Team, roles & permissions

Access is where you add your team and control what each person can see and do. Open it from the operator-wide main menu in the client portal ↗. It has four subtabs:

Users - the people on your account and the roles each one holds.
Roles - the built-in Full Access role, the two provided default roles (General Manager and Floor Staff), plus any custom roles you create.
API - API tokens for integrations. See the developer docs for how these work.
Devices - the devices currently signed in to your account and your team’s, with where each was last seen.

Adding a user

Open Access → Users and choose + Add User.
Enter the name and email (both required).
Choose the role that sets their access.
Save. They’re emailed an invitation and listed as Invited until they accept it and set their own password. From their panel you can resend the invitation, or cancel it while it’s still pending.

An invitation carries a single role. Once someone has accepted and joined your team, open their panel to give them further roles - see holding several roles below.

You can invite someone using an email address that already has a guest account with you, for example a regular who’s booked as a guest before. The invitation creates a separate business account for them: their guest account, password and booking history stay exactly as they are, and they end up with two separate logins, one for the client portal and one for the guest app and main site.

The Users list shows Name, Email, Phone, Role and Status, with search and a role filter. A member holding more than one role shows all of them in the Role column, separated by commas.

Editing a user

Select a user from the Users list to open their panel, split into two tabs:

General - their name, email, phone, password and roles.
Notifications - that person’s own copy of staff notification settings: which team alerts reach them, by Email and App push, for each venue. If they work across more than one venue, pick one from the picker first, or choose All venues to set every venue the same way at once. Changes save automatically, there’s no separate save step.

If none of their roles are allowed to receive a notification type at all, the tab says so and points you to Access → Roles → Notifications to change it. If you don’t share any venues with them, it tells you that instead.

You need write access to Access → Users to open someone else’s panel, and you can’t edit a user who holds more access than you do.

Holding several roles

Once someone has joined your team (they’re no longer shown as Invited), the Roles field on their General tab becomes a multi-select, so you can pick as many roles as they need - a Manager role at one venue and a Host role at another, for example.

Under the picker, each role you’ve picked is listed with the venues it covers (or All venues). If two or more of their roles add up to grant an account-wide area (Operator settings, Access, Support or Venue groups), a line underneath reads “Account access:” followed by the area and which role or roles are granting it.

Permissions always add up and never override, so at a venue a person can do whatever any of their roles covering that venue allows - see how permissions work below.

How permissions work

Sidedoor’s permission model is deliberately simple:

Permissions add up, never override. A person can hold more than one role. At a venue, they can do whatever any of their roles covering that venue allows.
Most areas are scoped by venue access. Reservations, Guests, Events, Vouchers, Analytics and the rest only apply at the venues a role’s Venue access covers. Leave Venue access empty to grant access to all venues.
A few areas are always account-wide. Operator settings, Access, Support and Venue groups apply across your whole account from any role that grants them, whatever that role’s venue access says.
Write implies read. Granting write access to something automatically includes read access - you never need to tick both.
Some areas are write-only. A few areas only make sense as an action (for example the “Add …” rows, and most Settings sections), so they offer a single Write tick and read is included automatically. In the grid their Read box is shown ticked but greyed out to make that clear.
Related permissions are pulled in. Some rows depend on another. Ticking a detail row (for example Guest detail) also ticks the list it belongs to, so the permission actually works.
You can’t grant more than you hold. A role (or a person’s combined roles) can never reach further at a venue than your own access does there.

Permissions are shown as a grid organised into areas, each with Read and Write columns. Areas that hold sub-items (like Guests or Settings) expand so you can grant the whole area or pick individual items.

A page that lists every venue, like Reservations, Guests or Analytics, only includes the venues where you actually hold that permission. Pickers you open while adding something at a specific venue (an entry on the Guest list, a Reservation, a booking Request) list every venue, but only let you choose one where you have permission to add it there.

The Full Access role

There’s one built-in system role: Full Access. It has every permission, is generated automatically, and can’t be deleted. Use it for the people who run the whole operation.

