Pliant's Admin and Cardholder Apps
Before talking about the different member roles, it is important to understand that Pliant offers two types of apps, an admin app and a cardholder app.
The purpose of the admin app is to allow, for example, the leadership team or the finance team of a company to manage an organization’s cards and members. The admin app can be used to view all transactions across all cards issued to the organization’s members, to process those transactions for accounting purposes, and also offers many other functionalities that make managing the cards and related payments more easy.
The purpose of the cardholder app is to give individual employees access to the cards issued to them, track their own transactions, upload receipts to those transactions, and access card benefits and other rewards made available by Pliant.
Admin App Roles
Users with access to the admin app can have four different types of roles: owner, admin, accountant or auditor.
Owners
The owner role is reserved for members that shall have the full control of a company’s Pliant account. Owners have full access to the admin app without any restrictions. They can, for example, invite members and assign any kind of roles, issue cards and assign card limits without restrictions, and change any kind of account settings including the company’s billing account.
Owners are the only ones who can assign or unassign the owner or admin roles to other members. When assigning admin roles, they can define specific permissions, like a maximum amount up to which the admin can assign card limits and decide whether admins should be able to issue cards to themselves.
The first member invited to an organization is by default an owner, but this can be changed later on. An organization must always have at least one owner, but may also have multiple owners.
Typically, this role is assigned to the actual owners of a business, the managing directors, or the CFO.
Admins
Admins also have full access to the admin app, but owners can tailor access by modifying specific permissions:
Organization settings: Manage bank connections and billing bank accounts, manage risk and compliance documents on behalf of the organization and modify key company information such as company trade name, VAT-ID, billing email address and card delivery address.
Accounting settings: Configure accounting data fields including G/L accounts, VAT rates, suppliers, cost centers and cost units.
Modules: Activate and deactivate advanced features such as card requests, single use cards, card controls, teams, transaction review, merchant based accounting rules and receipt management.
Integrations: Connect and disconnect accounting, expense management, invoicing and other integrations.
Card issuance permissions: The maximum limit the admin is allowed to grant when issuing a new card or changing the limit of an existing card and whether he can issue a card for himself. Please note that the maximum limit can only be changed by the Owner.
Export permissions: Prepare transactions for accounting purposes and export them to the organization’s accounting tool.
Admins can invite cardholders and accountants, but not other admins, who may only be invited by owners.
Typically, this role is assigned to the head of finance and/or other senior members of the finance team, or whoever shall be in charge of managing a company's Pliant account on a day-to-day basis.
Accountants
Accountants have limited access to the admin app. The main purpose of this role is to set up and manage the organization’s accounting settings. Accountants also are usually the ones preparing card transactions and bill payments, etc. for being exported to an organization's accounting or ERP system. They ensure the right accounting data like G/L accounts, VAT rates, cost centers or cost units, etc. are assigned and that the receipts attached to the transactions fulfil the requirements, of the tax authorities.
Accountants are not permitted to invite new members, change any of their details and permissions. Accountants are also not allowed to issue cards, change limits, or any other card related actions in the admin app. Owners and Admins can determine if an Accountant has the permission to modify accounting settings.
Accounting settings: Configure accounting data fields including G/L accounts, VAT rates, suppliers, cost centers and cost units.
The accounting role is typically assigned to members of the finance or accounting departments, but may also be assigned to, for example, tax advisors or other external accounting experts that help with closing a company's monthly books.
Auditors
The Auditor role grants comprehensive, read-only access across the platform, ideal for internal or external auditors, compliance officers, and regulatory oversight personnel. This role allows for complete visibility into all facets of the organisation, including transaction details, accounting settings, card limits, and member permissions, facilitating thorough compliance and audit processes. However, Auditors cannot make changes, issue cards, invite members, or modify account settings, ensuring they can oversee and verify company operations and financial transactions without altering any data.
Cardholder App Roles
Cardholders
This is the default role for every member of an organization. It does not need to be assigned and cannot be unassigned. Every member invited to an organization’s account on Pliant therefore has access to the cardholder app by default.
Cardholders will only have access to their own cards, and they can only view the transactions made with their own cards.
The cardholder role is typically sufficient for most employees of a company.
Team Managers
Admins and owners can assign the team manager role to any member. The team manager role is always assigned for a specific team, but one member can be assigned the team manager role for multiple teams.
The purpose of this role is to give team managers control over their team's cards and viewing rights to the transactions of the team, without requiring to share access to the entire organization's data (as available via the admin app).
Via the cardholder app, team managers can ...
... view a list of all members belonging to the team, including their cards that also belong to the team (a member may have cards belonging to different teams);
... issue new cards to team members and change card limits, however only within the maximum limits previously set by an owner or an admin;
... approve and decline requests for new cards and limit changes made by team members, if in line with the permissions set for team managers of that team;
... view all transactions made by members belonging to their team.
Please note that the team manager role can be assigned in addition to roles relevant for the admin app. For example, a member with the accountant role can at the same time be a team manager for, e.g. the finance team, and issue cards to team members within the boundaries of the assigned team manager permissions.
More details on features for team managers can be found in this collection of articles.
Assigning Roles and Changing Role Assignments
For each member, the role can be chosen when inviting that member, but it can be changed later on.
We recommend separating processing functions by using flexible permissions, ensuring adherence to the four-eyes principle.
If you need more help regarding this topic you can book a time with our onboarding specialist with this link.