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Roles, permissions and entity access

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Access in Governax is decided by two independent things: the role you hold in the organisation, and whether you can reach a given entity. Confusing the two accounts for most access questions we get.

Two separate questions#

The two access questions
QuestionAnswered by
What am I allowed to do?Your organisation role: owner, admin, member, billing or viewer.
Which entities can I open at all?Owners and admins reach every entity. Everyone else needs to be a member of that specific entity.

Holding a role does not imply reaching an entity, and reaching an entity does not imply permission to change things in it.

The five roles#

Organisation roles
RoleIntent
ownerFull control. Every organisation has at least one and the last one cannot be removed.
adminFull control in practice, including reaching every entity.
memberOrdinary user of the product.
billingIntended for finance contacts.
viewerIntended for read-only access, such as an external auditor.

What roles actually gate today#

This is where documentation usually drifts from reality, so here is the precise position. Exactly three actions in the product check your role:

Actions gated by organisation role
ActionRequired role
Update organisation profile metadataowner or admin
Create an entityowner or admin
Delete an entityowner or admin

Everything else in the product, reading the ledger, listing members, running a verification, is available to any approved member who can reach the entity, regardless of role.

Which entities you can open#

Owners and admins bypass entity membership entirely and can open every entity in the organisation. Everyone else, member, billing and viewer, must be a member of the specific entity, and hitting an entity they are not a member of returns NOT_ENTITY_MEMBER.

Governax platform administrators#

Separate from organisation roles, Governax staff hold a platform administrator role used to review new workspaces and, if necessary, suspend an organisation. It is not something a customer is granted, and it is not part of your role model.