01 / Access guide
Know the two kinds of people in a workspace
Workspace members sign in to the full application and are listed under Settings, Members. Each has one of five roles: Owner, Admin, Manager, Member or Viewer. Portal users are invited against a client record and sign in to the client portal instead. They have no workspace role, cannot open internal views and only see what has been shared with their client.
A freelancer who delivers work needs a member seat with an appropriate role. A client stakeholder who reviews work belongs in the portal, however senior.
02 / Access guide
Choose the right workspace role
Each role grants a default set of permissions. Owners hold everything, including ownership transfer and workspace-level export. Admins hold every configurable permission. The table summarizes the defaults for the other roles.
| Role | Can do by default | Cannot do by default |
|---|---|---|
| Manager | Run projects and clients, tasks and time, CRM, invoices and proposals, expenses, capacity planning, forms and scheduling, reports | See rates, costs, margins or other financial analytics; manage members or roles; view the audit log |
| Member | Write tasks and time, comments and chat, documents, files and proofs | Manage projects, billing, CRM, capacity, reports or settings |
| Viewer | Read what they have access to | Create or change anything |
03 / Access guide
Keep financial data with the right people
Flowboard separates financial analytics from billing operations. Rates, revenue, costs, margins, budget amounts, expense amounts and deal values are visible to Owners and Admins. Managers can create and send invoices and proposals, including their totals, because they often run billing, but they do not receive margin and cost analytics. Hours, utilization percentages, time estimates and capacity are treated as shareable operating data.
The restriction is applied to the data itself: for roles without financial access, those figures are left out of what Flowboard sends to their screen rather than hidden in the interface. Reports run in the app follow the same rule, so a Manager sees hours but not revenue, cost or margin columns. Scheduled report emails, which only Owners and Admins can set up, include every column for every recipient.
04 / Access guide
Create custom roles with role presets
Owners and Admins can open Settings, Roles & Permissions to create role presets. A preset starts from a base role, such as Manager, and then grants or removes individual permissions, for example letting a senior account lead view financials or removing CRM access from a contractor. Presets appear in the role selector on the Members tab alongside the base roles.
Some permissions in the matrix are marked takes effect later. Those toggles are listed for planning but are not enforced yet, so do not rely on them to restrict access. A Viewer is always read-only, whatever a preset says.
05 / Access guide
Scope what portal users can see
A portal user sees every project linked to their client, not a hand-picked subset. Within those projects they see tasks set to Client visible, client comments, files and documents shared as client visible, client-visible messaging channels and the client's invoices once they are sent. Draft invoices are not shown. Internal comments, internal files, cost rates and margins stay out of the portal.
If two groups at the same client must not see each other's work, a single client record will not separate them. Plan the client records before inviting people. Managers, Admins and Owners can invite portal users and disable or remove them when a contact leaves. Use the client preview in a project to check the view before sending an invitation. The client portal guide covers invitations and review requests.
06 / Access guide
Use the audit log and data export for what they are
The Audit Log tab in Settings is available to Owners and Admins. Filter by action (created, updated, deleted, status changed, visibility changed), by entity such as task, comment, time entry, invoice or client, by the person who acted and by date range, then expand an entry to see what changed. The log covers changes to specific record types. It is not a record of every action in the workspace, so an empty result does not prove nothing happened.
The Export All Data option in Settings is limited to the workspace Owner. It packages the requesting person's own profile, time entries, task comments and assigned tasks from that workspace into a ZIP file, and the download link it creates is valid for 24 hours. It is a personal data export, not a full workspace backup: other people's records, projects, invoices, files and documents are not included. For operational records, use the CSV exports in reports, time reports and form submissions. If a data request has a deadline, contact support@flowboardhq.com early to confirm how the file will reach you.
07 / Access guide
Review access on a regular schedule
Review access each quarter and whenever someone leaves.
Check members and roles
Confirm each active member still needs their seat and that no one holds Admin only for convenience.
Check role presets
Confirm each preset still matches its purpose and that nobody depends on a permission marked takes effect later.
Check portal users
Disable client contacts who have left or no longer review work.
Sample the audit log
Filter for deleted and visibility changed entries over the period and ask about anything unexpected.
THE PRACTICAL DETAILS
Questions, answered.
Can a Manager see project margins?
Not by default. Managers handle invoices and proposals, including their totals, but rates, costs and margins are limited to Owners and Admins. An Owner or Admin can create a role preset that grants the View financials permission to a specific person.
Can we limit a client contact to one project?
Not within one client record. Portal users see all projects linked to their client, with only client-visible content inside each. If groups at the same organisation need separate views, plan separate client records before inviting them.
Does the audit log record everything?
No. It records changes to specific record types, such as tasks, comments, time entries and invoices, and it is available to Owners and Admins. Use it to investigate a change, not as proof that an action never happened.
Is Export All Data a full backup of our workspace?
No. It exports the requesting Owner's own profile, time entries, task comments and assigned tasks in that workspace as a ZIP with a download link valid for 24 hours. Use report and time CSV exports for broader operational records.
Does Flowboard support SSO or SAML sign-in?
No. SAML single sign-on is not currently offered, as the security page explains. Manage members and portal users directly in Flowboard, and remove access promptly when someone leaves.