Help · Updated 22 October 2026

Team, roles and the audit trail

A shop has three roles: owner, manager and staff. Staff can count stock and record movements but cannot change prices or manage the shop, and the server enforces that, not just the screen. Invites go out by email, a pending invite counts toward the seat limit, and the owner can read the activity trail.

Most shops do not need a permissions system. They need one person who can change prices, and a few people who can count and move stock without changing what the shop is. The rule is enforced on the server, so a modified app or a clever browser tab does not get around it.

The three roles

Every member of a shop has exactly one role. The role belongs to the person, not to the device, so the same login on a phone and on the web behaves the same way.

The table is short on purpose. Stock work is the job of everyone in the shop; the decisions that define the shop stay with the owner and the manager.

What staff cannot do

Staff can open an item, count it, receive it, and record what happened to it. They cannot change a price, and they cannot manage the shop — the prices on the item list, the shop's settings, and who belongs to the team stay with the owner and the manager.

This is not a hidden switch you have to remember to turn on. The server checks the role on every request that writes something. If a staff member reaches a screen they should not have, the write is refused and the app tells them, and the attempt does not land in the ledger as a change.

If someone needs to change prices and count stock, make them a manager. If they only need the shop floor, staff is the smaller, safer grant.

Invite someone by email

Invites are by email address, one person at a time. There is no shared login and no generic "shop" account; each person signs in as themselves, which is what makes the activity trail worth reading later.

1. Open Settings and find the team section.
2. Enter the person's email address and choose their role.
3. Send the invite.

What happens next depends on the address:

• The address already has an account. That person joins the shop immediately and the shop appears for them the next time they open the app or the web trial.
• The address is new. They get a sign-up email and join when they accept it and finish creating the account. Until then the invite is pending.

You do not choose a password for anyone, and nobody receives one in an email. If an invite seems to have vanished, ask the person to check the address they gave you and their spam folder before sending a second one.

Pending invites count toward the seat limit

A seat is used by a member and by an invite that has been sent and not yet accepted. That keeps the count honest: you cannot invite ten people on a three-seat plan and hope the limit only applies later.

The owner is one of those seats. So on Starter, a shop with an owner, a manager and one pending invite is full. If you are out of seats, remove the pending invite or remove a member before sending another. Removing someone does not delete their stock history: their past movements keep the name that recorded them.

Seats and locations are the only things a plan limits. Items are unlimited on both plans, so adding stock to the catalogue never pushes you to a bigger plan.

Who did what: the activity trail

Stock in Mobile Inventory is a ledger. Every change is a movement, and every movement records three things: the actor, the device and the time. The owner can read that trail.

That is more useful than it sounds. When someone says the shelf says eight and the screen says eleven, the trail is the place to look, because it lists what actually happened rather than what the current number is:

• a delivery received on Tuesday, with who received it and on which phone;
• a sale recorded at the counter, with the price it was sold at;
• a correction with its reason, and the count that produced it.

Because movements are append-only, the trail cannot be quietly rewritten to make a number look better. A mistake is fixed by recording the correction, which is itself a movement with a name and a time against it. If you are looking for the reason a number moved, start at the movement history for that item rather than at the number.

Working in more than one shop

An account can belong to more than one shop — a second shop, or a shop you help someone else run. The shop you are working in decides what you see: its items, its counts, its movements and its reports. Nothing from another shop appears in a list, a scan result or a total.

Changing shop changes the screen, not the data. A movement recorded in one shop stays there, with the role you held in that shop at the time — a manager in one shop is not automatically a manager in another.

Removing someone

When a person leaves, remove them from the team rather than sharing their login with the next hire. The trail keeps their name against the movements they recorded, which is exactly what you want if you have to explain last month's variance. Their account itself is theirs; removing them from the shop does not delete it, and they can delete it themselves from Settings if they choose.

What it does not do yet

• No per-location roles. A role applies to the whole shop, so a manager is a manager everywhere in it.
• No custom roles or per-screen permissions beyond owner, manager and staff.
• No approval step for a price change, and no second-person approval for a count. One person runs a count.
• No SSO, and no sign-in with a company directory. Sign-in is email and password.
• The activity trail is readable by the owner; there is no separate audit export beyond the history CSV inExport.

If a permission you need is missing, email[email protected] with the job you are trying to separate and we will tell you whether the current roles can express it.

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