MachShip Owners

MachShip Owners

Every MachShip organisation has at least one Owner — the person who holds the account, decides what it runs, and controls who else can get in. Here is what that means, the rules MachShip enforces, and how to set yours up. 

What an Owner is

An Owner sits above the normal roles-and-permissions system. Where a standard user gets exactly the access their assigned roles allow, an Owner automatically holds the highest level of every permission available to your account type — plus a handful of organisation-wide controls no role can grant at all.

Owner is set against a person, not a role you assign to a group. It is deliberately a short list: the one, two or three people who genuinely speak for your business on the account.

In the app, Owners are marked with a shield icon in the Owner column of Admin → Users. Owner status itself is granted and removed from the individual user's page:

To add an Owner — Edit User → Make Owner
To remove an Owner — Edit User → Remove Owner

The most common lockout scenario is a single Owner leaving the business without handing over. Nobody left inside the organisation can appoint a replacement, and every feature and organisation-wide user change stalls until MachShip intervenes.

Keep at least two Owners at all times — ideally people who would not both be away or both leave together. It costs nothing and removes the risk entirely.

What are the rules relating to MachShip Owners?

Every organisation must have at least one active Owner

You cannot remove the last one. If you try, MachShip refuses the change and tells you another Owner must be added first. An organisation with no Owner has nobody who can enable features, manage users organisation-wide, or act as the account authority

An Owner cannot be disabled or deleted

While someone is an Owner, their account is protected: Disable User is unavailable and the account cannot be deleted. Use Edit User → Remove Owner first, then disable or delete

An Owner must belong to your organisation's base company

Only users sitting at the top-level company of the organisation can be made an Owner. If the Make Owner button is greyed out, this is almost always why

Owners appoint and remove other Owners

Any Owner can grant or revoke Owner status for anyone eligible in their own organisation — and only their own organisation — from Edit User → Make Owner and Edit User → Remove Owner. You do not need to contact MachShip to add or replace an Owner. If your owner has left the organisation and you need to elect another user to be an owner, please contact support.

Every change is emailed to all Owners

Whenever Owner status is granted or removed, MachShip emails every current Owner of the organisation plus the person affected, showing who changed it and when. Owner status is powerful enough that it should never change quietly — if you receive one of these and did not expect it, follow it up.

Owner overrides roles

Owner status is separate from the role and permission system. Changing an Owner's roles will not reduce what they can do. If you need someone limited to part of the system, they should not be an Owner; use roles instead.

How to add an Owner

You need to be an Owner yourself to do this.
  1. Go to Admin → Users. Current Owners carry a shield icon in the Owner column, so you can confirm the list before you change it.
  2. Select the person from the list to open Edit User. They must sit at your organisation's base company to be eligible.
  3. Choose Make Owner. The button sits with the other actions at the bottom of Edit User. If it is greyed out, hover it — MachShip explains why, which is almost always that the user does not belong to the organisation's base company.
  4. Confirm, and check the notification. Owner status applies immediately. MachShip emails every Owner and the new Owner to confirm the change, and the shield icon appears against them in the Owner column straight away.

Offboarding an Owner

Because an Owner cannot be disabled or deleted, removing one is a two-step job. Do it in this order:

  1. Make sure another Owner is in place first — if the person leaving is your only Owner, appoint their replacement before anything else.
  2. Open Edit User → Remove Owner for the departing person and confirm.
  3. Then disable or delete the account as normal.

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