# Who Can See What

Decide what each role in your clinic can see and do before you create staff accounts.

Before you give the rest of the clinic accounts, you want to know what each of them will be able to see. This page answers that in the terms a clinic thinks in — the front desk, the vets, the person who runs the place — rather than in terms of checkboxes. For the screens and the click path, see [Users and roles](/settings/users-and-roles).

## The Short Answers

| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Can the front desk see what the clinic earns? | Not unless you grant it. Financial reports, invoices, payments and expenses are each granted separately from everything else |
| Can one veterinarian see another's patients? | Yes. Access is granted by area, never by patient or by staff member — anyone who can view visits sees every visit in the clinic |
| Can someone record a visit but not delete one? | Yes. Viewing, creating, editing and deleting are four separate grants in every area |
| Does the groomer see medical records? | Only if you grant them. Appointments and visits are separate areas |
| Can anyone send a patient's history outside the clinic? | Only with a separate grant. Reading a patient record and sending its history out are different permissions |
| Can one person be a vet on some days and the manager on others? | Not with one account. A user holds exactly one role |
| What happens to a leaver's records? | Nothing. Disable the account instead of deleting it and everything they recorded stays where it is |

## How Access Is Decided

Three things decide what a person can reach, in this order.

**The role.** Every account holds exactly one role, and takes all of its access from that role. Choosing a different role replaces the one before it — roles do not stack.

**The permissions in that role.** A role is a name plus a set of **Permissions**, grouped by area of the system. Two people with the same job title can hold different roles if you want them to; the role is just a set you named.

**The clinic administrator.** This role is the exception to all of the above: it has full access, cannot be narrowed by permissions, and it is the only role that can open **Clinic Admin** — where users, roles, the clinic's own lists and the subscription live. Everyone else works entirely in the main application.

> **Note**
> A few areas also depend on your subscription rather than on the role. Where your plan does not include an area, granting the permission does not open it.

## The Areas You Can Grant

Permissions are grouped by area. The ones a clinic usually has to decide about:

| Area | What it covers |
|---|---|
| **Customers** | Client records, and whether the client can be invited to the mobile app |
| **Pets** | Patient records, and separately whether their history can be sent out of the clinic |
| **Visits** | The medical record: examinations, treatments, prescriptions, checkout |
| **Vaccinations** | Vaccinations and the vaccination calendar |
| **Appointments** | The calendar, and the appointment types behind it |
| **Hospitalizations** | Inpatients |
| **Invoices** | Invoices |
| **Payments** | Payments taken against them |
| **Expenses** | What the clinic spends |
| **Products** | The catalogue and its categories |
| **Tags** | The labels used across records |
| **Communication Hub** | Bulk messages, reminders and the WhatsApp inbox |
| **Reports** | Each report, granted one at a time — see below |
| **Notifications** | The notification log |

Two of these are worth pausing on, because clinics usually assume they travel together and they do not. **Invoices and payments are separate**: someone can raise an invoice without being able to record what was paid against it, or the reverse. And **billing is separate from reporting**: seeing today's invoices is not the same as seeing what the clinic earned last quarter.

## The Four Actions

Every area is granted as some combination of four actions, and they are independent:

| Action | What it allows |
|---|---|
| **View Visits** | Open and read the records in that area |
| **New Visits** | Create one |
| **Edit Visits** | Change one that exists |
| **Delete Visits** | Remove one |

This is how you give a new member of staff room to work without room to do damage: view, create and edit, but not delete. They can record everything they do and correct their own mistakes, and nothing leaves the clinic's records without someone more senior.

Some areas add a few grants beyond the four, for work that sits inside another record rather than beside it. Visits are the clearest case: the examination notes, the treatments, the prescription and the invoicing at checkout are each granted separately, so a role can be allowed to write up an examination without being allowed to price it.

## Sending a Patient's History Out Is Its Own Permission

Reading a patient's record on screen and sending that record out of the clinic are different things, so they are granted separately. **Share Medical History** covers both ways a history leaves: downloading it as a file, and creating a sharing link that opens without a Veterian login — the one you send to a clinic you are referring to, to a laboratory, or to the owner.

Someone who can open a patient's record cannot do either of those unless you grant this as well. Whoever holds the permission can also close a link again with **Close access**.

Note that granting this also grants viewing across clients, visits and vaccinations, since that is what a medical history contains.

## Reports Are Granted One at a Time

This is the answer to the revenue question, and it is worth being exact about. Reporting is not one permission. Each report is its own grant:

- **View Overview Reports**
- **View Financial Reports**
- **View Customer Reports**
- **View Pet Reports**
- **View Vaccine Reports**
- **View Product Reports**
- **View Notification Reports**

So the front desk can be given the client and patient reports — who is overdue, which vaccinations are due — while the financial report stays with you. See [Reports](/reports).

## One Permission Can Bring Others With It

Some permissions cannot work alone, and Veterian grants what they need rather than letting you save a role that half-works. When you tick one of these, a confirmation appears first — **This permission will also grant the following permissions:** — listing exactly what else the role is about to receive. Nothing is added behind your back.

The one that surprises people is invoicing at checkout: allowing a role to close a visit out also gives it the ability to view, create and edit invoices, because that is what closing a visit does. If you want your vets to finish their own visits, they are invoicing.

Once a permission has been granted because something else needed it, it locks until you clear the permission that required it. That is not a bug — clearing it on its own would leave a role that cannot do the job you just gave it.

Permission changes take effect immediately: **Are you sure you want to change the permissions for this role? This action will apply immediately.** Nobody has to sign out and back in.

## Three Places to Start

Veterian does not ship ready-made roles, because clinics divide the work differently — a two-person practice where the vet does everything needs almost the opposite of a clinic with a full front desk. Build your own, and if it helps, start from one of these and adjust:

**Front desk.** Clients, patients, appointments and vaccinations, with viewing and creating but not deleting. Invoices and payments if they take money at the counter. Reports limited to clients and patients. No expenses, no financial report.

**Veterinarian.** Everything on the clinical side: patients, visits with the examination notes and treatments and prescriptions, vaccinations, hospitalisations. Add invoicing at checkout if vets close out their own visits; leave it off if the front desk always does.

**Practice manager.** The clinical areas as read-only if they do not treat, plus what nobody else gets: expenses, the financial report, and the bulk messaging in the Communication Hub.

Whatever you build, keep the clinic administrator role for the one or two people who actually need to change how the clinic itself is set up. It cannot be narrowed later.

## When Someone Leaves

Disable the account rather than deleting it. Their visits, invoices and notes stay exactly as they are, still attributed to them, and the login stops working the same day. See [Users and roles](/settings/users-and-roles).

## Related

- [Users and roles](/settings/users-and-roles) — creating the accounts and the roles themselves
- [Your first week on Veterian](/getting-started/first-week) — where roles fall in the setup order
- [Reports](/reports) — what each of the reports actually shows