Scoped permissions: give your team access without handing over the whole condo

Think about how you manage the physical keys to your community. The gardener does not carry the key to the machine room. The cleaning crew does not carry the one to the administration office. Nobody argues about this: it is operational common sense.

Software, on the other hand, has almost always shipped with a single master key. You were an administrator or you were nothing. And that produces three problems that cost money and peace of mind:

• Unnecessary risk. The more people who can see banking details, statements and residents' personal data, the bigger the exposed surface. Not because your team is dishonest, but because one compromised account opens everything at once.
• Mistakes from noise. A menu with twenty sections that are none of your business is a menu where sooner or later you will click where you should not have. The expensive mistake is rarely the malicious one — it is the distracted one.
• Friction that blocks delegation. Plenty of managers end up delegating nothing and doing everything themselves, simply because granting full access felt like too much. The system should not punish you for wanting to share the work.

The answer is not a hundred-checkbox panel nobody ever configures. It is a handful of areas that match how work is actually organised in a community.

Koti groups the whole platform into five access areas. A limited administrator holds one or several; the general administrator holds all of them, plus the community settings.

The grouping is not arbitrary: it follows roles that already exist in a management office. If someone in your community "runs the gatehouse", that person needs Security. If someone "runs the dues", they need Finance. Nothing to translate.

Checking an area does not just open a section: it rebuilds that person's navigation. Sections outside their scope disappear from the sidebar and from the quick search, and if they arrive through a direct link they get a clear notice that they do not have access to that section, telling them to ask a general administrator to widen their areas.

Try the control below: check and uncheck areas, or use the shortcuts, and watch the menu rearrange.

These are the splits we see over and over. Use them as a starting point; you can always adjust.

1. Accountant or external firm → Finance. Reconciles payments, reviews arrears and downloads financial reports. Does not see the access log and cannot touch the fee configuration.
2. Maintenance lead → Operations. Handles tickets, manages amenities and bookings, runs packages and inventory. Never sees a collections figure.
3. Head of the gatehouse or security company → Security. Access log, visitor QR codes, patrol rounds and devices. Everything else stays out of view.
4. Communications committee or small board → Community. Publishes announcements, runs polls, uploads documents and keeps the calendar, with no access to finance or security.

And the board president or the lead manager? General administrator, no trimming. The point is not to limit whoever is in charge: it is to stop forcing everyone else to hold that same level.

A different mix is just as valid. Someone in resident services can hold Residents and Community; a junior administrator can hold Operations and Residents while they learn. A limited administrator must always hold at least one area — an access grant with no areas would be useless, so the app will not let you save it.

Delegating areas means delegating work, not handing over control of the community. There is a set of actions no limited administrator can reach, no matter how many areas they hold.

There is nothing to configure in advance. The feature is already in your account and changes nothing until you name your first limited administrator.

1. Go to Settings → Administrators.
2. Add the person, or edit someone already on the list.
3. Pick Limited access and check their areas. The Finance, Operations, Community and Security shortcuts pre-check the boxes in one click.
4. Save. The change applies immediately: next time that person opens Koti they will see their trimmed menu.

If they do not have an account yet, set the role and areas when you invite them. The invitation carries its scope, so they start day one with exactly the right access and no extra steps. And while the invitation is still pending you can edit that scope as often as you like.

One detail you will appreciate: if you narrow your own access, Koti warns you before saving and reminds you that another general administrator can restore it. And you can never leave the community with no general administrator at all — the app will ask you to name another one first.

Worth saying plainly: permissions are enforced on the server, not only on screen. Hiding a section from the menu is the convenient part; having the request rejected on the other side is the part that actually protects you.