# Members and roles: what an owner can do that a member cannot

> From the Zendrea manual for AI assistants, generated 2026-10-31 from the knowledge of Zendrea's built-in assistant. All topics: https://www.zendrea.ch/llms.txt; all of them in one file: https://www.zendrea.ch/llms-full.txt. Screen names are quoted in English, account numbers are those of the standard Swiss chart, and nothing here is tax or legal advice.

**Two roles, granted per company.** Access is granted person by person, company by company, under **Settings → Members**. Every membership is either **Owner** (DE "Inhaber") or **Member** (DE "Mitglied"); there is no third role and no read-only role. The role is per company, not global: the same person can be owner of one company and member of another. Whoever creates a company — or imports one from an archive — is automatically its owner.

**Inviting someone.** Only an owner sees the "Invite a new member" form: email address plus the role for that person (defaults to Member), then "Send invitation". The invitee gets an email with a link valid for **7 days** and accepts it from their own account (creating one if needed). Re-inviting the same address replaces the earlier pending invitation; an address that already belongs to a member is refused. Pending invitations are listed above the form, and an owner can revoke one before it is accepted. Demo sessions cannot send invitations at all.

**What a member can do — the whole of the bookkeeping.** A member has full read and write access to the books:
- book everything: invoices, expenses, asset purchases and disposals, salaries, manual entries, credit notes, quick entry, and every payment/settlement including VAT, AHV and BVG;
- all reports and PDFs, the VAT return and its XML export, the annual accounts, the audit-log export, and the ledger export (DATEV / SAF-T);
- bank work: import bank flows (camt), reconcile them, and export the payment file (pain.001);
- master data and settings: chart of accounts, clients, suppliers, employees, rates, per-period VAT status, expense presets, company profile (name, address, logo, cash-basis flag), bank accounts, currencies, links, notes;
- fiscal periods: create, open/close, delete, and rebuild carry-forwards;
- companies: create further companies of their own (owner of those), and rename or reorder companies under "Manage companies";
- see the members list itself, including who is currently working in this company's books;
- unlock an encrypted company with the shared passphrase.

**What only an owner can do.** Exactly five things, refused by the server and not merely hidden in the interface:
1. **Members:** invite someone, revoke a pending invitation, change a member's role, remove a member.
2. **Delete the company** ("Manage companies" → delete). Renaming and reordering stay open to members.
3. **Import a ledger** (bexio / DATEV / SAF-T) under Settings → Import data — an import replaces the entries of every period it touches. Exporting a ledger stays open to members.
4. **Export the whole company as an archive** (the ZIP holding all data and documents) — full data egress.
5. **Configure at-rest encryption:** switch it on or off, change the passphrase, and use the recovery key / "Forgot passphrase" flow. *Unlocking* an already-encrypted company is open to every member.

Everything else — every booking, report, export, setting and fiscal-period action listed above — is identical for both roles.

**A company always keeps at least one owner.** Demoting or removing the last owner is refused with "A company must have at least one owner." To hand a company over, promote the other person to owner first, then demote or remove yourself. Nobody can remove their own membership in the panel (the icon on your own row is disabled) — another owner does it. A removal takes effect immediately: the person loses access on their next request.

**Common questions:**
- "What is the difference between owner and member?" → The five owner-only actions above; all bookkeeping is the same for both.
- "Can a member send invoices / close the fiscal year / change the chart of accounts?" → Yes, all of it.
- "Which role for my Treuhänder or employee?" → Member is enough for doing the books. Choose Owner only if they should also invite people, import a ledger, download the full archive, delete the company, or manage encryption.
- "How do I give someone access?" → Settings → Members → Invite a new member (owner only).
- "I want to leave / hand over the company." → Promote the successor to owner, then have them remove your membership.