Before signing up with Xero, it is important that you understand the various User Roles within Xero.
As a new user, you will be granted the Standard User role. As a Standard User, you are able to invite other users, and grant various levels of authority.You will be able to invite a Financial Advisor, but will NOT have the Financial Advisor role. The Financial Advisor has special priviledges and can perform certain functions that cannot be done by a Standard User.
For this reason we recommend that you sign up through a Xero Certified Partner who can act as your Financial Advisor, and assist in setting you up to get you going. You can then choose whether you go it alone or fall back on your Financial Advisor for assistance when needed.
Details of the different levels of authority are as follows:
There are two access levels for Invoice Only, either Draft only or Approve & pay
Somewhat limited role allowing access to input invoices, expense claims and Contacts.
You might have this role, or invite someone to have this role if someone is needed for invoice data-entry type activities but needs to be prevented from seeing the organisation's financial status or controlling who has access to the accounts and how they're set up.
The Dashboard will show Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable invoices panels (labelled Money Going Out and Money Coming In and with bar graphs for Approve & pay user) and Expense Claims panel. These panels allow the user to create new invoices or receipts and view summary information relevant to the invoices and claims that they have entered. There are only 3 menus available to this user (Dashboard, Accounts, Contacts) and the links to logout, My Xero and Help.
Invoices - Draft only: those with Draft only access can add invoices (including choosing inventory items) and save as draft or submit for approval. Any invoices added by the user can be edited up until the point they are approved by another user with a greater role. Once invoices are approved, the user has view only access to the invoices they have raised and can see if the invoice has payments or credit notes attached or has been sent. Draft only users can't import invoices, view invoices created by others, approve, view and print PDFs or send invoices via email or the Xero Network. Invoices can be copied but no other actions are permitted (e.g. paying, emailing, voiding, raising credit notes, sending statements, entering expected payment dates). Invoice History & Notes can be viewed.
Invoices - Approve & pay: staff with this permission can view, create, approve, print, email & pay any invoices (including those created by others within their organisation). They can also create credit notes, and view or send credit notes and statements. The Approve & pay permission does not allow the user to drill into payment details on an invoice. While the Invoice Only roles have no access to Settings, those with Approve & Pay access can add new inventory items from within an invoice screen.
Expense claims - Draft only users can add, edit and view their own expense claims throughout the expense claims workflow. Claims that have been submitted are view only and as they are approved or paid (by a user with a greater role) their status will change in the list of previous claims submitted. The user cannot approve any expense claims and cannot view the expense claims that others have submitted.
Expense claims - Approve & pay users can add, edit, view, approve and record as paid all expense claims, including those submitted by others.
Contacts - almost full access to add, edit (including invoice branding), import, export, merge and archive Contacts either directly off transactions and expense claims or from Contacts. Cannot view a Contact's payment history, Xero Network key. Only users with the Approve & pay permission can send statements.
Currencies - within the areas of Xero the Invoice Only role has access to, they can add invoices in any currency set up for the organisation and choose a default currency for a Contact but cannot add currencies, save a new exchange rate on an invoice or view gains/losses information on invoices and reports. Users with the Approve & pay permission can save a new exchange rate on an invoice.
Users with the Invoice Only role have no access to bank account details or transactions, reports, budget, repeating transactions, credit notes, imported statements, journals, fixed assets, the pay run or any settings (e.g. logo, users, organisation information, the inventory item list, Chart of Accounts, conversion balances).
Inventory items - Those with Approve & Pay access can add new inventory items from within an invoice screen despite not being able to access inventory items via Settings.
A user with this role can be invited during the set up process but the email invitation won't be sent to them until the set up process is complete so that they only have access to the organisation in Xero and not the set up information.