📖 All guides
Access levels: give someone manager access
Access levels — Team member, Shift Lead, Manager, Location admin — decide what a person's login can do. Job titles are just labels.
A person's job title (Server, Cook, Shift Manager…) is a label for scheduling and pay. What their login can actually *do* is their Access level, set on their Team profile. There are four: Team member (employee app only), Shift Lead (runs the floor — never sees pay), Manager (day-to-day operations), and Location admin (adds owner-level settings control for their locations). Changing the title never changes access; changing the access level takes effect immediately.
- 1
Open the Access level card
On the Team page, open the employee. The Access level card shows their current level; owners and Location admins can change it. The person needs an email on file — that's their login.
- 2
Shift Lead — runs the floor, never sees pay
A Shift Lead gets the Schedule (build, edit, publish), the Clock Station (punches, corrections, breaks), and Compliance (review and resolve violations, with their name on the record). They never see pay rates, premium dollars, the Team page, Documents, Reports, or any settings — SafeShift withholds wage data from their account entirely, not just from their screen.
- 3
Manager — day-to-day operations
A Manager has everything a Shift Lead has, plus the Team page, Documents, Reports, Pay & Tips, and time-off approval. This level includes pay-rate visibility. They can also complete their location's payment or update its card.
- 4
Location admin — owner-level control of their locations
The fourth card, Location Admin (owners only), gives everything a Manager has plus owner-level control of the locations they're assigned to: feature toggles, clock modes and the kiosk, POS integrations, and location billing including plan changes. It takes effect at their next sign-in (or within about 15 minutes).
- 5
Removing access
Set the level back to Team member — their manager login deactivates immediately. Punching, their schedule, and the employee app are completely unaffected; they keep signing in with the same email and password and simply land in the employee app. Re-granting later reactivates the same account.
- 6
One password, whatever the level
A person has one set of credentials; their access level decides what signing in opens. Promote someone who already uses the employee app and their existing password immediately works on the manager dashboard — no new setup email. The App Setup card (with its Send Setup Email button) is only needed for someone who has never set a password anywhere.
Good to know
- Changing someone's job title never grants or removes access anymore — only the Access level card does. (Accounts created the old way, by the App Manager title, still lose access if that title is removed.)
- Location admin never includes: the location's labor-law state, adding or closing locations, cancelling subscriptions, account-wide settings, or granting access to other managers — those always stay with the owner.
- Every grant is recorded with who set it and when.
- A Location admin's reach is exactly the locations they're assigned to on the Team page — assign or unassign locations to change it.
If something goes wrong
What happened to the App Manager role?
It's retired as a special role — access now comes from the Access level card, not from a job title. Existing App Managers kept exactly the access they had (as the Manager level); the title remains as a label you can rename freely.
My manager can't find Integrations or the location toggles.
Those need Location Admin. Set their Access level to Location Admin (Team → their name → Access level card) and have them sign in again — Integrations then appears in their sidebar and the toggles go live.
Can a Shift Lead approve time off?
Yes. Leads run the floor, so they can approve or deny requests from Schedule → Time Off and are pushed when a new one arrives. Balances are computed, so an approval can never overdraw, and leads still never see pay rates.
Can a Location admin make someone else a Location admin?
No. Location admins can grant Shift Lead and Manager for their locations, but the Location admin level itself is owner-only — one manager account can never escalate another to admin.
Do they need a new password when I change their access level?
No. Their password follows them across levels — including when they change it later (a password change applies everywhere at once). Only someone who has never set a password needs the one-time setup email from the App Setup card.