User Role - Restrict access to specific Settings
Ability to customise user roles to restrict some access in Xero.
Purpose: Some staff should only have limited access in Xero.

Hi everyone, we appreciate all your feedback on how we could evolve roles for customers using Xero. As you can see through the ideas on the platform, there are a wide range of combinations of permissions our customers want to see us build. As user roles impact all areas of the product, there are many considerations we must factor in when assessing how to solve for majority of our customers needs.
We’re beginning to conduct research on the current landscape and how we might approach some of the most predominant needs in roles for our customers. Front footing this, the discovery of this work will be long winded and there will be multiple phases of research and forms of engagement with users that’ll help shape the path ahead in this space.
We’d like to invite you, our community to be part of this research and discovery. This may involve interviews and sharing further feedback through direct surveys or questionnaires.
✍️ If this is something you’d be interested in taking a part of please fill in our short form here.
Though we won’t be able to invite everyone into every stage, our research team will be in touch with many of you over the coming months.
We will be back to share on the outcomes of our research and any progress around development of roles in Xero.
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Leisa Sheath commented
I would like to see more options in user access.
Payroll not just Admin or not. Example need admin access but not all the emails like timesheet approvals.
If you have multiple users doing similar work but not all you should be able to give partial access (not just in Payroll)
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Campbell Green commented
Hi everyone,
I understand that many of you are facing challenges with Xero's current permissions settings, especially when it comes to restricting access to specific bank accounts or transactions. While Xero may not have an immediate solution for these issues, I wanted to let you know that Control-C might be able to help.
As an add-on partner for almost 10 years, Control-C has developed a platform that can surface the required access to view-only data that your team members need to do their job. This ensures that sensitive information, such as staff wages and bonuses, remains confidential while allowing your colleagues to perform their roles effectively.
Having worked at Xero, I appreciate the complexities involved in retrofitting features into an established system. It's a challenging task, and I understand why some features might not be available yet. Our goal at Control-C is to provide you with the tools you need to manage your financial data securely and efficiently, complementing Xero's capabilities.
If you're interested in learning more about how we can help, please feel free to reach out to us through the Xero app store or the Control-C website.
Best regards,
Campbell Green
control-c.com -
Stuart Mohamed commented
@Luke Abbott - 368 days since last update
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Ritesh Kapadia commented
My new companies are setup in Quickbooks Online because of this issue. QBO has much better roles defined. GAAP is not possible with the current roles that Xero has, putting customers at risk.
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Luke Abbott commented
@Kelly Munro, isn't it about time for an annual update? We're eleven years into this version of an idea for customisable user roles, and a week away from there being a full year of radio silence.
Xero just need to get a grip on some of these basic software functions.
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Charlotte Woodbridge commented
I am in exactly the same situation as Stuart Mohamed! Reconciling customer payments (deposit summaries) is causing a huge problem, as the owner of the business I should not have to perform this task myself but am left with no choice as the permissions do not allow for any other way.
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Stuart Mohamed commented
Just wanted to add my thoughts on here to the many that have taken the time already to provide feedback.
The level of flexibility in this area is seriously behind
i) customer expectations/requirements and
ii) Xero's competitorsIn my example, I have a colleague who reconciles customer and supplier payments. This is a key area of her role, which she carries out to a high standard. However, with permissions settings as they currently stand, she also has access to other bank payments such as staff wages/bonuses/petty cash claims etc which are private and confidential.
My only option as it stands is to reduce her user rights, but by doing this I would be removing access to the very things she needs to do her role. It's an impossible situation.
In my opinion, Xero would do very well to allocate resources looking at it's competition to understand how they can roll out greater depth to the user rights/access options like for example Quickbooks.
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Darleen Cai commented
please have specific permissions for users, i.e., they can draft the bills, POs, but cannot self approve it. it's very hard to detect... thank you!
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Anh Nguyen commented
How can we add 'permission feature' to specific users especially at Standard level (junior account staff) who would not have ability to delete/void repeating invoices or single invoices or any transactions related in our accounting system without prior authorisation/approval from their supervisors.
Would there be an app that can connect to our Xero subscription and provide notification at the back end perhaps. We can not keep reconciling manually at repeating invoices level if we are looking after a significant amount of invoices -
Cathy Ely commented
Is there an update on this facility?
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Hannah Terry commented
PLEASE create greater options with user access! I'm actually quite shocked that this is not already a function!
The fact that I may have an employee doing my books who can see my entire business and all of my bank account balances or basically nothing at all is quite ridiculous. This is NOT supportive of small - med sized businesses in my opinion. Especially in small towns!
It should be completely customizable down to which bank accounts can be seen and which reports can and cannot be run.
despite the simplicity of this I have little to no hope of this being done however if it has not been already.
We will be considering swapping to another platform that will support this functionality asap. -
Henry Khoo commented
To limit a user access to manage (create and update) the tracking categories in the Xero, but cannot have the visibility on the bank accounts details.
Current system behaviour:
I tested to give invoices only access. but the user reported that cannot access tracking categories.And if provide standard access, by default accounts will be visible.
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Elizabeth Heyes commented
This is crucial, yet I don't have much hope that xero will make the necessary changes to provide a better product as the request was initially made 10 years ago!
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Patrick McMahon commented
It's so simple.
See all your "guides"
Just allow us to create our own groups of permissions based on each item.
For example, go to this page:
https://central.xero.com/s/article/User-role-access-to-purchases-in-Xero?userregion=true#ComparepurchaseordersuserrolesSee where you have a tick and a no ticket. let me make that choice.
Do that for each of these permissions here:
https://central.xero.com/s/article/User-roles-and-permissions-in-Xero-Business-edition#UserpermissionsinXeroJobs done, we can actually have granular permissions like every other app on the planet, that actually spends time in development.
Cheers.
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Karen Allbright commented
I would like to see a roll where someone can manage PRODUCTS only and. not have access to my businesses financials. It's pretty crazy that Xero makes your financials available to people who would be only hided to add products. for example they say they can see everything under the business tab - well that includes a financial snap shot . Impossible to hire anyone to mange products unless you want financials out in the open. There should ALWAYS be an option to restrict users to access your financial info,
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Allison Pickett commented
A user should have access to 'Quotes" only - and not have access to the invoice section, as they can see "all invoices' including every invoice the company has ever raised.
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Stuart Mohamed commented
The option to exclude someone's ability to see the bank balance should be a given in any level of user permissions.
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Liza James commented
Individual permissions, for employees to be able to raise quotes but not have access to view how much money the business is owed on the dashboard.
allow users access to create a project, and then create the related quote but no further accessSo to reiterate a more bespoke way of assigning individual permissions is needed .thanks
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Alison Nixon commented
The filter box on the quotes need to have a filter for "departments" as someone with basic access cannot get access to the all quotes summary report so it needs to be filtered not just on dates.
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Lori Notman commented
There should be many options within each section of permissions available to each individual user. It is far to broad.