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Staff Permissions

In addition to the primary role (Manager or Staff), you can grant staff members additional permissions to access specific areas of the system. These permissions are configured in the staff profile under the Permissions section, which appears when the Role is set to Staff.

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Available Permissions

The Permissions section offers the following permission checkboxes: Safeguarding Lead

• Responsible for child protection and ensuring the safety and well-being of children
• Has access to all safeguarding data in Pigeonhole
• Can review, sign off and manage all records of concern
• Sets the safeguarding sign-off rules and exclusions

Deputy Safeguarding Lead

• Supports the safeguarding lead by recording concerns and ensuring appropriate actions are taken
• Has access to all safeguarding data in Pigeonhole
• Can review, sign off and manage all records of concern
• Can see the sign-off rules and exclusions, but only a Safeguarding Lead can change them

Finance Manager

• Has access to invoicing management
• Can create, edit, and manage invoices for children and families

Funding Manager

• Has access to funding form management
• Can create, submit, and manage funding applications and forms

Document Manager

• Has access to document management features
• Can upload, edit, and delete documents and folders
• Can access the document recycle bin to restore or permanently delete documents

Child Administrator

• Can view and edit children’s personal details, profile images, and custom attributes
• Can manage parents, carers, and emergency contacts
• Can manage sessions and charges for children
• Has access to the waitlist and archive
• Can add new children and bulk import
• Always sees parents’ contact details, even when contact details are restricted

Publisher

• Can publish announcements and observations directly to parents without manager approval
• Can approve other staff members’ submissions
• Can edit observations and term summaries after they’ve been published; deleting them stays with managers

Diary Publisher

• Can mark the care diary complete for a room or a single child, in the app or on the web
• Marking a day complete shares it with families when your setting uses Once marked complete, and sends the end-of-day email if you’ve turned it on
• Doesn’t let them publish observations or announcements; that is the Publisher permission

SENCo

• For your special educational needs co-ordinator, when your setting uses SEND monitoring
• Is notified in the app whenever a member of staff starts monitoring a child
• Can stop, restart and delete monitoring, and edit anyone’s monitoring and updates
• Every member of staff can already start monitoring, add updates and link observations, so only give this to the people who decide when monitoring stops

Form Approver

• Can approve forms raised by staff, such as accident records, before they’re sent to parents — see Approving Forms
• Is emailed when a form is waiting for approval, and sees a Form Approvals page with just the approval queue
• Forms they raise themselves are sent without waiting for anyone else to approve them

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Restricting Contact Details

By default every staff member can see parents’ and carers’ addresses, email addresses and phone numbers. If you would rather keep those to your management team, you can restrict them for everyone else. Go to Settings → Site Profile, open the Staff Settings tab and turn on Restrict contact details. That hides all three to begin with; switch any back on that your staff still need:

• Hide home addresses
• Hide email addresses
• Hide phone numbers

Most settings leave phone numbers visible, so staff can ring a parent without having to find a manager first. Switching all three off turns the whole setting off with them, since restricting nothing is the same as not restricting at all.

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What restricted staff see

Hidden details simply don’t appear — a staff member sees the contact card without the email or phone row, and the child’s Address card disappears from their profile and the register. Nothing is marked “hidden” beyond that. What stays visible to everyone:

• Parents’ and carers’ names and their relationship to the child
• Emergency and pickup contacts’ names and their relationship, so staff still know who the setting would call
• Everything else on the child’s profile — allergies, health notes, dietary needs, collection password and permissions are all unaffected

Nothing is deleted. Turning a switch back off makes the details visible again immediately, although staff may need to refresh the page.

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Configuring Permissions

To add additional permissions to a staff member:

1. Open the staff member’s profile by clicking the edit icon in the staff list
2. In the Permissions section, check the boxes for the permissions you want to grant
3. Click Save to apply the changes

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Organisation Owner

Organisation Owner is not one of the permission checkboxes. It’s granted separately, from the staff list, and only applies to managers in a multi-site organisation. An Organisation Owner:

• Can switch between all sites in your organisation
• Can add new nursery sites to the organisation
• Can grant Organisation Owner to other managers
• Cannot remove Organisation Owner from their own account

To make someone an Organisation Owner:

1. Go to the staff list.
2. Click the More Actions (…) button on a manager’s row.
3. Select Make Org Owner.

Organisation Owners are shown in the list with a crown icon. To revoke it, use Remove Org Owner from the same menu.

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Safeguarding Exclusions

Safeguarding exclusions keep a member of staff away from safeguarding records about a particular child or colleague, usually their own child or a relative who also works at your setting. They are no longer set on the staff profile. Your Safeguarding Leads manage them under Safeguarding → Settings, so managers who aren’t on the DSL team never see who is excluded from what. A member of staff never sees a concern about themselves, so that needs no exclusion. See Safeguarding Exclusions.

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Permission Combinations

You can grant multiple permissions to a single staff member. For example, a staff member could be both a Deputy Safeguarding Lead and a Funding Manager, giving them access to both safeguarding and funding features.