People, roles and departments

Add your team, give each person the right sign-in, and scope what they see with departments, categories, and locations.

Everyone on your team signs in with a phone number and a PIN — but what they see depends on their role. Getting roles right is most of the setup: a barista should see their outlet’s stock and nothing else; the purchase manager needs the whole console. This page covers adding people, what each role can do, and the three scoping tools — departments, categories, and locations.

New to the terms here (persona, PR, console)? See the Glossary.

The four kinds of sign-in

• Owner — everything: the console plus the owner-only surfaces (purchase order approvals, org profile, approval threshold, expiry horizons, new-outlet setup).
• Manager (warehouse manager, or the org-wide manager) — the day-to-day console: stock, ordering, receiving, vendors, reports, and people admin.
• Outlet staff — the mobile app, scoped to their own outlet only: they order, receive, count, and log wastage there, and never see the console. An outlet manager gets the same app plus approval of their outlet’s purchase requests.
• Kitchen — the production console for one production unit (see Kitchen production). A kitchen account must be assigned to a production unit, or production data can’t load — the console shows “No production unit assigned” instead.

Note: there is also an org-wide admin marker that works across every Maska module. An admin sees and can do everything, in every module, regardless of the module roles on their account.

Add a person

Go to Settings → Users & Roles and tap New — this opens the Add user dialog. A New / Bring existing toggle at the top of the form picks the path:

1. New — someone without a Maska login yet.

   1. Enter their full name and phone number.
   2. Under Roles & locations, add one or more role rows. Each location-scoped role needs a location of the matching kind:
      • Warehouse manager → a warehouse
      • Outlet manager or Staff (Outlet) → an outlet
      • Kitchen (Production Unit) → a production unit
      • Manager (org-wide) → no location
   3. For outlet staff, pick their departments (below) so they only see their own items.
   4. Save. Procurement generates a one-time temporary PIN and shows it once — share it with them before you close the dialog; it can never be fetched again. They’re asked to set their own PIN on first login.

   If the phone or email you typed already belongs to someone at your organisation, a banner appears naming who it belongs to and asking if you’d like to bring them instead — and you can’t save until you switch to Bring existing for that person or change what you typed. Only an owner can assign the admin role — a manager adding a person is limited to the other roles.

2. Bring existing — a colleague who already has a Maska login.

   1. Search by name, phone, or email. Rows show a masked phone/email (last 4 digits / first letter) and any other Maska modules the person is already in.
   2. Pick them, then add their Roles & locations rows exactly as above.
   3. Save. They keep their existing PIN — nothing new is shown.

One exception: if the person you bring already holds your organisation’s org-wide admin marker, the role rows are replaced with a note — they can only be added as admin, since they already reach every module through that marker.

The person can sign in straight away either way.

To reset a forgotten PIN, open the person from the list and type a new one in Reset PIN (leave it blank to keep the old one). To remove someone, use the archive control on their row — archiving disables their sign-in but keeps their history, and you can restore them later.

Who sees what

The big gates, in people terms:

• Owner-only: approving purchase orders (the Approvals tab), the org profile, the PO Approval Threshold, Expiry horizons, and the new-outlet stock setup wizard.
• Owners and managers: Users & Roles, Locations, Departments, Categories, imports, and the whole console.
• Outlet staff: the mobile app for their own outlet — never the console, and never other outlets’ stock.
• Kitchen: only the kitchen console, scoped to their own production unit — none of the procurement tabs, and none of another unit’s stock, recipes or menu.

Departments

Departments scope items and staff so people only order and count what is theirs — the bar team sees bar stock, the bakery sees bakery stock.

1. Go to Settings → Departments and create a department (name, optional code, an emoji if you like).
2. Open it to assign items and staff.

A staff member assigned to a department sees that department’s items in their ordering and counting screens. Items with no department are visible to all staff, and admins always have access to every department.

Categories

Categories are the everyday grouping you see on stock lists and filters — Dairy, Produce, Packaging. Manage them under Settings → Categories: create, rename, and set their display order. Every item belongs to one category (departments, by contrast, are about who can touch the item).

Outlets and locations

Settings → Locations lists every place that holds stock. A location is one of three types:

• Warehouse — the central stock-holding location that receives vendor purchase orders and supplies everyone else.
• Production Unit — a place that makes food and holds its own stock, either a central commissary supplying your warehouses or an on-site kitchen cooking for one outlet. Setting one up is covered in Production units.
• Outlet — a customer-facing branch.

When adding, you can link an existing outlet (one already set up elsewhere in Maska) or create a new location from scratch. Every outlet and production unit needs a supplying warehouse — Requisitions from on an outlet, Warehouses on a production unit — before it can requisition anything. With a single warehouse in the business, it binds automatically.

A brand-new outlet needs opening stock. Creating one sends you (owners only) into the two-step setup wizard:

1. Select items & par levels — choose what this outlet stocks and set its reorder points. You can copy the list from an existing outlet.
2. Record opening stock — enter the quantities currently on hand. Skip any item you have none of.

Once saved, the outlet is live: its staff can sign in, order, and receive.