Understand roles and permissions

Exclusive Roles

There are two special roles, each of which can only be assigned to a single person:

• Organisation Owner - has the unique permission allowing them to open new Spendesk entities
• Account Owner - the super user for the entity, can effectively perform any action within Spendesk that Administrators or Controllers can do, along with some additional permissions:

• Set up a secured phone number to approve wire transfers
• Set up which users have the Administrator role
• Edit the assignee for a subscription card

Modifying these roles needs to be done by following this guide.

Assignable Roles

There are three assignable roles that can be managed for users (see this page):

• Requester - any employee using Spendesk to make requests / payments
• Controller - required by the finance team to perform bookkeeping/accounting tasks
• Administrator - required to configure the system and manage users

The full list of permissions for these roles is as follows:

Requester

• Create and view their requests
• View their own payments
• View their own subscriptions
• Pause/report as lost their own cards

Controller

• Download account statements and balance confirmations
• View and manage wallet funding
• Prepare and export payments/payables
• View billing plan
• Manage the invoice inbox
• View subscriptions
• Send receipt reminders
• Manage suppliers:

• View and edit supplier details
• Download proof of payment for supplier invoices
• Review and pay invoices (including via XML/CSV)
• View all payments
• View and manage budgets
• Create and edit a custom analytical field
• Manage accounting settings:

• Accounting setup tab
• Create custom export templates (if file-based)
• Create a custom 'receipt file name'
• Set up and manage native accounting integrations

Administrator

• Edit company information & billing
• Enable/disable payment methods
• Manage notifications & reminders
• Invite new users
• Update user roles and user information
• Manage organisation settings:

• Members (invite users, update roles and information)
• Cost centres
• Analytical fields
• Set up HR integration
• Manage spend control settings:

• Approval policies
• Approval workflows
• Spend limits
• Play by the rules
• Manage physical cards:

• View all
• Order new cards
• Update card budget
• Pause/report a card
• Activate cash withdrawal (if it is available)

All Roles

• View and set up their own notifications
• View and set up their own profile information

Virtual Roles

We also have a number of 'virtual' roles that are a result of other configurations and come with their own permissions. These are:

• Approver - assigned as an approver via the approval workflows:

• View the 'To approve' tab and approve/deny requests assigned to them
• Cost Centre Owner - someone managing an area such as a department:

• View payments in their cost centre
• View budgets in the cost centre
• View invoice inbox
• View the 'To approve' tab and approve/deny requests assigned to them
• Reporting Manager - a user marked as another user's manager:

• View the 'To approve' tab and approve/deny requests assigned to them

Aktualisiert am: 30/04/2026