MerchantFlow Roles and Permissions Guide

Understand MerchantFlow workspace roles for owners, admins, analysts, and viewers with the complete permissions matrix.

MerchantFlow Roles and Permissions Guide

MerchantFlow roles and permissions define what each team member can access and manage within an e-commerce analytics workspace. The platform uses a four-tier team role model - plus two special-purpose roles - that controls access to dashboards, integrations, billing, and team management.

What Roles Does MerchantFlow Use?

The four core team roles are:

owner
admin
analyst
viewer

Of these, only admin, analyst, and viewer appear in the invite form and the role-change dialog at Settings > Team. owner moves by ownership transfer instead.

Two further roles are granted by the system rather than picked from the team page:

supplier - a restricted external role for one of your product suppliers. It sees only the dedicated supplier surface (COGS plus order and unit volume) and never profit, revenue, margin, ad spend, or the main dashboard
agency_viewer - granted automatically to an agency's users when you approve a read-only agency connection. Read-only like viewer, but it can also see financials and expenses so the agency can read the P&L it was connected for

member may still appear on older data or migrated workspaces. It maps to analyst-level permissions for backward compatibility.

Role Summary

Role	Main purpose	Billing access
`owner`	Full workspace control	Yes
`admin`	Operate the workspace, team, integrations, and syncs	No
`analyst`	Work with dashboards, financial views, COGS, expenses, manual orders, and sync triggers	No
`viewer`	Read-only access to core dashboards and operational views, excluding financial figures	No
`agency_viewer`	Read-only agency access, including the P&L	No
`supplier`	The supplier surface only	No

Permissions Matrix

Capability	`owner`	`admin`	`analyst` / `member`	`viewer`	`agency_viewer`	`supplier`
View dashboards	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
View financials (P&L, margins)	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
View COGS	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Manage COGS	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
View expenses	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Manage expenses	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
View orders	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Manage orders (manual B2B entry)	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Trigger syncs	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
View integrations	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Manage integrations	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
View team members	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Manage team (invite, change roles, remove)	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Manage workspace settings	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
View agency portal	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Manage agency portal	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Manage billing	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
View the supplier surface	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	Yes

Two things in this table often surprise people:

Viewers cannot see financial figures. A viewer sees dashboards, COGS, orders, integrations, and the team list, but not the P&L, margins, or expenses. If a teammate needs the financial picture read-only, an agency read-only connection or an analyst role is the fit, not viewer.
Analysts cannot connect or disconnect integrations, and cannot change workspace settings. They can trigger a sync on an integration an admin already connected, but not add, edit, or remove one.

Ownership Transfer

billing:manage is the only capability an admin lacks, but ownership transfer is separate from the permission model: only the account whose role is currently owner can transfer ownership, and there is exactly one owner per workspace. See Team Management.

How to Assign Roles in MerchantFlow

From Settings > Team, the invite form and the role-change dialog both offer:

admin
analyst
viewer

Invitations are not bound by the role hierarchy: any owner or admin can send any of these three invitations, including an admin invitation.

Changing an existing member's role is stricter. It follows a hierarchy, ordered from least to most privileged: supplier < viewer < agency_viewer < analyst < member < admin < owner. You can only assign a role below your own, and you can only modify a member whose current role is below your own. In practice that means:

Only the owner can promote an existing member to admin, because an admin does not outrank the admin role
Admins cannot change or remove other admins - ask the owner
Nobody can change their own role, and the owner's role cannot be changed at all except through ownership transfer

Owners are transferred, not invited through the standard teammate form. See Team Management for step-by-step instructions.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between owner and admin in MerchantFlow?

Billing is the only capability an admin lacks in the permission model. The owner has full workspace control including billing management, and is the only account that can transfer ownership or delete the workspace. Admins can manage teammates, integrations, syncs, and workspace settings, but cannot access billing, transfer ownership, or change or remove another admin.

Can I change a team member's role after they join?

Yes, within the role hierarchy. Owners can set any member to admin, analyst, or viewer from Settings > Team. Admins can set members to analyst or viewer, but cannot promote a member to admin or modify an existing admin - only the owner can. (An admin can still invite a brand-new person as an admin; the restriction applies to changing the role of someone already in the workspace.) Nobody can change their own role, and the owner role is transferred separately rather than assigned through the role change flow.

What does the "member" role mean in MerchantFlow?

The member role is a legacy label from older workspaces. It maps to analyst-level permissions for backward compatibility. New workspaces use the current four-role model.

Can viewers edit data in MerchantFlow?

No. Viewers have read-only access to dashboards, COGS, orders, integrations, and the team list. They cannot modify COGS, expenses, integrations, or trigger syncs - and they cannot see financial figures such as the P&L, margins, or expenses at all.

Last updated: August 29, 2026

MerchantFlow Roles and Permissions Guide

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