User and Role Administration¶
Applies to: All subscriptions
Purpose¶
Let an administrator map the customer's real job functions onto the available roles, answer "why can my colleague do this and I cannot" from documentation, and evidence access control at audit.
Audience¶
System administrators, compliance and internal audit, implementation consultants.
Prerequisites¶
- Authentication and Security
- The customer's list of users and their job functions
Steps¶
| Page | Covers |
|---|---|
| Roles and Permissions | The seven roles and exactly what each can do |
| User Lifecycle | Creation, activation, change, suspension, revocation |
| Segregation of Duties | The maker-checker model, and what relaxing it means |
| GSTIN Access Control | Which registrations a user may work with |
Three independent gates¶
What a user can do is decided by three separate mechanisms. Diagnosing an access problem means identifying which gate is closed, and they fail in visibly different ways.
| Gate | Controls | Symptom when it blocks |
|---|---|---|
| Feature flag | Whether the module exists for this GSTIN | The whole screen is absent |
| Role permission | Whether this user may perform the action | The screen is present; controls are greyed out |
| GSTIN access | Which registrations the user may see | Screens load but show no data, or a smaller set than expected |
An administrator who internalises this table resolves most access tickets in a minute. The three failure appearances are distinct: missing screen, greyed control, empty screen.
The role model in one paragraph¶
Seven roles, built around segregation of duties. One platform-level role for cross-tenant administration; one organisation-level role for configuration without transactional authority; a maker and a checker for tax operations; two logistics roles; and a read-only auditor. Preparation and commitment are deliberately held by different roles, and relaxing that is an explicit, recorded decision.
Design principles worth knowing before assigning roles¶
Configuration authority and transactional authority are separate. The organisation administrator can manage users, configure the ledger and manage numbering — but holds no authority to generate or cancel an IRN or an e-Way Bill. That is deliberate: the person who controls who has access should not also be able to commit transactions.
Logistics roles cannot generate IRNs. They hold the full e-Way Bill family and view-only access to IRNs for cross-checking. A dispatch team does not need, and should not have, the ability to register invoices.
The auditor role touches nothing. View and print only, across every area including administration. It is designed so that granting audit access is never a risk decision.
Some reads are available to everyone. Dashboard, notifications, analytics, upload visibility, template visibility and audit visibility are held by every role. These are informational reads within the user's own tenant that have never been role-restricted; they are kept separate from resource-specific permissions so that widening one cannot silently widen another.
Validation¶
| Check | Method | Pass condition |
|---|---|---|
| Every user has a role | Review the user list | No user without one |
| Roles match job functions | Review with the customer's process owner | Each mapping is deliberate, not defaulted |
| Segregation is intact, or its relaxation recorded | Check the setting and the change record | Consistent with the customer's decision |
| At least two administrators | Count | Two or more, at different individuals |
| GSTIN access is minimal | Review per user | Users have access only to the registrations they work with |
| Auditors cannot change anything | Sign in as an auditor and attempt an action | Refused |
| Departed users are disabled, not deleted | Review inactive accounts | Disabled, with attribution intact |
| Access review is scheduled | Operations calendar | A recurring review with a named owner |
Troubleshooting¶
| Symptom | Gate | Action |
|---|---|---|
| A whole module is missing | Feature flag | See Feature Flags |
| Screen present, buttons greyed out | Role permission | Check the role. See Roles and Permissions |
| Screen present, no data | GSTIN access | Grant access to the relevant registrations |
| "Why can my colleague do this and I cannot" | Role permission, usually maker versus checker | Compare the two roles; this is by design if segregation is enforced |
| A user can do more than expected | Segregation relaxed, or an over-broad role | Check the setting first; it collapses maker permissions into checker permissions |
| Nobody can administer the system | The sole administrator left or was disabled | Always maintain two. Recovery otherwise requires escalation to Complifly |
| An auditor requests write access | Misunderstanding of the role's purpose | The role is deliberately zero-touch. A different role is the answer, with the control consequence understood |
Related Articles¶
- Feature Flags — the first gate
- User Authentication — how users sign in
- Login and Access Failures — the diagnostic tree
- Role Assignment — assigning roles during implementation