Why roles matter
Roles do two things: they cut down on what each person has to look at, and they keep the wrong people away from the wrong buttons.
The six roles, briefly
Section titled “The six roles, briefly”| Role | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Owner | The tenant owner. Full access, including billing and ownership-level controls. |
| Admin | A trusted tenant administrator with full dashboard scopes. Admins still cannot replace or delete the Owner account. |
| Manager | A working manager with management pages, reports, work-order approvals, settings, and limited lower-role user administration. Billing and Permission Audit are not granted by default. |
| Service Advisor | Front-counter staff with customer workflows, reports, texting, connections, and customer-app access. Cost and profit visibility are not granted by default. |
| Technician | A technician with Overview, Work Orders, TRACS Flow, TRACS Extended, mobile workflow, and support pages. |
| Member | A restricted TracsSync/workstation fallback. It is not a normal role offered by the grant-access workflow. |
For a full breakdown, see What each role can do.
Why this is worth setting up
Section titled “Why this is worth setting up”- A technician’s default pages keep customer administration, billing, and settings out of the way while retaining the work-order and TRACS workflow tools needed on the shop floor.
- Reports stay visible to the people who use them (Service Advisors and up) — no one has to dig through pages they don’t need.
- Billing stays with Owners and Admins by default; Managers can have limited user-administration capabilities without receiving billing access.
- When someone leaves the shop, removing their TracsConnect account also yanks every report, integration, and customer-record view they had.
The practical rule
Section titled “The practical rule”Start with the lowest role that lets the person do their job. So:
- Lube tech → Technician.
- Lead tech who reads WIP daily → Technician plus the specific report and parent-page scopes they need, if your tenant and TRACS permission policies allow them.
- New service advisor → Service Advisor.
- Service writer who handles customer approvals → Service Advisor; verify the effective approval permission for that user and shop.
- Shift lead → Manager.
Use explicit permission overrides sparingly and review the user’s effective permissions after saving. Role defaults are further constrained by tenant policy, TRACS permissions, parent-page gates, and shop scope.
When to review
Section titled “When to review”Reassess roles when someone changes jobs in the shop, when a person moves between shops in a multi-shop tenant, when someone leaves, or when you bring on a contractor or temp who only needs access for a project.