OrchardHQHome › Guides › Users and roles
Add the people who work your orchard. Give each the right access.
An OrchardHQ organisation holds your orchards, trees and history. Roles decide who can invite people, who can change the plan, and who can only look. Here's how to add someone, and what each role can do.
Your data lives inside an organisation. When you first signed up and made your organisation, you became its owner. Everyone else you want in there, a colleague, a seasonal picker, a funder who just needs to see the map, joins as a member of the same organisation. Roles are how you keep that tidy: the office manager can invite staff, the field worker can log observations, the funder can look but not touch.
This page covers the two things you'll actually do. Adding a person, and picking their role.
How to invite a user
People join by invitation. You send an invite to their email address, they open the link and sign in, and they land inside your organisation. You don't create their password or their account for them, they do that themselves when they accept.
Where the invite lives. From your orchard list, open Organisation (the button in the top bar, or under the overflow “⋯” menu on a phone). That screen has a Members card and, below it, an Invite a collaborator card. The invite card only appears for an admin or the owner. A member or viewer sees the note “Only admins or the owner can invite new members.”
- Open your orchard list, then tap Organisation.
- Scroll to Invite a collaborator.
- Type the person's email address in the
email@example.combox. - Pick their role from the small dropdown beside it: member, admin or viewer. It defaults to member. (You can't invite someone straight in as owner, an organisation has only one owner at a time. See ownership below.)
- Hit Invite. OrchardHQ creates the invite and shows you a shareable invite link with a Copy button.
- The link is emailed to them automatically. If the email doesn't arrive, copy the link and send it yourself, by text or WhatsApp or however suits. The link works the same either way.
When they open the link, they sign in (or sign up) with that email, and accept. The email on their sign-in has to match the email you invited, that's the check that keeps an invite from being used by the wrong person. Once accepted, they show up in the Members list and the organisation becomes their active one.
Pending and expiring. An invite that hasn't been accepted yet sits under Pending invites with its expiry date. An admin or the owner can Revoke it at any time. Invites also expire on their own, so a link that's been sitting around for weeks may need re-sending.
User types (roles)
There are four roles: owner, admin, member and viewer. The table below is what each one can do today. The important line to read across is who can add people and who can touch billing, versus who can only look.
| Owner | Admin | Member | Viewer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Invite & remove users | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Change a user's role | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Manage billing & tree limit | Yes | Yes | See plan only | See plan only |
| Rename the organisation | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Transfer ownership | Yes | No | No | No |
| Add & edit orchard data | Yes | Yes | Yes | Read-only |
| View the orchard | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Admin and owner get the same day-to-day powers. The one thing an admin can't do is transfer ownership, or push the owner out. That's reserved for the owner.
Owner
Every organisation has exactly one owner. The owner can do everything an admin can, plus hand ownership to someone else. Use the Make owner button on a member's row to transfer it: the person you pick becomes owner, and you step down to admin so you keep your working access. You can't leave the organisation while you're the owner, transfer ownership first, then leave.
Admin
An admin runs the organisation day to day. They can invite people, remove people, change roles, rename the organisation and manage billing. This is the right role for a manager or anyone you trust with staff and the account. The only ceiling: an admin can't remove or demote the owner.
Member
A member is a full working user. They can add and edit orchards, trees, observations, tasks and photos, everything the app does with your data. What they can't do is manage people or the account: no inviting, no role changes, no billing changes. They can see the current plan, they just can't change it. This is the role for most of your team, the people actually out logging the orchard.
Viewer
A viewer gets read-only access. They can open the organisation and look at the orchards, the map and the history, but they don't add or change anything, and they can't manage people or billing. It's the role for someone who needs to see the orchard without editing it: a funder, an advisor, an auditor.
Who should be what
A simple setup that works for most orchards:
- One owner. Usually you, the person the account really belongs to. Keep it to one, and only transfer it deliberately.
- Admins for the people who run the place. A manager, a business partner, anyone you'd trust to add staff and handle the subscription.
- Members for the field workers. The people walking the rows, logging observations and ticking off tasks. They need full edit, not the account keys.
- Viewers for the lookers. A funder who wants to see the map, an advisor checking in. Access to see, nothing to break.
You can change anyone's role later. On the Members card, an admin or owner taps a person's role chip and picks a new one. Promote a member to admin when they take on more, drop an admin to viewer when their season's done. The only move that's blocked is demoting the last owner, which is why ownership has its own transfer step.
Not sure who should have which role, or want a viewer seat set up for a funder? hello@orchardhq.app. We'll help you set it up.
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