Settings & permissions

Decide what general members can open and change, set your fiscal year, and choose whether stock may only come in through requisitions.

Settings, under Admin in the sidebar, holds the choices that belong to your railroad as a whole. Only administrators see it or change it. It has two parts: Roles & permissions, and Books & purchasing.

Roles & permissions

The matrix sets what general members can open (View) and add, edit, or remove (Change) in each part of RailCompliant. Administrators can always do everything, so their column simply reads Always.

Rows are grouped the way the app is:

Each row has a switch for View and a switch for Change. A few areas have only one: Receive stock and Import data are Change only, and the three reports and Export data are View only. Change always needs View — turning View off turns Change off with it, and turning Change on turns View on.

The defaults

A railroad starts with general members able to do the railroad's work — everything in Compliance, Fleet, Maintenance, and Operations, and the Labor report — while the crew roster (with people's pay terms and qualifications), importing and exporting, form templates, the volunteer report, and the Cost Center are administrators' until you open them up. A badge at the top of the matrix says whether you are Using the defaults or how many areas you have changed, and changed rows are marked.

Click Save permissions to apply your changes, or Reset to defaults to put every area back. Changes take effect from each member's next click, and every save is recorded with who made it.

What the switches do

The switches are enforced, not cosmetic:

• The sidebar shows a general member only the areas they can view.
• On an area they can view but not change, the New, Edit, and Delete buttons do not appear, and any attempt to change something is refused.
• If they reach a page their role cannot open, the page names the area and says that your railroad's administrators decide.

Rows that never change

Below the switches the matrix lists what is always administrators', with a lock: railroad settings and this matrix; billing (administrators view it and the owner changes it); app accounts and roles; binder links and public pages; unlocking a completed work order; correcting a stock count; and certifying the volunteer report.

Two authorities are given to people, not roles, on the Crew page: sign off inspections (certify authority) and approve purchases, optionally up to a dollar limit. See Users & access.

Books & purchasing

The second card holds two settings, saved together with Save settings. It shows when they were last changed and by whom.

Fiscal year

Starts in — the month your fiscal year begins. The Cost Center totals spending by fiscal year, and a fiscal year is named for the calendar year it ends in: with a January start, FY 2026 is January to December 2026; with a July start, FY 2027 runs from July 2026 to June 2027. The card shows the current fiscal year and its dates.

Receiving stock

Stock comes in only through requisitions — when this is on, every part and stores item must come in against an approved requisition, so each purchase has an approval and an order behind it.

With it on:

• The plain Receive stock panel on a part and Record purchase panel on a store are replaced by a list of that item's open requisitions and a Request more button.
• Receiving against a requisition works exactly as before.
• Fuel or water bought at a pump and logged on a run or locomotive without a store is still logged there.
• Administrators can still Correct the count on a part or store after a stocktake, with a reason. A correction is never counted as spending.

It is off by default, so parts and stores can be received either directly or through a requisition. See Requisitions & vendors.

Related pages

• Users & access
• Cost Center
• Requisitions & vendors