What employees, managers and HR can see
A plain-language guide to each role and the privacy boundaries between them.
What this guide helps you do
HRStuff uses two separate ideas to decide what somebody can see: their login role and their reporting line. The role controls what pages and information the person can access. The reporting line determines which employees appear in a manager’s team and which requests they can approve.
A customer login can access information only within its own company.
Role and reporting line are different
Login role: Employee, Manager, Assistant Admin or HR administrator. It controls the kinds of pages and company data the login may open.
Reporting manager: the person recorded in an employee’s Reports to field. It controls direct-report lists and, when enabled, manager approval routing.
A Manager role does not make every employee report to that person. An Assistant Admin can handle leave and claims across the company without changing who reports to whom.
A person recorded as a reporting manager may receive team links for their direct reports even if their login role is not Manager.
Employee
Employee is the normal self-service role. It can use only the company features enabled for that person’s own records.
Can open their own Dashboard, profile, leave, claims and published payslips when the company plan includes them.
Can update their own personal contact details and open their own employment documents and shared company documents.
Cannot see a coworker’s record, requests, pay, bank details, home address, documents or payslips.
Cannot approve requests or open company ADMINISTRATION pages.
Manager
Manager includes Employee access and adds limited team tools. The ordinary team scope is direct reports only, not the direct reports of those people.
Can use My Team, Team Calendar and permitted Team Reports when people report directly to them and the matching features are enabled.
Can approve eligible leave and claims for direct reports when company approval settings route that work to managers.
Can see the work information needed for those tasks, such as names, job details, requests and balances.
Cannot see team salary, payslips, bank details, home addresses, private identity details or employment documents.
Cannot see people outside the direct team or open payroll, company settings or ADMINISTRATION merely because they are higher in the reporting chart.
Assistant Admin
Assistant Admin is an operational company-wide role for leave and claims. It is separate from the full HR administrator role and separate from reporting lines.
Can use ADMINISTRATION Leave, Claims and Calendar across the company and make the approval, payment, import, export or deletion decisions available on those pages.
Can decide their own leave or claim when working in the company-wide administration view.
Cannot change leave or claim policy settings, run company reports, manage employee or login records, open payroll or salary information, or see private employee records.
If people also report directly to an Assistant Admin, separate Team Approvals and Team Calendar links keep that manager work distinct from the company-wide role.
HR administrator
An HR administrator has full access within one customer company. It is intended for the people responsible for employee records, payroll and company policy.
Can manage employees, reporting lines, logins and roles, including private personal, identity, salary, bank and employment-document information.
Can manage leave and claims policy, company-wide requests and calendars, payroll, reports, integrations, settings, billing and the Activity Log when those features are enabled.
Can step in to decide company requests even when the normal route points to a manager.
Cannot open the HRStuff platform-administration portal or another customer company merely because they administer their own company.
The company must retain at least one active HR administrator. HRStuff refuses a change that would leave the company with none.
Check access before changing a role
Start with the job the person needs to do
Use Employee for personal self-service, Manager for direct-team work, Assistant Admin for company-wide leave and claims operations, and HR administrator only for full company administration.
Check the reporting line separately
Set Reports to on employee records. Changing a role does not assign direct reports, and changing a manager does not grant company-wide administration.
Test the intended view
Confirm that the menu shows the needed page and omits private areas the person should not use. Feature-plan limits still apply even when a role would otherwise allow a page.
Correct excess access promptly
An HR administrator can change or disable the login without deleting the employee record. Important role and login changes are retained in the company Activity Log.