---
title: "Roles and permissions"
description: "What an owner, an admin and a member can do in a team or a project, how to change a role, how ownership changes hands, and what a team owns."
last_updated: "2026-10-21"
lang: "en"
canonical: "https://matchai.co/docs/guide/teams-and-projects/roles-and-permissions"
---

# Roles and permissions

> What an owner, an admin and a member can do in a team or a project, how to change a role, how ownership changes hands, and what a team owns.

Source: https://matchai.co/docs/guide/teams-and-projects/roles-and-permissions

Everyone in a team or a project has one of three roles. The member list shows it beside each name: **Team owner** or **Team admin** in a team, **Project owner** or **Project admin** in a project. Everyone else is a member.

## The three roles [#the-three-roles]

**Owner.** The person in charge. A team or a project has exactly one owner, at first the person who created it. The owner can do everything, and is the only one who can change someone's role or hand ownership to someone else.

**Admin.** Runs the space day to day, alongside the owner: invites people, removes members, edits the details and archives it when it is done.

**Member.** Takes part. A member reads and writes in the chats, sees who else is there, and can add listings to a project.

## What each role can do [#what-each-role-can-do]

| | Owner | Admin | Member |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open the team or project, see its members and use its chats | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Add listings to a project | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Edit the name, picture and description | Yes | Yes | No |
| Rename or archive the team or project | Yes | Yes | No |
| Invite people, by name or with a link | Yes | Yes | No |
| Add people to a project's roster, and add a team to a project | Yes | Yes | No |
| Remove a member | Yes | Yes | No |
| Remove an admin | Yes | No | No |
| Promote a member to admin, or an admin back to member | Yes | No | No |
| Transfer ownership | Yes | No | No |
| Leave | After handing over ownership | Yes | Yes |

Nobody can remove the owner. Anyone can leave, except an owner who still has people with them: they hand over ownership first.

## Change someone's role [#change-someones-role]

Only the owner can change roles.

<Steps>
<Step>
Open the members list. In a team, that is **Team members**. In a project, open the roster and go to **Access**.
</Step>
<Step>
Open the menu beside the person.
</Step>
<Step>
Choose **Promote to team admin** or **Demote to team member**. In a project, the choices are **Promote to project admin** and **Demote to project member**.
</Step>
</Steps>

A role can also come with an invitation. Everyone who joins with an invitation link gets the role chosen when the link was created. Someone who is already in the team or project and accepts an invitation for a lower role keeps the role they had.

## Transfer ownership [#transfer-ownership]

<Steps>
<Step>
Open the members list, then the menu beside the person who will become the owner.
</Step>
<Step>
Choose **Transfer team ownership**, or **Transfer project ownership** in a project.
</Step>
<Step>
Read the confirmation and choose **Transfer**.
</Step>
</Steps>

The person becomes the owner, and you become an admin. The new owner must already be a member. To leave a team or a project you own, Matchai asks you to pick the new owner and then choose **Transfer and leave**.

<Callout title="Why admins cannot transfer ownership">
Ownership is the one role nobody can take from you. If admins could transfer it, any admin could hand the team to themselves or to someone else, and the person who built the team would be left with less say than the people they invited. So the owner keeps the final word on roles and on who is in charge, and admins get everything they need to run the space day to day.
</Callout>

## What you own and what your team owns [#what-you-own-and-what-your-team-owns]

Roles also decide who can work on listings and other records, not only on teams and projects.

**What you create belongs to you.** When you create a listing or add a contact, you are its owner, and it stays yours whichever teams you are in. Being an admin of a team gives you no rights over a colleague's own listings, and being in a team gives your colleagues none over yours.

**A team can own things too.** When a listing belongs to a team, the team holds the owner's role on it, and every member of the team works on it with that role. A member who joins the team gets access to the team's listings, and a member who leaves loses it. The listing itself stays with the team.

<Callout title="Why a team can own a listing">
In a brokerage team, the inventory belongs to the team. If a listing belonged to the agent who happened to create it, it would leave with them, and nobody else could update it while they were away. Team ownership keeps the team's work with the team, so everyone works on the same listing instead of copies, and a departure never takes a listing with it.
</Callout>

**People on a project without an account have no role.** A notary or an inspector you add to a deal is a record of who is involved. They cannot open the project, and taking them off the deal leaves them in your contacts.

## Sitemap

- [Every page of Matchai Docs](https://matchai.co/docs/sitemap.md)
- [llms.txt](https://matchai.co/docs/llms.txt)