Roles are available on Deliver, Grow, and Scale plans.
Feature overview
What
Roles represent the type of work someone performs, such as Designer, Developer, or Project Manager. You can create custom roles and assign them to users across your site.
Why
  • Reflect your real-world team structure in Teamwork.
  • Plan and report on work by function, not only by individual user.
  • Support role-based billing workflows when rates differ depending on the role used.
Who
  • Site admins can create and manage roles and assign them to users.
  • Standard users with the profile permission to manage people and companies can view, edit, and create users, roles, teams, and companies/clients.
When
Use roles when you want to understand capacity, staff work by specialty, and keep planning and rate decisions aligned with the type of work being done.

Roles help you describe what kind of work someone is doing, representing talent, specialty, or function. They do not control what a user can see or do in Teamwork.com. Defining roles makes it easier to plan work, review resource coverage, and support downstream rate workflows tied to the role being used.

Example

A creative agency might create roles such as Designer, Developer, Strategist, and Project Manager. Each person is assigned a primary role in Teamwork. When planning work or selecting a rate on a project, you can use the relevant role as the basis for staffing and billing decisions.

How roles work

Concept
What it means
Role
A function or specialty such as Designer, Developer, or Project Manager.
User
The person in your Teamwork site who can be associated with a role.
Planning and reporting
Roles can be used to filter, group, and understand work distribution and capacity across planning views.
Rates
Roles support downstream rate workflows. Role rates can override a user's standard billable rate, and client role rates can build on those role rates when selected on a project.

How roles connect to rates

Roles are a foundational part of the rates system. They help standardize billing when the same type of work should be billed consistently, regardless of which person does it.
  • User rates are the default billable rates assigned to individual users.
  • Role rates are the standard billable rates assigned to a role.
  • Client role rates are client-specific variations of those role rates.
  • When a role-based rate is selected on a project, the role used for that work helps determine the billable rate applied.
Think of roles as the hat someone wears for a piece of work. This is useful when the same person contributes in different ways across different projects.

Before you start

  • Roles define function, not access. They represent the kind of work being done and do not define permissions within Teamwork.
  • Each user can be associated with one role. If a user is already assigned to a role and you select them for another role, they are removed from the original role.
  • Use clear, job-based names for roles so your planning views, reports, and rate configuration stay easy to understand.
Because each user can only have one assigned role at a time, choose the role that best represents their primary function in your organization.

Create a role

Create roles from the People area when you want to model the functions your team performs.
  1. Select People from Teamwork.com's main navigation menu.
  2. Switch to the Roles tab. Each role is listed along with its currently assigned users.

  3. Click Add role.
  4. Enter a role name.

  5. Select the user icon (Assign users icon), then click the plus (+) beside each user you want to assign to the role.
  6. Click back into the Add role window.
  7. Click Add. If you want to create additional roles, click the arrow on the right of the Add button and select Save and add another.

Edit a role

Edit a role when you need to rename it, change its assigned users, or remove it entirely.
  1. Select People from Teamwork.com's main navigation menu. People might be hidden under ... More.
  2. Switch to the Roles tab. Each role is listed along with its currently assigned users.
  3. Hover over the role you want to update.

  4. Next, choose an action:
    1. Edit: Click the pencil icon (Edit role icon) to update the role name.
    2. Assign: Click the user icon (Assign role icon) or existing assignee avatars to manage the role's assigned users.
    3. Delete: Click the trash can (Delete role icon), then click Yes, delete this role to confirm.
Deleting a role removes all assigned users from that role. This action cannot be undone.

Assign roles

In addition to the role creation flow, you can assign users to roles from several places in Teamwork:
  • People > Roles view: Click the user icon (Assign role icon) or existing assignee avatars to manage the role's assigned users.
  • Add (or edit) user flow: Switch to the Essentials tab, then select a role from the Role dropdown. Use Add role to create a new role.
  • People > People view: Hover over the Role field in a user row and click Add role.

Best practices

  • Reflect real functions: Create roles that match the actual work people perform in your organization, such as Designer, Developer, or Project Manager.
  • Keep naming consistent: Use clear, standardized role names so roles remain easy to understand when assigning work, planning projects, or applying billing rates.
  • Support rate consistency: Align roles with your billing structure so role-based rates remain predictable across projects and clients.
  • Plan work by role first: When scoping projects, estimate required roles before assigning specific people. This makes resourcing and forecasting easier.
  • Review roles periodically: As teams evolve, update roles to reflect new responsibilities or changes in how work is delivered.

Use roles across Teamwork

  • Scheduling: Get role-based capacity and resource insights using role filters in:
  • Rates: Roles are also used by related billing features such as Role rates and Client rates.
  • Grouping: Group resources by role in the Schedule for a more strategic resourcing view before drilling into user-level allocations.
Access to some related planning and finance features depends on your subscription.

FAQ

What are roles in Teamwork?

Roles in Teamwork represent the type of work someone performs, such as Designer, Developer, or Project Manager. They help with staffing, planning, reporting, and related rate workflows.

Do roles affect permissions?

No. Roles do not control what a user can access in Teamwork. They are used to describe function, not access level.

Can a user have multiple roles?

No. Each user can currently be associated with one role at a time.

Why use roles instead of only assigning people directly?

Roles make it easier to understand resource coverage, plan work by function, and support workflows where the role used on a project can influence the rate applied.