Adding people and giving them a role
Last updated August 21, 2026
You add someone to LakeOps by inviting their email address in Settings → People and giving them one or more roles — admin, office, operator or crew — which is what decides every screen and button they can reach.
Adding somebody takes about twenty seconds and there is no password anywhere in it. That is worth knowing in April, when you are onboarding six seasonal crew in a week.
Adding somebody
Under Settings → People. Enter the email address and a name, tick the roles they should have, and save. They can sign in immediately — the address is the account, and signing in is a code in their inbox.
The five roles you start with
| Role | Roughly |
|---|---|
| Owner | One person, who answers for the company. Everything an admin can do, plus the two things nobody else can: close the account, and hand it to another admin. The person who signed up. |
| Admin | Everything except closing the account and handing it on: rates, people, roles and how the account takes payment. The owner is an admin too; add one or two more if the office needs them. |
| Office | Customers, properties, items, service plans, seasons, jobs, dispatch and the reports. The day-to-day of running the business. |
| Boat operator | Whoever runs a boat: the crew surface plus the dispatch decisions that belong at the landing rather than at a desk. |
| Crew | The field app. Timers, marking items done, photos, notes. Not rates, not customers, not anybody’s access. |
Someone can hold more than one role, and their permissions are the union of all of them. An owner-operator who also runs a boat is usually admin and operator.
The five built-in roles cannot be edited, so no one can accidentally lock the account out by editing the admin role at eleven at night. When they do not fit, build a custom role instead.
Seasonal turnover
LakeOps is priced per serviced property, never per user, precisely because your headcount triples in May and halves in July. Add everybody who needs the app; it costs nothing extra.
When somebody leaves, remove their access. That signs them out of every device immediately and keeps the record of what they did — their completions, timers and photos stay attached to their name, because that history is yours and it is what a billing question needs six months later.
You cannot remove the last admin
LakeOps refuses. An account with no reachable admin is an account nobody can fix — not you, and not us on your behalf. Promote somebody else first.
The owner, and handing the company on
Exactly one person is the owner. They cannot be removed while they hold it, and the roles form never offers the role. When the business changes hands, the owner goes to Settings → People → Transfer ownership, picks another admin, and types the company name: that person becomes the owner and the old owner becomes an admin, both get an email, and the change is in the feed. There is no other way the role moves.
One person, more than one company
Access is held per account, not on the person. The same email address can be an admin at one dock company and a crew member at another, and the two never see each other’s data. That is common enough among contractors who share seasonal crew that it is built in rather than worked around.
Still stuck? Ask us — or go back to the help center.