GiveWP User Roles

GiveWP creates some custom user roles and capabilities to provide you with more flexibility in how you allow your website users to manage and see your donation-related data in your admin area.

How GiveWP Handles Donor Accounts

GiveWP creates a WordPress user account for every donor based on their email address entered on the donation form. This helps site admins track donations, manage donor profiles, and support recurring giving.

Donors aren’t required to log in before donating. Instead, GiveWP creates or associates the donation with a user account automatically in the background.

Roles and Capabilities

WordPress has the default Roles: Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, and Subscriber. When you create a new user at Users > Add New you choose one of these roles for that user. The user’s role determines what they have access to in your WordPress website overall.

Capabilities are attached to roles and are the things that give or remove that user’s ability to view or make changes. Some common capabilities include publish posts, update plugins, delete others posts, etc.

GiveWP creates some custom user roles and capabilities to provide you with more flexibility in how you allow your website users to manage, and see your donation-related data in your admin area.

Below is a list of the custom user roles that GiveWP creates upon install and what their capabilities are.

GiveWP Donor

This is the default user role for donors and this role is similar to a WordPress Subscriber, in that it only has the ability to read, never write.

Capabilities

• Read

GiveWP Worker

Think of the GiveWP Worker as an assistant to the Accountant and/or Manager. They might be a volunteer within your organization who is capable and trustworthy, however, they won’t have access to detailed donation and donor data, as well as the GiveWP settings.

The GiveWP Worker can manage everything about the GiveWP Forms and Donations. They cannot see the following screens: Donation details, Donors, Reports, Settings, Tools, Add-ons, Subscriptions (Recurring Donations only), Updates (only visible when GiveWP updates are available).

Capabilities

• Core:
  • Edit Pages/Posts
  • Read
  • Upload Files
• GiveWP:
  • Read/Edit/Delete/Publish GiveWP Forms
  • Read Donations (cannot Edit/Delete donations)
  • Cannot view GiveWP Donors
  • Cannot view GiveWP Reports
  • Cannot view GiveWP Tools
  • Cannot view GiveWP Settings
  • Cannot view GiveWP Subscriptions (Recurring Donations)

GiveWP Accountant

The GiveWP Accountant is exactly what it sounds like — a role dedicated to managing the donation-specific tasks in the Donations admin screens. The GiveWP Accountant — contrary to the Worker — can only see GiveWP forms, they cannot edit or delete them. They can also create a draft of a new GiveWP form for a Manager, Editor, or Admin to approve.

The screens that are most pertinent to the Account’s role are: Donations, Donors, Reports, Tools, and Subscriptions (when Recurring Donations is installed). The GiveWP Account can manage all things within all of those screens, enabling them to have full capabilities to get their job done.

Note that they — like the Worker — cannot access the Settings or Add-ons screens.

Capabilities

• Core:
  • Read access only
• GiveWP
  • Can only Read GiveWP Forms, not Edit/Delete
  • Read/Edit/Delete Donations
  • Read/Edit/Delete Donors
  • Read/Edit/Delete Subscriptions
  • Cannot see GiveWP Tools
  • Cannot see GiveWP Settings

GiveWP Manager

Think of the GiveWP Manager like the Admin of Donations. They have access to everything within the GiveWP admin screens. They can do everything that the Accountant can do, plus they are the only GiveWP user role that can access the Settings, Add-ons, and Updates screens.

Outside of the GiveWP admin screens, a GiveWP Manager can also create and delete their own posts and pages. They can add, edit, and delete any posts or pages they create. They also have access to the WordPress Import and Export tools within the Tools admin menu.

Capabilities

• Core:
  • Can manage Comments
  • Can read/edit/delete/publish their own posts and pages — not other’s posts or pages
  • Cannot view/manage Users, Appearance, Plugins, Tools, Settings
• GiveWP:
  • Can manage all aspects of GiveWP

Assigning GiveWP Roles to a User

To assign a GiveWP User Role to a specific user, navigate to Users in your WordPress dashboard, then select User(s)by checking the box for each, then select the desired user role in the Change role to…. menu and click Change.

Customize GiveWP User Roles with User Role Editor

If you want to grant custom capabilities to any of your user roles, we highly recommend the free User Role Editor plugin. Once you install it, you’ll see its settings available under Users > User Role Editor.

Here’s an animation showing how that is done.

Settings for Option-Based Forms

User Registration Options

GiveWP allows non-logged in users to make donations in the Legacy and Option-Based Forms. These are referred to as “Guest Donations”. To enable this option, while editing the form, go to Donation Form Options > Form Fields > Guest Donations. If you have this option enabled, a GiveWP user will be created with the donor email address while the donation is made. If you have this option disabled, donors have to login or register beforehand.

Additional options are to disable the registrations completely, enabling registration or login, or enabling registration and login both at the same time. You can see these options in Donation Form Options > Form Fields > Registration.

If you have the Registration option enabled, GiveWP create WordPress users with the WordPress “GiveWP Donor” user role.

FAQs