This guide explains what you can and cannot do with personnel expenses based on your role and the allocations assigned to each expense.
How permissions are determined
Your ability to edit a personnel expense depends on two things:
-
Your role — the role you have been assigned for the budget you are working in.
-
The expense's allocations — the funding account allocations attached to the expense.
Your role determines which allocations you are authorized to work with. When you open a personnel expense, the system compares your authorized allocations against the allocations on that expense and assigns you one of three access levels: full access, restricted access, or no access.
Budget administrators
Budget administrators always have full access to every personnel expense regardless of allocation restrictions. The rules below apply to non-admin users with a budget role.
Role expense-type access
Before allocation-level rules apply, your role must have plan access to personnel expenses. If your role's personnel expense access level is set to:
|
Access level |
What you can do |
|---|---|
|
Plan |
View and edit personnel expenses (subject to allocation rules below) |
|
Display |
View personnel expenses, but not edit them |
|
Hidden |
Personnel expenses are not visible to you at all |
If your role does not have plan access to personnel expenses, none of the rules below apply — you cannot edit any personnel expenses.
Access levels explained
Full access
You have full access to a personnel expense when any of the following is true:
-
You are a budget administrator.
-
The expense has no allocations on its fundings.
-
All of the expense's allocations are ones your role is authorized for.
With full access, you can edit every field on the expense and perform all available actions.
Restricted access
You have restricted access when the expense has a mix of allocations — some that your role is authorized for and some that it is not.
With restricted access:
-
You can only edit the Notes field. All other fields (position, job, location, employee, FTE, and the expense code) are locked and displayed as read-only.
-
For funding rows, you can only modify fundings that use allocations your role is authorized for. Funding rows tied to allocations you are not authorized for are displayed as read-only.
-
You can add new funding rows, but only using allocations your role is authorized for.
No access
You have no access when none of the expense's allocations are ones your role is authorized for. You cannot open the expense for editing at all.
What you can do at each access level
The table below summarizes which actions are available at each access level.
|
Action |
Full access |
Restricted access |
No access |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Edit all fields |
✅ |
❌ |
❌ |
|
Edit Notes |
✅ |
✅ |
❌ |
|
Edit authorized funding rows |
✅ |
✅ |
❌ |
|
Edit unauthorized funding rows |
✅ (all are authorized) |
❌ Read-only |
❌ |
|
Add new funding rows |
✅ Any allocation |
✅ Authorized allocations only |
❌ |
|
Delete expense |
✅ |
❌ |
❌ |
|
Duplicate expense |
✅ |
❌ |
❌ |
|
Vacate employee |
✅ |
❌ |
❌ |
|
Mark for removal |
✅ |
❌ |
❌ |
|
Revert changes |
✅ |
✅ |
❌ |
|
Cancel removal |
✅ |
✅ |
❌ |
|
Create new expense |
✅ |
— |
— |
Notes on specific actions
Revert and cancel removal require only that you have some access to the expense (full or restricted). Reverting restores the expense to its prior-cycle state, which is always safe regardless of your allocation access.
Creating a new expense always requires full access. When you create an expense, you can only select from allocations your role is authorized for, so a valid create is always fully authorized.
Duplicating an expense requires full access because the duplicate inherits the original's allocations. If you do not have full access to the original, you cannot duplicate it.
Vacating an employee requires full access because it modifies the employee field, which is locked under restricted access.
How this looks on the expense list
On the personnel expenses list page, each row reflects your access level:
|
Your access |
What you see |
|---|---|
|
Full access |
Normal edit button and full action menu (delete, duplicate, vacate, mark for removal, revert) |
|
Restricted access |
Edit button is available, but the action menu only shows Revert and Cancel Removal — destructive actions (delete, duplicate, mark for removal) are hidden |
|
No access |
The row shows an "Editing Disabled" label with no edit button |
How allocations become restricted
An allocation is open (available to all roles) by default. A district administrator can restrict an allocation by associating it with one or more specific roles. Once an allocation is associated with at least one role, only users with those roles can edit expenses funded by that allocation.
If an allocation has no role associations, every role is authorized for it.
Common scenarios
You can edit everything on an expense
Your role is authorized for all of the allocations on the expense's fundings (or the expense has no allocations). You have full access — all fields, all fundings, and all actions are available.
You can only edit notes and some funding rows
The expense is funded by a mix of allocations — some that your role covers and some that it does not. You have restricted access. You can update the Notes field and modify funding rows for your authorized allocations, but everything else is read-only. Destructive actions like delete and duplicate are not available.
You cannot edit the expense at all
None of the expense's allocations are ones your role is authorized for. The expense list shows "Editing Disabled" for this row, and you cannot open the edit form.
You can revert but not delete
You have restricted access to the expense. Revert and cancel-removal are allowed because they restore the expense to its prior-cycle state, which is always safe. Delete requires full access because it is a destructive whole-expense operation.