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Three separate checks decide what a report shows you: the seven report capabilities, the cost and rate firewall, and your supervision scope. All three must pass.

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The three checks

Two people can open the very same shared report and read different numbers. That is correct behaviour, not a bug.

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The seven report capabilities

report.manage is a superset of report.edit – holding manage satisfies every edit check on its own.

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Editing rules

Ownership alone is never enough on a personal report. And a shared report is workspace property, so its author does not keep unilateral rights over it.
Archiving uses exactly the same rule as editing, because archiving is the destructive end of the same right.

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What each role holds by default

Reports does not appear in the sidebar for Finance, Contractor or Client, because none of them holds report.view. The curation tier – manage, share, schedule and export – is Owner and Admin only out of the box. A workspace can move any of them onto a custom role. See /team/custom-roles.
Finance holds data.export, which is the workspace-wide bulk export, not report export. They are different rights. See /data/export-your-data.

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The cost and rate firewall

This is the rule that matters most. A report never shows cost, revenue or margin to someone whose role may not see them – no matter what the report asks for. The firewall is enforced on the server, on every path: the screen, the drill-down, the export, the print view and the scheduled email. There is no arrangement of a report, no share link, and no export format that gets around it.

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The gated figures

Cost and billing are honoured independently. Someone who can see billing rates but not cost sees Revenue and not Labor cost. Someone with the reverse sees Labor cost and not Revenue.

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Why profit needs both

Profit is revenue minus cost. Someone who could see profit next to cost could subtract one from the other and reconstruct the revenue figure they were not allowed to see. Margin is the same problem in reverse – revenue is profit divided by margin. Requiring both capabilities closes that gap. It is the one place two permissions are demanded together.

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What you actually see

A restricted cell is not a blanked-out number waiting to be read. The value never leaves the server. It is not in the page, not in the export, and not in the scheduled email.

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Roster fields

Group, Manager, Job title and Employment type are gated on roster access. A role that cannot read the roster cannot group or filter by them either. This stops a report becoming a side door onto roster information the team page already hides from that person.

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Source gates

Two sources need a capability beyond report.view: The other six – Time entries, Projects, Tasks, Timesheets, Time off and Timecard – need only report.view. They still narrow which rows you see, based on your scope.

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Supervision scope

A capability says whether you may. Scope says for whom. A manager with time.viewOthers still only sees the people their scope reaches. A report folds only over those people, so a total covers your reach, not the whole workspace. When your scope is narrower than the roster, a note sits above the table:
Covering 4 of 12 members – your role only sees the people you supervise.
The note only appears when it matters. If you see everybody, there is nothing to say.
Read that note before pasting a total into a client email or an invoice. The number is correct for your reach – it is not the whole workspace.
See /concepts/supervision-scope.

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Drill-down

Clicking a subtotal opens the records behind it, and the same three checks apply again:
  • Rows – you see your own records plus those of people in your scope.
  • Fields – billing and cost rates on each record only appear if you may see them.
  • Hidden records – anything out of reach is counted, never shown: “N more entries aren’t shown because you don’t have access to them.”
If none are visible: “No entries you can view for this total.”

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Exports and schedules

A scheduled report is built under the creator’s permissions and emailed to whoever is on the list. If the creator can see margin, the file everyone receives has margin in it. Check the recipient list before scheduling a money report.
A schedule also stops sending if its creator loses report.view – through a role change or leaving the workspace. Nothing is sent, and no error reaches the recipients. report.export never implies cost access. Someone who can export but cannot see cost downloads a file with no cost columns.

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Example

Northwind Studio’s shared Unbilled work report asks for Billable time, Uninvoiced time and Revenue. Sarah’s totals also fold only over her own time, so her copy shows a coverage note.

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Changing what someone can do

1

Decide capability or scope

“They cannot open Reports” is a capability problem. “They see only some people” is a scope problem.
2

Open the role

Go to Settings → Roles and open the role.
3

Grant the capability

Tick the report capability you need, or the cost or billing capability.
4

Or set the scope

Change the role’s supervision scope to widen who its holders can see.
5

Save

The change is live. Capabilities are checked fresh on every action.
Granting time.viewCost or rate.viewBilling opens cost and revenue everywhere, not only in reports. Think about it as a business decision, not a reporting one. See /rates/cost-rates.

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Plans

Permissions and plans are separate gates, and both must pass: The Reports app itself is on every plan and never paywalled. See /concepts/plans-and-features.

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Common questions

No. The firewall runs on the server on every path – screen, drill-down, export, print and scheduled email. A gated value never reaches your browser.
Finance holds no report capability by default. It owns the money surface – invoices, payments and the bulk data export – not the reporting surface. Grant report.view on a custom role if you need it.
Their role can see cost or billing figures that yours cannot. The file mirrors what each person may see.
Ownership alone is not enough. A personal report needs ownership plus report.edit. A shared report needs report.manage regardless of who made it.
Yes, and it is a good default. report.export never implies cost visibility – their file has no cost columns.
No. Totals are calculated over the whole filtered set. A column you cannot see is not subtracted from anything; it is just not shown to you.

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Troubleshooting

Roles and capabilities

The seven roles and every capability.

Supervision scope

Which people your reports cover.

Cost rates

What cost visibility actually exposes.

Metrics reference

Which figures carry which gate.

Share a report

Publishing without widening access.

Plans and features

What Free covers and what Pro adds.