The provided default roles

To save you building common roles from scratch, two ready-made roles appear automatically the first time you open Access → Roles:

General Manager - full operational access to run the venue day to day, with everything except Access (managing users and roles), Operator settings and Analytics exports.
Floor Staff - a narrower, floor-focused role: no Access, Operator settings, Marketing, complimentary vouchers, pre-order discounts, guest network or analytics exports and logs. It also doesn’t receive Business performance notifications (see below), since those include revenue.

These are yours to adjust: you can edit their permissions freely, and any change you make sticks. Like Full Access, they can’t be deleted (only their permissions can be edited), but unlike Full Access their permissions are fully editable. If you’d rather keep a default untouched, Duplicate it (see below) and edit the copy instead.

Creating a custom role

Open Access → Roles ↗ and choose + Add Role. The Roles list shows each role’s Name, Description, Users count and the venues it covers.

Give the role a name (required) and a description.
In the Permissions grid, tick Read or Write for each area. Use the Search permissions box to jump straight to one. Remember write includes read, and write-only areas grant read automatically.
Under Venue access, leave it empty to grant all venues, or pick the specific venues this role can work in. This only scopes the venue-level areas - Operator settings, Access, Support and Venue groups still apply across your whole account.
Save the role, then assign it to one or more users.

The permission areas

The grid mirrors the portal’s own layout. The areas, and the items inside each, are:

Dashboard - the account home overview.
Venues - adding and editing venues, and the Venue groups tab (creating, editing and deleting venue groups).
Guests - the guest directory (add a guest is included here), the Network view, and opening an individual guest.
Guest list - the operator-wide guest list, and opening an individual booking.
Reservations - the grid, coverflow and list views; the Requests (booking-requests) inbox; adding a reservation; opening a reservation; and applying a pre-order discount.
Events - the events list; ticket sales; adding an event; and opening an event.
Vouchers - the vouchers directory; issuing a voucher; and issuing a complimentary (free) voucher.
Floorplan - the per-venue table-layout editor.
Marketing - the Marketing dashboard, and managing automations, campaigns, segments and templates.
Analytics - the dashboards; the report builder; reviews; exports; and logs.
Business Intelligence - insights, forecasts and recommendations.
Access - Users, Roles, API tokens and Devices (the tab you’re on).
Settings - split into Operator (General, Marketing, Payments, Plan & Add-ons, Billing, Payment method) and Venue (Availability, Tables, Marketing, Inventory, Venue details, Integrations, Notifications, Policies, Tags).
Support - the help documentation, and support tickets.

Which notifications a role can receive

Below the permission grid, a separate Notifications section controls what kind of staff alert a role is allowed to receive at all. It’s not the grid’s read/write model: each person still chooses, from their own account settings, which of the allowed types they actually want and by which channel.

Section	Covers	Shows
Reservation activity	Guest and staff cancels and edits, and the daily reservation summary.	Guest names and booking details.
Guest feedback	The daily guest satisfaction summary - ratings and comments.	A guest’s name always shows. Their email, phone, visit history and spend, and any guest tags, only show for roles that can also view guests; other roles see a link to the guest’s profile instead.
Business performance	The end of day report, the weekly report and business alerts.	Revenue.
Payouts	The payout breakdown email, sent whenever Stripe pays out to the bank.	Sales by type, refunds, chargebacks and fees, as totals only - no guest details.

Tick each section a role should be allowed to receive at all. Someone holding several roles can receive a notification type if any of their roles, at the venue it concerns, is allowed to receive it.

Role examples to build

The built-in General Manager and Floor Staff defaults already cover the two most common shapes, so you may not need to build these at all: start from a default (or Duplicate one) and adjust it. If you do want to design your own, here are a couple of common shapes:

Floor manager - read/write on Reservations, Guest list and Guests; read on the Dashboard; limited to their venue via venue access.
Door staff - read on Guest list and Guests so they can check people in; no access to Settings or Access.