that list, because a workspace has exactly one owner and it is set on the Company info tab of Company settings, where only the current owner can change it.
Owner and Admin are treated the same almost everywhere. The two differences are that only the owner can hand ownership to someone else, and that the owner account cannot be archived.
The interesting role is Manager, because its rights are not global. A manager gets rights on a project only when they are ticked as PM in that project's Users assigned table. A manager who runs no projects sees roughly what an employee sees, including no Manage section in the sidebar at all.
What each role can do
| Capability | Employee | Manager | Admin and owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Track their own time | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Enter time for someone else | No | People on their projects | Yes |
| See the Projects list | No | Projects they manage | All projects |
| Create or archive a project | No | No | Yes |
| Edit a project, its rates and budget | No | Projects they manage | Yes |
| Assign people and tasks to a project | No | Projects they manage | Yes |
| Manage clients, tasks and expense types | No | No | Yes |
| Invite, edit and archive users | No | No | Yes |
| Company settings, modules and security | No | No | Yes |
| Invoicing | No | No | Yes |
| Edit or delete expenses | Own only | Any | Any |
| Timesheet report and pivot table | Own time | Their projects | Everything |
| Project report | No | Their projects | Everything |
| Cost and profit columns in reports | No | No | Yes |
Rows that mention invoicing, expenses or approvals also depend on the matching module being switched on.
What everyone can do
Whatever their role, each person can track time on the projects they are assigned to, import their own entries from a file with Import timesheets, start and stop timers when the timers module is on, connect their own calendar, and edit their own details and password through View Profile in the menu under their avatar.
Absences are entered by an owner or an admin. Everyone else can see them but not add them.
Reports
Reporting is where the roles are most visible, because the same report returns different data depending on who runs it.
- Employees only ever see their own entries. The User, Price, Invoiced and Hour rate columns are not offered to them.
- Managers are limited to the projects they are assigned to. Cost, cost per hour and profit are never available. If the selection also covers a project they are assigned to but do not manage, the price and rate columns drop out as well, because those would let a cost be worked out indirectly.
- Owners and admins see everything, including cost and profit.
The same reasoning applies to the Labor rate on a user: it is stated on the form itself that only administrators are able to view it.
Approvals
When the approvals module is on, approval rights follow the reviewer, not the role.
- Everyone submits and recalls their own period.
- The Approvals inbox opens for anyone who is not an Employee, and for any employee who is named as a reviewer on at least one submission.
- Approving, rejecting or reopening a submission requires two things: it is not your own, and you are either the named reviewer for it, an admin, or the owner. Running a project is not enough on its own.
- Opening and closing approval periods is limited to admins and the owner.
See reviewing and approving timesheets.
Choosing a role
Most people are Employees. Give someone Manager when they need to see how a particular project is doing, adjust its rates or budget, decide who works on it, and correct their team's time, without also handing them clients, invoices, subscription and everyone else's costs.
Reserve Admin for the people who genuinely run the workspace. An admin can change company settings, see every rate and cost, invoice, and archive other users. See inviting your team for how to set a role, and how to remove access when someone leaves.