Docs, Approvals and roles
Approvals and roles
Updated
Every payout and every new address is approved by someone other than the person who prepared it. Payout approvals are signed with a passkey, on the approver’s own device.
Roles
| Role | What they do |
|---|---|
| Owner | Everything an editor does, plus the members, the wallets, the approval rule and the Activity log. Approves addresses and payouts. |
| Editor | Adds recipients and proposes addresses; drafts payouts, sends them for approval, pays them and records payments. Doesn’t approve. |
| Approver | Sees the recipients and payouts; approves addresses and payouts. Changes nothing else. |
Owners set roles in Settings → Members; see invite your team.
One or two approvals
In Settings → Organization, owners set Approvals required: 1 per payout, the default, or 2 per payout. A payout is approved once it has that many approvals; then owners and editors can pay it.
- The sender never counts. Whoever sent the payout for approval can’t approve it, so with 2 approvals, two other owners or approvers approve it.
- Nor does the proposer. Whoever proposed a new address can’t approve it.
- Except when you’re alone. As the only active member of the organization, you approve your own payouts and addresses. Invite a second owner or approver to make it four-eyes.
Invited members count once they’ve signed in. With 2 approvals and fewer than three members who approve, Settings → Organization warns you: a payout that one of them sends couldn’t get two approvals from the others.
Approve a payout
- Needs you on Overview shows “Approve the September payout” with the total, the number of recipients and the changed addresses. Review opens the payout on Changes only.
- Read the changes. A changed address is shown in full, with the groups that differ marked.
- Compare the Fingerprint in Next step with the one in the approval email. If they differ, don’t approve.
- Select Approve with passkey and confirm with your passkey.
If you have no passkey yet, Next step lets you add one right there, then approve.
Your approval is a passkey signature of the payout’s hash: it covers exactly these lines, and nobody else, Payclose included, can give it for you. When the last approval is in, the person who sent the payout gets an email, and Next step moves on to signing or paying.
If you can’t approve, Next step says why: you sent the payout yourself, you’re an editor, you’ve already approved it, or an address in it was revoked after sending.
Approve an address
New addresses are approved on Recipients or on the recipient’s page: see approve a new address. Owners and approvers approve them, except the person who proposed the address, unless they’re the only member. Address approvals don’t ask for a passkey.
When nobody can approve
Payclose checks the rule against the people who could actually approve.
Before sending. If the rule asks for more approvals than there are people who could give them, Send for approval stays off and Next step explains, for example: “This payout needs 2 approvals, and only 1 person could approve a payout you send.” Owners get two ways out: Invite an approver, or lower the approval rule. Anyone else is told what an owner can do, and who else could send the payout.
While waiting. If approvers left or changed roles after the payout was sent, Next step says so, for example: “It needs 1 more approval, and nobody is left to approve it.” Owners get Invite an approver, Lower the approval rule and Reopen.
Lowering the rule doesn’t approve a waiting payout by itself: approvals count when someone approves. If nobody is left to approve it, reopen it and send it again.
Passkeys
- Add and remove passkeys in Settings → Security, under Passkeys. The list shows each one’s kind, whether synced or on this device only, when it was added and when it was last used.
- Removing a passkey doesn’t undo the approvals signed with it; you just can’t sign new ones with it.
- Changing your passkeys needs a sign-in less than 10 minutes old, or a confirmation with a passkey you already have.
- The private part of a passkey never leaves your device. Payclose keeps only the public part, which can check a signature but can’t make one.