Role-based access: billing as a workflow

In his insightful article B2B Payments Aren't Payments, They're Workflows, Matt Brown explains why B2B payments go beyond mere transactions—they're intricate workflows. Similarly, billing isn't just a single feature; it's a comprehensive, cross-team workflow.

• Monetization and exec teams conceptualize new pricing strategies.
• Engineers implement these strategies.
• Sales Ops integrate billing with their CRM and ensure data accuracy for sales teams.
• Finance teams verify that billing aligns with revenue forecasts and financial tools.

Billing involves multiple teams, and to streamline this, we created role-based access with specific feature and action permissions in Lago.

The Admin role: mastering all billing tasks

Admins are typically engineers who need to adapt metering and implement technically new pricing. They have full control over Lago, managing billable metrics, plans, customers, subscriptions, settings, and financial analysis. By default, the account creator is assigned the admin role, handling all critical billing operations.

The Account Manager role: empowering customer interactions

Some of your teams, like account managers or sales, don't have to change prices or metering. They only want to assign a new plan to a customer, grant a discount, or credits. This is why we created the account manager role. The account manager role suits Sales or Customer Success Managers, enabling them to carry out billing tasks for customers. Account Managers can assign subscriptions, coupons, add-ons, and override prices for a negotiated contract.

The Finance & Analyst role: control and adjustments

The last step of this flow is to ensure that finance teams have access to revenue data or connect Lago to their preferred tool like Xero or NetSuite. They are often the ones who review invoices and adjust them before sending them to the end customer. The finance & analyst role is view-only, restricted from creating or editing metrics and plans, or assigning core billing actions such as coupons, subscriptions, or one-off invoices. It’s ideal for analyzing financial data, reviewing invoices, and issuing credit notes as necessary.

What's next

We built this feature by enabling actions and permissions for each role. It's fully composable, meaning we can now easily let you build custom roles in the future, so it matches exactly your workflow. Here is the full list of permissions. Again, let's think of billing as a workflow, not just a feature.