You can add users to Lightyear and control what each person can see and do, helping you maintain privacy and security across your business. You'll need Parent Admin or Company Admin permissions to add or edit users.

Only users with Parent Admin or Company Admin permissions can access the Users page, located within Settings. This means only an Admin of an account can add or remove users and edit each user's permissions, limiting what each person can see.

If you encounter issues with permissions, contact your Company Admin or Parent Admin to request the necessary access.

You can invite a new user to Lightyear in a few steps:

The invited user will receive an email with instructions to set up their account, including creating a password.

After you invite a user, you can set what they have access to.

Once the user has accepted the invitation, go to the permissions or roles section in your account settings. Configure the user's permissions to match their role or responsibilities. You can replicate permissions from an existing user if needed.

Two-factor authentication (2FA) adds an extra level of security for users. You can turn on 2FA at an account level, or on an individual level per user. For more information, see our multi-factor authentication article.

With 2FA turned on, users logging in need to enter a passcode, which they receive by text message. This provides a second level of security beyond what a single password can provide.

If you need multiple users to view the Approvals or Purchase Orders workflow, but need to restrict the specific suppliers and documents they see, you can set up Departments.

If a user is in a Department, within Approvals or Purchase Orders, they can only view the specific suppliers they have been assigned to. Users who are not in the Department won't see the supplier's documents at all, as if they don't exist.

Some areas of the Lightyear app are only viewable by certain users, e.g. Company and Parent Admins.

A Company Admin has access to the Users page, as mentioned above. They also have access to the Company Settings page, where the main account settings are established. These include:

A Parent Admin has access to everything available to the Company Admin as well as access to the Parent Dashboard, giving an overview of all child companies within their structure. They are the only users who can view the billing on these accounts and access the Users/Companies page. This page gives information on all child accounts and client users, allowing the Parent Admin to move users in and out of accounts.

Administrators added at the child level have full admin access to that specific child company. It's important to ensure that only centrally managed administrators are granted administrator rights to maintain proper access control.

To set up a centralised admin model:

The permissions matrix shows what a user can access based on the combination of rights you assign them. Click the image to zoom in, then you can proceed to invite your team.

Each role gives a user different access to documents and features in Lightyear. Choose the role, or combination of roles, that matches what the user needs to do.

Accounts Payable (AP) roles control access to bills, approvals and core account features.

This Standard User role is the most customisable, allowing you to combine the following permissions:

The 'Approval Task & Archive' role gives users read-only access to documents through the Archive, Statements, Notifications and Profile Settings. It also allows them to action Approval Tasks assigned to them. Users cannot make changes to the document data from within the approvals workflow. This user can only view documents, run reports through the Archive and leave notes on documents.

This permission is particularly useful for audit-only purposes, as it allows users to view data without consuming credits. This makes it ideal for compliance or review scenarios. Auditors can securely access archived invoices for review and reporting purposes, ensuring data integrity while maintaining restricted access.

The user can edit document data through tasks if Edit Approval Tasks is selected.

This 'Approval Task Only' role limits the view to Approval Tasks assigned to the user. They can also access Notifications and Profile Settings. By default, the user cannot edit document data. They can indirectly impact documents in the workflows by approving, rejecting, un-assigning, re-assigning, disputing and leaving notes.

This role gives you full admin rights and access to all features within Lightyear, including:

If you have POs enabled, you will see additional PO-specific permissions. You can combine these permissions:

You can combine these permissions with the PO roles above:

If you have Expenses enabled, you will see additional expense-specific permissions. You can combine these permissions:

This is off by default for Submit users. When combined with this permission, you are restricting the user to see only the expenses they have personally raised, no matter what department they are assigned.

You can grant Archive roles to any user with the Standard User permission. By default these are off, and you can turn them on across Lightyear to allow users to see specific documents. You can choose between:

If a user has only Bill Archive, they will only see bills, credit notes and receipts. They will not see any POs, expenses or expense reports without either of the other two permissions turned on.

Lightyear does not support restricting archive visibility to only the bills that a user has personally approved. Users with archive access can view all items in the archive, regardless of their involvement.

You can grant the Statements role to any user with the Standard User permission. By default, this is off, and you can turn it on to allow users to see Statements.

If a user has only a PO role, they will not have access to view Statements unless this is explicitly selected.

You can combine these permissions with the roles above: