Invite your team and set roles

There are two kinds of "people" in SupplierVault, and it helps to know the difference before you invite anyone:

	Team members (sign-ins)	Stakeholders
What they are	People who can sign in to your organisation	People who own steps in your process, grouped by team
Where you manage them	Account button (top right) › Team	The Stakeholders page, or step 5 of the setup guide
Used for	Access and permissions (Admin, Editor, View only)	Task routing, approvals, supplier ownership, reminders
Need an account?	Yes	No. You can route tasks to someone who never signs in.

The two are linked by email address. When a member who isn't View only first opens the organisation, a stakeholder record is created for them automatically (team "Unassigned") if one with their email doesn't exist. Approvals, sign-offs and completed tasks are then recorded against that person. Set their team on the Stakeholders page so tasks reach them.

Invite a colleague

Click the account button (your initial and organisation name, top right) and open the Team tab.
Under Invite a colleague, enter their email and choose a role: Editor (the default), View only, Admin or Auditor (read-only, time-limited), or one of your own roles listed under Your roles (see Custom roles). For an auditor, choose when their access ends (Auditor access ends on: 30 days ahead unless you change it, a year at most).
If access by area is on, choose the Areas they'll see.
Click Invite. SupplierVault saves the invitation and emails it straight away. You'll see "Invitation emailed to …".

The email comes from SupplierVault, says who invited them, which organisation and which role, and has an Accept invitation button. If they reply, the reply comes to you.

The button opens SupplierVault with their email already filled in. They can then:

click Continue with Microsoft or Continue with Google and sign in with their work account for that email, or
create a SupplierVault password with that email and confirm it from the email we send.

Either way, they're added to your organisation with the role and areas you chose as soon as they sign in. Someone who already has a SupplierVault account (for example in another organisation) joins the next time they sign in.

They must use exactly the email you invited. If they sign in with a different address (say a personal Gmail), they won't be added: invite that address instead, or ask them to sign in with the invited one.

If the email doesn't arrive

Ask them to check their junk or quarantine folder. Some company email systems hold new senders for a while.
Under Waiting to join each invitation shows when it was emailed, for example "Emailed 22 Oct, 21:40". Click Email again to resend it (once a minute at most).
Click Copy link to copy their personal invitation link, then paste it into an email or chat yourself. It works exactly like the button in the email.
If an email couldn't be sent, the invitation says "Email not sent" and why. It is never shown as sent when it wasn't.

Click Cancel to withdraw an invitation. The link then stops adding them.
Inviting the same email again updates the invitation's role and areas.
Messages you might see: "Enter a valid email address." or "They're already in the team."
Only admins can invite. Everyone else sees "Only an admin can invite people or change access."
To stop invitations being misused for bulk email, each invitation can be emailed up to 10 times, and an organisation can send up to 100 invitation emails a day (20 a day in its first week). Over that, use Copy link.

Add people automatically (Enterprise)

If your IT team uses Microsoft Entra ID or Okta, it can add people to SupplierVault when they join and remove them when they leave, so you don't have to invite starters or remove leavers by hand. People added this way don't get an invitation email: they join the first time they sign in with their work email. See Add and remove people automatically.

What each role can do

What	Admin	Editor	View only
See suppliers and records (within their areas)	Everything, always	Yes	Yes
Add, change or delete suppliers, tasks, invoices, requests and files	Yes	Yes	No: edit controls are hidden
Add areas, teams and edit document templates	Yes	Yes	No
Send supplier portal links and sign documents	Yes	Yes	No
Use the AI assistant and readers	Yes	Yes	Yes (counts against the monthly allowance)
Change organisation settings: branding, modules, forms and packs, record layout, setup answers, routing, scorecard, governance framework, tier policy, evidence, document storage, exchange rates	Yes	No	No
Change a signed-in colleague's stakeholder team or email, or link a stakeholder to a sign-in	Yes	No	No
Change who raised a purchase request or its budget holder	Yes	No	No
Invite and remove people, change roles and areas	Yes	No	No
Turn on access by area, require two-step sign-in	Yes	No	No
Download all data, create or revoke API keys, close the organisation	Yes	No	No
Own two-step sign-in, calendar link, leave the organisation, delete own account	Yes	Yes	Yes

Editors who try an admin-only setting see "Only an admin can change this setting." View only users see "You have view-only access."

Custom roles

If none of these fit, an admin can create roles such as "Finance" or "Requester" under Organisation › Custom roles, choosing what each may change: Suppliers, Payments, Purchase requests, Sourcing, Stakeholders and Set-up. Someone with a custom role sees everything in their areas but can only change what their role allows. Give it to people in the role drop-down on the Team tab, or when you invite them. See Custom roles.

The Auditor role

An auditor can see everything in their areas, exactly like View only, but change nothing. On top of that:

Their access stops on the end date you chose. After it, they see "Your auditor access has ended". The team list shows "access until date".
Every sign-in, every document they open and every pack or export they download is recorded in the access log.
They can run the audit trail tamper check and download the access log from the Organisation tab.

If you change an existing member's role to Auditor, their access ends 30 days later unless you change the date. See Audit evidence for auditors.

Nobody, including admins, can edit or delete the audit trail.

Change someone's role or remove them

On the Team tab, admins see a role drop-down next to each person. Changing it shows "Role updated".
Remove (then Confirm) takes away their access. Their past work and history stay.
An organisation must always keep at least one admin, so the last admin can't be demoted, removed or leave.
If your team signs in with Microsoft or Google, also remove leavers here. With Company sign-in only switched on (and, ideally, locked to your own tenant or domain), someone whose work account is turned off loses access within 12 hours anyway; without it, removing them here is what stops them. With automatic syncing, switching them off in Entra ID or Okta removes them straight away.
When someone moves on, use Hand over work on the Stakeholders page to move their open tasks and supplier ownership to someone else in one step. For a holiday or leave, use Cover while away instead: see Cover while you're away.

Give each team only its own areas (Professional and above)

By default everyone sees every area. On Professional and above, an admin can restrict people to the areas they work in, for example so Facilities only sees facilities suppliers.

Account › Organisation › Who sees which suppliers: choose Each person sees only the areas they're given (set them in Team).
On the Team tab, each member shows "Areas: …". Click Change, tick All areas, including new ones or individual areas, then Save areas.

Admins always see everything.
A supplier's area is its Area field ("Other" if blank). Its tasks, invoices, purchase requests, files, change history, portal links and signatures follow it. Changing a supplier's area moves all of that with it.
Stakeholders and settings have no area, so everyone sees them.
With teams set up, people in a team that covers set areas see those areas plus the suppliers their team manages, and areas you give them here are added to their team's. See Teams.
Restricted people see a banner: "Your view: you see the … areas only. Totals and charts cover these areas." Someone with no areas yet is told to ask an admin.
Their calendar feed only includes suppliers they can see.

Show work for

The Show work for list in the top bar filters the Tasks count, the bell and the Dashboard's task panel to one person. It's only a filter: whatever you do is always recorded as you, the signed-in person. If your sign-in isn't linked to a stakeholder yet you'll see "Your sign-in isn't linked to a stakeholder yet". Ask an admin to link you on the Stakeholders page.

Still have a question?Email hello@suppliervault.co.uk or use the contact form. Try anything safely in the live demo.