Sablio has three roles. Not four. Not twelve. Not a configurable matrix of granular permissions.
- Member: starts sessions, sees their own data.
- Manager: sees the workshop's aggregated data, assigns projects.
- Finance: exports invoices, manages rates and taxes.
That's it.
The classic trap
I worked at a company that used a project-management SaaS with 14 configurable roles and 47 granular permissions. After two years, nobody knew who could do what.
Result: everyone had the Admin role because it was simpler than understanding the subtleties. Theoretical granularity became practical absence of control.
Why three is enough
Workshops of 3 to 12 people — our target — don't need more. There are:
- People doing the work. (Member.)
- One or two people coordinating. (Manager.)
- One person handling accounting. (Finance.)
In a smaller studio, the same person wears two or three hats. Sablio lets you hold several roles at once. No forced hierarchy.
What each role can't do
A manager can't see each person's detailed hours. They see the total per project, the total per week, the projected load. Not Marie worked from 2:00 to 4:23 Tuesday.
Finance can't modify sessions. Time blocks belong to whoever created them. Finance can bill, export, correct rates. Not rewrite your history.
Nobody can force a member to share presence. The workshop module has three presence levels (transparent, discreet, silent). Default is discreet. A manager can ask, not impose.
Simplicity as a promise
Three roles is a constraint we impose on ourselves. Every time a user asks for a fourth role — Senior accountant, Junior manager, External observer — we answer with a question: what are you actually trying to do?
90 % of the time, the answer fits the three existing roles with a small permission tweak. 10 % of the time, the request reveals a use case we hadn't planned — which we take seriously, but without adding a role.
The real cost of flexibility
Each extra role multiplies the possible combinations. With 3 roles, 8 combinations. With 5 roles, 32. With 10 roles, 1024. At some point the internal docs grow bigger than the app.
Three roles, you understand in a minute. That's the function we're designing.
— Patrick