Permissions and roles reference

Rinvy has four roles: Owner, Manager, Staff and Viewer. Each role carries a fixed set of capabilities, and each person holds one role per kitchen. This page lists who can do what. Use it to choose a role for a new teammate, or to work out why a button shows for one user but not another.

Roles, at a glance

Role	What they're for
Owner	Restaurant owner, GM, accountable for the business. Full access, including billing and user management.
Manager	Chef, kitchen manager, operations lead. Full operational access plus historical overrides.
Staff	Line cook, prep cook, dishwasher. Day-to-day operations — count, receive, prep, log waste.
Viewer	Accountant, consultant, district manager, investor. Read-only access for context without edit risk.

The same summary lives in the app, under Role permissions on the User management screen:

The Role permissions card in User management, summarizing Owner (full access, billing, kitchen delete, role assignment), Manager (all operations, no billing), Staff (count, receive, prep, log waste, no reports), and Viewer (read-only, no operations)

Full permission matrix

Capability	Owner	Manager	Staff	Viewer
Team and billing
Manage users (invite, change roles, remove)	✅	❌	❌	❌
Manage API keys	✅	❌	❌	❌
Manage accounting (GL mapping, CSV export)	✅	✅	❌	❌
Inventory operations
Take inventory counts	✅	✅	✅	❌
Edit recent (≤24h) completed counts	✅	✅	✅	❌
Edit older completed counts (override)	✅	✅	❌	❌
Delete inventory sessions	✅	✅	❌	❌
Change the date of a count	✅	✅	❌	❌
Receive products	✅	✅	✅	❌
Log waste	✅	✅	✅	❌
Delete waste logs	✅	✅	❌	❌
Send stock to another kitchen (transfers)	✅	✅	✅	❌
Undo transfers	✅	✅	❌	❌
Shift notes
Write shift notes	✅	✅	✅	❌
Delete shift notes	✅	✅	❌	❌
Catalog
Create / edit / delete products	✅	✅	❌	❌
Create / edit / delete storage areas	✅	✅	❌	❌
Manage suppliers	✅	✅	❌	❌
Recipes and prep
Create / edit / delete recipes	✅	✅	❌	❌
Execute recipes (run prep)	✅	✅	✅	❌
Manage prep lists (create, approve)	✅	✅	❌	❌
Menu and sales
Manage menu items	✅	✅	❌	❌
View menu items	✅	✅	✅	✅
Manage sales data (upload, edit)	✅	✅	❌	❌
View sales data	✅	✅	✅	✅
Reports and dashboard
View reports	✅	✅	❌	❌
View the Waste report	✅	✅	✅	✅
View dashboard stats	✅	✅	✅	✅
See costs and margins	✅	✅	✅*	✅*
Read-only access
View inventory	✅	✅	✅	✅
View products	✅	✅	✅	✅
View storage areas	✅	✅	✅	✅
View recipes	✅	✅	✅	✅

Rinvy follows the role-based access control model: permissions belong to the role, and each person gets a role. The server checks the role on every request, as the OWASP Authorization Cheat Sheet recommends. A Staff member who opens a manager-only page by its link still can't change anything there.

Notes on specific permissions

"Edit recent completed counts"

Staff can edit a completed count, but only within 24 hours of the session completing. After that window, only a Manager or Owner can edit. See editing past counts and receipts.

"Manage users"

Owner-only. Managers can't promote, demote, or remove other users. The system enforces at least one Owner per restaurant — you can't downgrade the last one. You also can't change your own role or remove yourself: both are one-way doors (you'd lose the access needed to undo them), so ask another Owner to do it.

"View reports"

Staff and Viewers see one report: Waste. Staff log the waste, so they can open the report that groups it by reason and product. The other reports (Spending, Food Cost, Inventory, and so on) are for Managers and Owners. Staff and Viewers still see the dashboard cards, which show summary numbers, and current inventory.

When a Staff member or Viewer opens Reports, only the Waste tab shows. A link to another report shows a message that the report is not available to their role. The Waste report still needs the Standard plan or higher.

"Manage API keys"

Owner-only. An API key lets another system send sales to Rinvy without a signed-in user, so only an Owner can create or revoke one. See Sales API.

"See costs and margins"

*By default, Staff and Viewers see money figures: product costs, food cost %, inventory value, spending and waste dollars. An Owner or Manager can turn this off in Kitchen Settings → Team & roles, under Costs. When it is off, Staff and Viewers do not see those figures anywhere in the app. They still see counts, quantities and menu prices. Staff still enter unit prices when they receive a delivery, and they still see the prices on the receipts they entered. Owners and Managers always see costs.

"Execute recipes"

Distinct from creating or editing recipes. Staff can run prep against existing recipes — that's their core workflow — but they can't change the recipe definitions themselves.

Tier gates on top of roles

A few features are role-allowed but also tier-gated. A Manager on the Free tier can't access:

Prep lists (Standard and up; forecast-driven prep is Pro)
Variance, product, and menu-item reports (Standard and up)
Demand forecasting (Pro)
Invoice ingestion (Standard+; auto-approve is Pro)
AI recipe scanning (Standard+)

Your role controls whether you can use a feature; your plan controls whether the feature is available at all.

Which role should a new hire get?

Give a new hire the lowest role that covers the work: Staff for cooks who count, receive, prep and log waste, and Viewer for people who only read the numbers. A quick decision tree:

Are they responsible for the business? Owner.
Are they running operations day-to-day and need to fix data when staff make mistakes? Manager.
Are they doing physical work in the kitchen? Staff.
Do they need to see numbers but never change them? Viewer.

When in doubt, start lower — you can upgrade a role whenever it turns out they need more access.

Invite users and assign roles