Who can see what a part cost you

Role decides what somebody can do. Money visibility decides what they see — and it is four separate switches, not one.

For owner, manager · checked against the product on 2026-09-15

There are two separate settings behind every person in your shop, and mixing them up is the usual cause of somebody seeing a number you did not mean to show them. Their Role decides what they can do — write an estimate, take a payment, book the calendar. Money visibility decides what they can see, and it is not part of the role.

Money visibility used to be one switch. It is four now, and the team screen says so at the top: Role decides what somebody can do. Money visibility decides what they can see — and it is four switches now, not one: parts, labor, wages, and the shop's own figures. The coarse switch is still there and still does the sensible thing; the four exist for the cases where it was too blunt.

The rule, in one sentence

A money field is anything that shows what the shop pays or what the shop keeps. Cost, margin, pay rate, what a pay period costs, shop-wide sales. A price you quote a customer is not a money field, and neither is the total on their invoice — an advisor who cannot see a price cannot sell, and the customer is holding those numbers already.

The one carve-out is your own pay. Your hours and your own rate are always yours to see on Time, whether or not the switch is on for you. Nobody else's is on that screen.

The four switches, and the one that is not a switch

What parts cost, and what they make: A part's cost, the margin on it, what the shelf is worth, the markup bands, and what a vendor charged on a purchase order. Off means those columns are not queried, not just not drawn.
What labour costs the shop: What punched time costs, and the labour half of a ticket's profit. Their own is always visible.
Pay rates and wages: What each person earns. Their own rate is always theirs to see, and setting a rate is a different key altogether.
The shop's own figures: Sales, average ticket, receivables, who sold what, and the figures the assistant is willing to quote. Off leaves Reports with its operational counts and withholds the money.
What the customer is charged: Prices and invoice totals. Everybody has this and there is no switch — see the rule above. It is listed on the card so you can see that it was decided rather than forgotten.

The split between the second and the third is the reason the whole thing exists. A pay rate is what a person earns; what punched time costs is what the shop pays to do the work. A foreman who has to know whether a job is under water needs the second and has no business with the first, and until these switches existed there was no way to say so.

What the switches cover

Seventeen places in the product ask the money question before they draw a figure, and each one names which of the four decides it. They are listed on Team under What money visibility covers, grouped by switch and each with the screen it applies to — so you can read the whole list rather than trust this one.

Parts — the Cost and Margin columns, the Total cost and Total value figures at the top of the shelf, and the Pricing matrix.
Parts › Purchase orders — what a vendor charged, on the list and on each order.
Time — pay rates and what a pay period costs, other than your own.
Reports — sales, average ticket, receivables, and what each person sold.
Settings › Preferences — the loaded labor-cost default is shown and editable only when the labor-cost grant is on. Without it, the card names the hidden figure and points to an owner instead of loading the stored cents into the page.
Assistant — the figures it will quote back to you.
The full export — the cost and rate columns inside the download.

On a repair order, the Profitability panel needs both the parts switch and the labour switch, so it appears only for somebody holding both. What a job made explains what it shows and what it refuses to guess.

A hidden figure is named, not just left out. Where a column, a tile or a panel is withheld, the screen prints a line saying so — the wording is much the same everywhere: the amount is hidden because money visibility is off for your account, here is what you are still seeing, and an owner can switch it on from the team screen. That matters more than it sounds. A missing cost column reads as "this shop has no costs", which is a different and untrue thing, and it is how a permission setting gets reported as a bug. The full export says it in writing too: its README.txt names the columns it left out of your copy.

Turning it on for somebody

Step 1: Open Team
It is in the second column beside the rail, in the settings band. You need Add people and set their access to open it, which owners and managers hold.
Step 2: Find them under Change someone's access
Each person gets a card. The table above it shows the shop at a glance — the Sees money column reads Always for an owner, Yes when they hold all four, No when they hold none, and something like 2 of 4 for anything in between. "Yes" there would have been a lie by rounding.
Step 3: Set the role, the switch, and any figure you want to overrule
Under the role and the coarse checkbox is a block headed What they can see, figure by figure with one control per switch. Each offers Follows the switch — with the answer that currently produces shown in brackets — or Always show or Always hide. Leaving all four on "Follows the switch" is the simple shop's setup.
Step 4: Press Save access
Role and money save together, because they are one decision about a person. The green line that comes back spells out exactly what changed, in both directions.

To check the result rather than infer it, follow Who can see costs? from Team. It puts one row per figure against one column per person, with Yes or No and, underneath, where that answer came from — the role, the coarse switch, something set for them, or something set for the whole shop. Those send you to three different screens to change, which is why it bothers to tell them apart.

An owner always sees money. The switch is still drawn on their card, and the hint under it says An owner sees money whatever this says — because hiding the control would look like a setting you had missed.

When it won't let you

You cannot switch money visibility on for somebody while it is off for you. The screen says so in words: You cannot switch on money visibility while you do not have it yourself. An owner can. You also cannot change the access of somebody whose role you could not appoint in the first place — a manager can appoint managers, advisors, technicians and front desk, but not owners and not accountants.

Every change is written down. Team ends with Permission changes — newest first, who did it, and what it went from and to. Money changes get their own line, reading like turned money visibility on for and then the person's name. The full trail is on the audit screen.

The accountant case

An accountant holds Open reports but the money switch is off unless you turn it on. So they open Reports and get the counts — cars in shop, ready, awaiting approval, approval rate — and a sentence explaining that the sales figures are withheld. That is usually not what you want for the person doing your books, and it is one switch away.

Where this stops

On purchase orders the switch takes the writing as well as the reading

Everywhere else, turning money off only hides figures. On Parts › Purchase orders it also stops you working: a purchase-order line IS a vendor cost, so there is no version of that form without one, and somebody with money visibility off cannot add or correct a line at all. The screen says so rather than showing a form that refuses. What is withheld is the money and the writing of it — the Total column on the list, the Cost column and the order total on the order, and the Add a line, Save draft and Remove draft line controls. Everything else stays open: they can press Start PO, open any order, read its parts, quantities and what has arrived, and press Receive as the boxes turn up, against the cost already on the order. Cancel purchase order stays open too, because stopping the quantities that have not arrived sets no figure. Both screens say the same thing in place of the figures rather than leaving a person to guess.

All help categories Create a shop