Invite your team: admins and care partners with the right access

Who can send invitations?

The account owner can always invite. Admins can invite only if they hold the user management permission. That rule is enforced in the database itself, not just in the interface, so it holds everywhere invitations can be created, listed, or revoked.

Sending or revoking an invitation is also a sensitive step, so FlockConnect asks the person doing it for a second step first, as described below. The two roles you can invite are admin and care partner. The account owner role is not granted by invitation.

• Account owners can always invite; admins need the user management permission. Both rules are enforced in the database.
• Two roles can be invited: admin and care partner. The account owner role is not granted by invitation.
• Link an invitation to an existing person so accepting attaches their sign-in to the record you already keep, instead of starting a duplicate.
• Invitations go out by email, and the same accept link is shown to you to copy if the email does not arrive.
• The invitee must sign in with the invited email address, so a forwarded link cannot be claimed by anyone else.
• Links expire after 14 days and work once. Pending invitations can be revoked at any time.
• Sending or revoking an invitation asks for a second step, and one check lasts 24 hours; accepting one never does, for any role.
• When an invite is accepted, the inviter sees a Home card, and an email arrives unless that notification is turned off.
• Every created, accepted, and revoked invitation is written to the audit log.

What can each role see and do?

The account owner sees everything in the church and is the only role that can manage billing. Admins see what their permission toggles allow, and the toggles are granular: access to people, care, groups and ministries, forms and reports, and analytics are each separate, as are user management, integrations, Collie (always advisory; nothing it drafts reaches a member until a person approves it), sensitive submissions, data export, giving signals, and calendar connections. Giving someone forms access does not also hand them pastoral notes.

Care partners are scoped, not broad. They see only the people assigned to them through a direct, household, group, or ministry care assignment, and their own profile; they can log care for the people assigned to them. That boundary is enforced in the database, so a care partner browsing the app simply does not receive anyone else's record. Church-wide settings remain owner and admin surfaces.

Where does an elder fit? Most churches invite elders as admins with the Full admin access level, so they see the whole church and carry care assignments. A church that prefers a narrower lane can invite an elder as a care partner instead and assign the people in their care. The care assignments guide explains what an assignment changes for each role.

How do I send an invitation?

Go to Settings and open Team. Enter the person's email address, pick the role (care partner is the default), and add an optional display name for how they will appear in your church. For an admin you also choose an access level, with Full admin as the starting point. Then create the invite.

If the person is already in your people list, from an import or hand entry, link the invitation to that record with the Link to an existing member picker. Linking is recommended: when they accept, their sign-in attaches to the record your church already keeps, history included, instead of starting a duplicate. The picker also says plainly when a record previously had a sign-in that was revoked, so you can revoke the invite if that is not what you intended.

FlockConnect emails the invitation for you and also shows you the same accept link to copy. If email is not configured or the send fails, it says so plainly and you can share the link yourself. FlockConnect stores only a fingerprint of the link's secret, never the link itself, so the database does not contain usable invitation links.

What happens when they accept?

The link opens an invitation page that greets your invitee by your church's name and says who invited them. They sign in, or create an account, using the email address that received the invite, confirm they are 18 or older and accept the terms and privacy policy, and then click Accept. The email has to match the invitation exactly, so a link that gets forwarded or leaked cannot be claimed by anyone except the person you invited.

On accept, FlockConnect connects their account to your church with the role you chose. If you linked the invitation to a person, their sign-in attaches to that existing record, history included; otherwise a new person record is created for them. Each link works once. An invitation that has already been accepted cannot be used again, and accidentally inviting someone who is already on your team will not create a duplicate.

You will know it worked. When an invitation you sent is accepted, a card appears on your Home screen, and FlockConnect emails you too unless you turn that notification off. A new care partner lands on a guided first screen that names you as their inviter, so neither side is left wondering what happens next.

When does FlockConnect ask for a second step?

Accepting an invitation never asks for a second step, and neither does everyday work in the app afterward. After accepting, an admin lands on a page that offers to set up where their codes go, with a link to skip it for now; a care partner goes straight to their Care page.

FlockConnect asks for a second step only before a sensitive step, like inviting a teammate, revoking an invitation, changing a teammate's role or permissions, or exporting data, and one check then covers you for 24 hours. If you haven't set up a way to get your codes yet, FlockConnect walks you through it right then: an authenticator app, a text message (US mobile numbers only), or an email. Email is the simplest, but it is also the least safe. The rule is the same for every role, and there is no separate setting for care partners.

How do expiry and revocation work?

Every invitation link expires 14 days after it is created. An expired link stops working for anyone who follows it. If a link lapses, just send a fresh invitation.

You can revoke any pending invitation from the list on Team, and a revoked link stops working from that moment. Revoking is the right move whenever an email went to the wrong address or you change your mind about a role.

What gets recorded?

The invitation list shows each invite's status, pending, accepted, revoked, or expired, along with when it was created and when it expires. Beyond the list, every created, accepted, and revoked invitation writes an audit entry recording who acted, the invited email, the role, and the new status.

Those events also appear in each person's own security history under Settings, alongside their MFA and permission events. So the trail is not just for the owner: a new team member can see when they accepted, and an admin can see the invitations they sent.