Roles get people set up in seconds, and per-person permissions let you handle the exceptions without inventing a new role for everyone.
Why do user roles matter?
Most brands share ProfitPeak with a mix of people: a founder, a marketing team, a finance lead, an outside agency, maybe a freelancer helping with creative. They all need the same numbers, but they shouldn't all be able to change your cost settings, edit a feed that's live on Google Shopping, or invite new people into the account.
Roles solve that. You decide who can make changes, who can only look, and who doesn't need a feature at all, so the data your whole team relies on stays accurate and you always know who has access to what.
What is a role in ProfitPeak?
A role is a ready-made bundle of permissions designed around a job, like Marketing or Finance. When you give someone a role, they get everything in that bundle.
A permission is a single thing a person is allowed to do in one area of ProfitPeak, like viewing Feed Management or managing marketing costs.
One important point: roles control what people can do, not what numbers they see. Everyone in your organization sees the same data in Peaks and Sherpa. Roles decide which tools and settings someone can open and whether they can make changes.
Which roles are available?
Every organization has these thirteen roles to choose from:
Admin: Everything in the organization, including members and their access, Sherpa connections and the audit log.
Default: Everything in the product except managing users, Sherpa connections and the audit log. This is the role new invites start with unless you pick another.
Agency / Consultant: An outside agency or consultant: peaks, spaces, exports, integrations and feeds; reads metafields, without costs or forecasts.
ECommerce: Runs the store day to day: peaks, spaces, exports, every cost, forecasts, metafields and feeds.
Marketing: Peaks, spaces, exports, marketing costs and feeds; reads metafields and forecasts.
Digital: Peaks, spaces, exports, integrations, marketing and processing fee costs, metafields and feeds; reads forecasts.
Analyst: Peaks, spaces, exports, metafields and forecast parameters; reads every cost, the revenue target and feeds.
Finance: Peaks, spaces, exports, every cost and both forecasts; reads metafields.
CRM: Peaks, spaces and exports; reads marketing and processing fee costs, metafields, forecasts and feeds.
Customer: Customer service: reads peaks and spaces and edits metafields, without costs, forecasts or exports.
Product / Merchandising: Peaks, spaces, exports, processing fee costs, metafields and feeds; reads the other costs and forecasts.
Creative: Edits peaks; reads spaces, metafields and feeds, without costs, forecasts or exports.
Technical: Members and their access, integrations, ERP delivery, markets, metafields and feeds; reads every cost.
You can also set someone to No role. They'll still be able to see your organization's analytics, plus anything you've switched on for them individually, but nothing else.
Every role includes Sherpa AI chat and company context, so the whole team can ask questions about your data. Anything Sherpa changes on someone's behalf still follows that person's own permissions.
How do I change a role for one person?
Go to Settings and open User management. You'll see everyone in your organization, their status and their current role.
Click the person's name to open their access settings.
Choose a new role from the Role dropdown. The role's description appears underneath so you can check it's the right fit.
Click Save.
Picking a new role starts that person fresh from the new role, so any individual tweaks you'd made before are cleared.
Need to update several people at once? Tick them in the user list and change the role in bulk. This works for pending invites too.
How do I turn individual permissions on or off for one person?
Sometimes a role is almost right. Maybe your marketing lead needs to manage integrations, or your agency shouldn't export data. Instead of changing the role, you can adjust single permissions for just that person.
Open the person from Settings > User management.
Scroll to Permissions. Each area of ProfitPeak (Peaks, Feed Management, Costs: Marketing, Integrations and so on) has its own row showing how many of its permissions are on, for example 1/2.
Click an area to expand it and see each permission with a short explanation of what it allows.
Tick a permission to switch it on, or untick it to switch it off. To turn a whole area on or off in one go, use the checkbox next to the area's name.
Click Save.
What's the difference between View and Manage?
Most areas have two levels:
View lets someone open that area and see its settings without changing anything.
Manage lets them add, edit and delete things there.
Unticking both turns the area off completely for that person. A handful of areas use a more specific word that matches what you're allowing, like Run for exporting data, Interact for chatting with Sherpa, or Manage others for deleting Peaks that other teammates created.
Some permissions depend on others, and ProfitPeak handles that for you. Ticking Manage automatically turns on View, since you can't edit something you can't see. Unticking View switches off Manage for the same reason.
How can I tell when someone's access differs from their role?
Any area you've changed from the role's defaults shows a Customized badge, and the user list marks that person's role as customized too. If you want to undo your changes, click Reset to role to put everything back to what the role normally includes.
Here's a nice side effect of this approach: if ProfitPeak later updates what a role includes, a customized person still picks up those updates for every permission you didn't touch.
What does "Not in plan" mean?
A few features, such as Sherpa Deep Research, Sherpa Connections and MCP access, depend on your ProfitPeak plan. If your organization doesn't have one of them, its area shows a Not in plan badge. You can still tick the permission, but it won't do anything until the feature is added to your plan.
Who can change roles and permissions?
Anyone with the Users: Manage permission can invite people, remove them and change their access. Out of the box that's the Admin and Technical roles. Everyone else with Users: View can see who's in the organization and what they can access, but can't change it.
Because managing users is the most powerful permission in ProfitPeak, treat it carefully. Someone with it can give any role, including Admin, to anyone. As a safeguard, ProfitPeak won't let you remove your own ability to manage users, so you can't accidentally lock yourself out.
Every change to someone's role or permissions is recorded in the Audit log, so Admins can always see who changed what and when.
Common questions
Can a role hide certain numbers from someone?
No. Everyone in your organization sees the same data in Peaks and Sherpa. Roles control which tools and settings people can use and whether they can make changes.
Which role should I give an outside agency?
Start with Agency / Consultant. It covers Peaks, exports, integrations and feeds, without access to your costs or forecasts. If you'd rather they couldn't download data, untick Export data for that person.
Do permissions apply when someone uses Sherpa or a connected AI tool?
Yes. Whether someone is clicking around ProfitPeak, asking Sherpa to make a change, or connecting from an AI tool like Claude or ChatGPT, the same permissions apply.