Team permissions built for service businesses
Six default roles that match how a real service business is staffed. Custom roles when you need them. Office users always included at every tier, no seat penalty for owners.
Permissions that match how a service business is actually staffed
Most field service tools were designed for one type of user and bolted permissions on later. Simple Scheduler shipped role-based access on day one because service businesses do not have one user, they have an office and a field. The office reads and writes customer records, shapes the calendar, sends invoices, and handles the books. The field reads the day's assignments, captures the work, and marks complete. The two halves need different surfaces and different guardrails, and the permissions library reflects that.
The default roles cover the staffing pattern of about 95 percent of the service businesses we see. The custom-role layer is there for the other 5 percent: franchise operations with their own region-manager hierarchy, multi-brand operators with shared bookkeeping but separate dispatch, and businesses with regulatory roles (a compliance officer, for example) that need a unique slice.
Six roles that cover almost every service business.
Every role ships with a sensible default. You can edit, narrow, or extend any of them, but most teams never need to.
Owner
Full control over every part of the workspace: calendar, customers, financials, billing, integrations, and team. The default for the person who signs up the workspace.
Dispatcher
Reads and writes the full calendar, assigns crews, accepts pending requests, sends customer messages. Cannot modify billing settings or close the workspace.
Crew lead
Sees and reshuffles their own crew's day, messages customers, marks visits complete. Cannot view other crews or financial data.
Crew member
Sees their assigned visits, captures signatures and photos, marks on-the-way and complete. Read-only on customer records, no access to other crews.
Bookkeeper
Read-write on customers, invoices, payments, and reports. Read-only on the calendar. The role exists so the books can be done without anyone touching a schedule.
Office
Generic non-financial office staff: customer service, owner's assistant, scheduler. Read-write on customers and the calendar, read-only on financials.
What the field sees, and what the field does not
The most common request from operators we talk to is: "I want my crews to see their day without seeing the rest of the company." That is the default crew member view in Simple Scheduler. The crew app loads their assigned visits for the day, the customer information for those visits, the directions, the scope, and the notes from prior work. It does not load the financial side of the customer record (revenue history, lifetime value, outstanding balance), it does not show other crews' calendars, and it does not show pricing on jobs the crew was not part of.
Crew leads see one step further: their crew, their day, with the ability to reshuffle stops and reassign individual visits to another member of the same crew. They can message customers, capture signatures, and close out the visit. They cannot move a visit to a different crew, that is a dispatcher decision, and they cannot view financial reports.
Office and bookkeeping permissions
The office side of a service business carries the customer relationship and the books. Office and dispatcher roles share read-write access to customers and the calendar, but only dispatchers can move visits between crews and accept pending bookings. Bookkeepers sit on the financial side: they read and write customers, invoices, payments, and the report library, but the calendar is read-only for them. That separation prevents the most common cross-permission accident, a bookkeeper rescheduling a visit while updating a balance.
None of these roles count against your plan. Office users in Simple Scheduler are unmetered, which is one of the structural differences between us and per-seat tools that bill $25 to $40 per office user per month. If your office grows, your bill stays the same.
Frequently asked questions.
- Yes. Beyond the default roles (owner, dispatcher, crew lead, crew member, bookkeeper, office), you can create custom roles with the exact permission set your business needs. Most teams stick with the defaults; the custom layer is there for businesses with unusual office structures or franchise operations.
Set up a team that sees only what they should.
Spin up a workspace, invite your team, and assign roles in under five minutes.