Roles and what each one can do — Help

What this covers

The four roles in Tabledoo, exactly what each can and cannot do, and how to choose the right one for a new member of staff.

Only an Owner or a Manager can create staff accounts or change someone's role, from Property Settings → Staff (/settings/users).

The four roles

Every person has exactly one role. The role decides which menu items they see and which buttons they get.

Role	Who it is for
Owner	The person who owns the account and pays the bill. Full access to everything.
Manager	Runs the restaurant day to day. Everything except billing.
Host	Works the door and the phone. Takes and changes bookings, looks after guest details, can move tables on the floor.
Waitstaff	Serves tables. Sees bookings and guests, and moves bookings along during service.

What each role can do

A tick means that role can do it.

Task	Owner	Manager	Host	Waitstaff
See bookings	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Create a booking or walk-in	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Change a booking, or move it along (arrive, seat, complete)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Delete a booking	Yes	Yes	No	No
See guest profiles	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Add or edit a guest	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Delete a guest	Yes	Yes	No	No
Export the guest list to a spreadsheet	Yes	Yes	No	No
Move and rotate tables on the floor plan during service	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Add, rename or delete tables	Yes	Yes	No	No
Open settings	Yes	Yes	No	No
Create and manage staff accounts	Yes	Yes	No	No
Create and manage events	Yes	Yes	No	No
See reports	Yes	Yes	No	No
Billing, invoices and changing plan	Yes	No	No	No

Worth noticing

Waitstaff can move a booking along but not create one. That is deliberate: a server marking a table as seated is normal, a server inventing bookings is usually not.
A Host can rearrange the floor but not change the tables themselves. Pushing two tables together for tonight is a floor decision; renaming a table or changing how many it seats is a setup decision.
Only the Owner can touch money. Managers cannot see invoices or change the plan.

The Owner account is special

It is the billing identity for the restaurant.
It has every permission, always.
It cannot be deleted. If you need to hand the restaurant to somebody else, change the details on the Owner account rather than deleting it.

Do not use the Owner login as a shared shift login. Give everyone their own account — otherwise every action in your history says "Owner" and you lose the ability to see who actually did what.

Choosing a role for a new starter

New server → Waitstaff
Host, or anyone answering the phone → Host
Assistant manager, head waiter, anyone who needs reports or settings → Manager
Owner → only the person responsible for the bill

Start people lower than you think. Moving somebody up is one click; undoing a mistake they made in settings is not.

If somebody cannot find a screen

Check their role first — menu items they cannot use are hidden rather than greyed out, so the screen genuinely is not there for them. If the role looks right, the other possibility is your plan: see Plans, features and limits.