As your team grows, it’s important to control what each staff member can see and do in Lightspeed. You might want floor staff focused on sales, managers reviewing reports, and others locked out of the POS entirely — it’s all up to you.

User permissions determine access across the POS, Back Office, and any enabled add-ons like Lightspeed Payments, Insights, Purchase, or Produce.

Permissions can be assigned in two ways:

• Assigning a user role — apply a predefined set of permissions based on a staff member’s responsibilities.
• Selecting permissions manually — enable or disable individual permissions one by one.

This guide explains what each permission does and how to manage them manually from the Users page in Back Office.

If you’re looking to apply permissions using roles or to update multiple users at once, check out:

• Manage Staff Access with User Roles
• Use Bulk Actions to Manage Users

What’s in this guide?

• Before you begin
• How to manage permissions manually
• Basic POS permissions
• Advanced POS permissions
• Back Office permissions
• Lightspeed Payments permissions
• Purchase permissions
• Produce permissions
• Insights permissions
• Other user settings
• Frequently asked questions
• What’s next

Before you begin

You'll need:

• Access to Back Office with permission to manage users.
• At least one staff member added as a user.

See: Adding Users (Staff Logins)

How to manage permissions manually

To manually adjust a user's permissions:

1. Go to the People page in your Back Office.
2. Click the cog icon next to the user's name to open their User details page.
3. Scroll to the Permissions section.
4. Under Permission assignment, click Select permissions manually.

Permissions are grouped by area — POS, Back Office, Payments, Purchase, Produce, or Insights — and can be expanded or collapsed for easy navigation.

Tick the checkboxes to enable or disable specific permissions. You can also use Select all to apply every permission in a category.

Changes are saved when you save the user’s profile.

Basic POS permissions

These permissions are enabled by default for all new users, as each user is assigned the Front of House role when first invited (this can be changed later):

• POS Permission – Allows a user to access the POS. If disabled, the user won't appear on the POS (e.g. for stakeholders who aren’t actively selling).
• Edit Held Order – Allows a user to open, add items to, and check out held orders.
  Note: To delete held orders, users also need the “Delete Held Orders” permission.
• Finish Sale – Allows a user to take payment for sales. If disabled, the user can create orders but not complete them.
• Wastage – Allows a user to record wastage of stock ingredients or products.
• Apply Adjustments – Allows a user to apply price adjustments at the POS.
  Note: To apply discount-based adjustments, the “Apply Discounts” permission is also required.

Advanced POS permissions

• Apply Discounts – Allows a user to apply price adjustments or discounts that require discount permissions.
• Change Price – Allows a user to override an item’s price at the POS.
• Delete Held Orders – Allows a user to delete held or printed items.
  Note: Users can always delete orders that haven’t been sent to production.
• Finalised Takings – Allows a user to finalise takings.
  Viewing current takings requires the “View Current Takings” permission.
• Money In/Out – Allows a user to access Money In/Out for managing cash floats or petty cash.
• Open Cash Drawer – Allows a user to open the cash drawer without a sale.
• POS Printing – Gives access to the POS printing tab to troubleshoot or adjust printer settings.
• View Current Takings – Lets a user view the current total recorded takings. When disabled, the amount is hidden during takings finalisation to ensure users count the actual takings present.
• Void / Return Sales – Allows a user to void or refund sales.
• Edit Product Availability – Allows a user to disable items or set availability limits.
• Reprint Dockets – Allows reprinting of orders up to 12 hours after they’ve been placed.
• Edit POS Layout – Allows a user to modify the layout and table configuration.

Back Office permissions

• Sites – Access and edit site-specific settings like registers, printers, and features.
• Company – Access and edit company-wide settings, including adjustments, taxes, and payment types.
• Customers – Manage customer records in Back Office.
  Users can still add new customers at POS even without this permission.
• Manage Products – Full access to the Products page across all sites.
  Note: This affects all locations, so assign with care.
• Site Products – Grants access to Site Products and lets users choose which products appear on the POS for their site.
• Site Pricing – Update price lists for sites with the Price Lists add-on.
• Reports – Allows a user to access Back Office Reports for their assigned sites.
• Users – Allows a user to manage staff in Back Office, including assigning this permission to others.
• Stocktaking – Perform and adjust stock counts.
• Unassign Registers – Allows a user to unassign or recycle POS registers.
• Suppliers – Manage suppliers in Back Office.
• View Billing Invoices – View Lightspeed billing invoices for assigned sites.
• Delete Users – Delete users with equal or lower permissions who share the same site access.
  If access differs, you can only remove site access — not delete the user.

Lightspeed Payments permissions

Visible only when Lightspeed Payments is enabled for the site.

• Manage Lightspeed Payments – Configure settings within the Lightspeed Payments integration tile in Back Office.
• Process MOTO Transactions – Allows a user to checkout orders with the MOTO payment option on the POS.

Purchase permissions

• Access Purchase – Access your company’s Purchase module via the app switcher.
• Manage Cost Price – Edit cost prices and purchase order details, including email fields.

Produce permissions

• Manage Recipes – Allows a user to create, edit, and delete recipes, create new products and ingredients, and edit their units of measure. Full control over the Prep tab in Produce is also included, even if not separately selected as a permission.
• Manage Prep – Allows users to view recipes and their cost of goods sold, plan and manage batches (start, finish, edit, and add batch notes), and create custom batches. Users can also access reports in the Batch History section.

Insights permissions

• View Insights – Allows the user to access your company’s Insights account via the app switcher, with view-only access to reports and dashboards.
• Share Insights – Allows the user to view and share reports and dashboards from your company’s Insights account.
• Build Insights – Grants the ability to create custom reports, and to view and share all reports and dashboards within your company’s Insights account.

Other user settings

These settings aren't part of roles or permissions but are managed fro the User details page.

• Contact details –Editable by Admins, unless the user belongs to multiple companies (in which case, the user must update it themselves).
• Require PIN entry on POS – Enforces PIN entry on POS login. Enabled by default.
• POS PIN – 4-digit code for POS login. Editable by Admins or by the user.
• Tags – Internal labels that can be used to filter users in the Time & Attendance report and through the user search bar in the Back Office.
• Staff reference number – Used for Pay at Table transactions. Must be unique across the company.
  Only visible if Lightspeed Payments is enabled.
• Site Access – Controls which sites the user can access.
• Receive billing alerts – Sends billing emails for your Lightspeed O-Series subscription, including payment issues and monthly invoices.
  Only visible and assignable by Site or Company Owners. Does not grant access to update payment details.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s next?

To learn how to assign these permissions using predefined roles, see:

• Manage Staff Access with User Roles

To learn how to apply permissions in bulk, see:

• Use Bulk Actions to Manage Users