Access, roles, and giving permissions
Understand organization membership, feature permissions, and separate giving access.
Parable controls access within each organization. A person can belong to more than one organization and have different access in each. Check the selected organization before inviting someone, changing a role, or viewing church data.
Membership, roles, and permissions
These three concepts work together:
| Concept | What it means |
|---|---|
| Organization membership | The person belongs to that church's workspace. Membership does not give access to every feature. |
| Organization role | A named set of permissions assigned to a member. A member can hold more than one role. |
| Capability or permission | The specific action that Parable checks, such as viewing reports, managing integrations, or managing team members. |
The role choices in Settings → Team come from the current organization-role catalogue. Choose from the roles the application offers. Manage Roles → Current Roles shows descriptions for roles the member already holds. Role availability can change as the organization and its features change.
Parable also checks the selected organization and access to the particular resource. A role that allows someone to use reports, for example, does not automatically grant access to every report another person owns.
Team management access
The Team page and its invitation, role, and giving-access controls require the
manage users capability (users.manage) for the organization.
Reading a member list is a separate permission. A person with read access to the roster can still be unable to open the Team management page or change another member's access.
A hidden navigation entry is not the only access check. Opening a bookmarked URL still requires the page's permissions, and the server checks permissions when an action is submitted. If access is refused, confirm your organization and ask an authorized team manager to review your roles.
Follow Manage your team for invitation and role-management steps.
Giving access is a separate choice
Giving access has three levels:
| Level | What it allows |
|---|---|
| None | No access to giving data. The member can still use other features their permissions allow. |
| Summary | Giving totals and summaries in features the member can otherwise access. Person profiles can also show whether and when a gift occurred and a relative giving breakdown. Individual gift amounts remain hidden. |
| Full | Individual giving details as well as summaries, within the member's other feature and data permissions. |
A giving level does not unlock every feature. Report, data, SQL, and other permissions still apply. Some features require Full giving access even when other giving summaries are available with Summary.
Invitations start with None. Selecting an organization role does not automatically change the invitation's giving level. Choose Summary or Full deliberately when the person's work needs it.
Organization ownership carries Full giving access. For other members, review the effective level displayed in Manage Roles → Giving Data Access rather than assuming a role's name describes their financial access.
Who can change a giving level?
The acting member needs team-management permission. They also cannot grant giving access above the level they hold themselves. For example, a manager with Summary cannot grant Full. Ask the organization owner or a team manager with sufficient giving access to make that change.
A member cannot change their own giving level through these controls. Another authorized manager must make the change. The same limit on granting a higher level applies when a manager sends an invitation.
If an access change makes a member ineligible for external database access, Parable also revokes their existing database credentials. See Accessing your data for database connection instructions.
Organization ownership
The owner role is assigned when the organization is created. It is not offered in the ordinary Team role selector, and its current-role row has no revoke control. These controls do not provide an ownership-transfer workflow.
Granting another available role does not make that person an owner. Revoking a role removes that role's access; it does not delete the person's organization membership.
Connections access
Connections access is managed separately in Settings → Connections. Connections access tiers and their scope are not organization roles in the Team role selector.
Giving someone Connections access does not automatically grant Team management or broad access to all church data. Someone may have a scoped Connections workflow while lacking permission to use the full data directory. If a person needs both kinds of work, review their organization roles and Connections access separately.
If a feature is unavailable
- Confirm that you are working in the intended organization.
- Ask a team manager to check your current organization roles and, for financial information, your giving level.
- Check whether the particular report, dashboard, or conversation has been shared with you.
- For scoped Connections work, have its manager review your Connections access.
If the application reports that permissions could not be loaded, retry the request. That state does not confirm that you have access or that your access was removed.