What is User Roles & Permissions?

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User roles and permissions are the settings that control what each user inside a B2B company account can see and do — who can browse the catalog, place orders, approve them, manage payment, or administer the account itself. Instead of every login having the same access, each user is assigned a role, and that role determines their rights within the organization’s B2B customer account.

This matters because B2B purchasing is a team activity, not a solo one. A single company account typically includes a purchasing agent who builds orders, a manager who approves them, a finance user who handles invoices, and an admin who manages users — each needing different access. Roles map those real job functions onto the account, so people can only do what they’re authorized to do, with a clear audit trail of who did what.

Permissions usually govern actions like viewing prices, placing orders, approving orders above a threshold, managing budgets, and adding or removing users. Combined with spending limits and approval chains, they let an organization enforce its internal controls online — a junior buyer can order up to a set amount, while anything larger routes to a manager for sign-off before it’s placed.

In Adobe Commerce, roles and permissions ship as part of the native B2B company accounts module and are typically defined by the account admin. Businesses tend to outgrow the native setup when they need highly granular custom roles, permissions that vary across a deep account hierarchy, or synchronization with an external identity or SSO system — points where custom development is usually required.