# Who can do what in maintenance

> Admins, owners and technicians do the work, work orders included; only admins price lines and raise the invoice. Dispatchers can read every board but cannot sign anything off, and do not see work orders. Instructors, students and renters cannot open the Maintenance board, but they can open a single squawk write-up and see open squawks on the aircraft page.

Source: https://www.aerscheduler.com/docs/maintenance/who-can-do-what-in-maintenance
Section: Maintenance and squawks. For: Owners, Admins, Dispatchers, Technicians, Instructors, Students, Renters.

Admins, owners and technicians do the work. Dispatchers can read every board but cannot sign
anything off, and do not see work orders. Instructors, students and renters cannot open the
Maintenance board, but they can open a single squawk write-up and see open squawks on the
aircraft page.

> **Note:** The roles below are what each one carries **by default**. An owner or admin can also give
> one person a single extra permission from that person's record, so somebody may be able to
> do something here that their role alone would not allow. See [Give one person an extra
> permission](https://www.aerscheduler.com/docs/getting-started/permissions-and-grants).

## The short version

|                                                               | Owner, Admin                      | Technician                                   | Dispatcher        | Instructor, Student, Renter |
| ------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------- | ----------------- | --------------------------- |
| Open the Maintenance page                                     | Yes                               | Yes                                          | Yes, read only    | No                          |
| Open one squawk write-up                                      | Yes                               | Yes                                          | Yes               | Yes, read only              |
| Add, edit or delete an inspection rule                        | Yes                               | Yes                                          | No                | No                          |
| Sign off an inspection                                        | Yes                               | Yes                                          | No                | No                          |
| File a squawk                                                 | Yes                               | Yes                                          | Yes               | Yes                         |
| Add or remove aircraft papers                                 | Yes                               | Yes                                          | Yes               | No, can open booker files   |
| Resolve a squawk                                              | Yes                               | Yes                                          | No                | No                          |
| Verify a squawk                                               | Yes                               | Yes                                          | No                | No                          |
| Ground an aircraft or return it to service                    | Yes                               | Yes                                          | No                | No                          |
| Record a Hobbs and tach reading                               | Yes                               | Yes                                          | No, can read them | No                          |
| Edit an aircraft's details, meters or rates (Aircraft → Edit) | Yes                               | No                                           | No                | No                          |
| Book maintenance                                              | Yes                               | Yes                                          | Yes               | No                          |
| Maintenance due and Squawks & downtime reports                | Yes                               | Yes                                          | Yes               | No                          |
| Maintenance shop reports (Work orders, Labor and parts)       | Yes                               | Yes                                          | No                | No                          |
| Audit log                                                     | Yes                               | No                                           | No                | No                          |
| **Work orders and customer aircraft**                         |                                   |                                              |                   |                             |
| See customer aircraft and their owners                        | Yes                               | Yes                                          | Yes               | No                          |
| Add a customer's aircraft or an owner                         | Yes                               | No                                           | No                | No                          |
| Change an owner's customer details (billing address, notes)   | Yes                               | No, can read them                            | No                | No                          |
| Email an owner how to sign in                                 | Yes                               | No                                           | No                | No                          |
| See work orders (Maintenance → Open jobs, Finished jobs)      | Yes                               | Yes                                          | No                | No                          |
| Open a work order, and move it through its stages             | Yes                               | Yes                                          | No                | No                          |
| Choose who a job is billed to                                 | Yes                               | No: a job they open goes to the billed owner | No                | No                          |
| Add findings, labor and parts                                 | Yes                               | Yes, at the shop's rates                     | No                | No                          |
| Change a line's price, rate, markup, discount, tax or billing | Yes                               | No                                           | No                | No                          |
| Change a line somebody else entered                           | Yes                               | No                                           | No                | No                          |
| Send findings to the owner, record the owner's answer         | Yes                               | Yes                                          | No                | No                          |
| Raise the job's invoice                                       | Yes                               | No                                           | No                | No                          |
| Delete a job opened by mistake                                | Yes                               | No                                           | No                | No                          |
| Set the shop's rates (Settings → Shop rates)                  | Yes                               | No                                           | No                | No                          |
| Set sales tax rates (Settings → Sales tax)                    | Owners only; admins can read them | No                                           | No                | No                          |

Roles add up rather than ranking. A technician who is also an instructor gets both sets.

## Technicians

The technician role is built around the shop. A technician can open every maintenance board,
add and sign off inspections, resolve and verify squawks, ground an aircraft and return it to
service, record a Hobbs and tach reading, and book an aircraft in for maintenance, which is the
only booking type they can create.

On work orders, a technician opens jobs, moves them along, adds findings, sends them to the
owner and records the owner's answer. They enter their own labor and parts at the shop's rates,
so they see those rates and what each job charges, and they change only the lines they entered.
Only people with the technician role can be put on a job or a labor line, so give an admin who
works on aircraft that role too. See
[Run a work order](https://www.aerscheduler.com/docs/maintenance/run-a-work-order).

What a technician cannot do:

- Edit an aircraft's details, meters or rates under **Aircraft → Edit**. They record a reading
  instead, on the aircraft's Overview or as a job's Hobbs and tach.
- Add a customer's aircraft or an owner, choose who a job is billed to, price a line, or raise
  the invoice.
- See revenue or the **Invoices** tab on an aircraft's page, or open **Billing**.
- Open the audit log.
- See simulator or classroom lanes on the dispatch board.

## Dispatchers

A dispatcher sees the whole Maintenance page: all five views, the same cards, the same
counts. What is missing is every button that changes something. No **Sign off**, no
**Resolve**, no **Add inspections**, no delete.

![Maintenance, Inspections grouped by status](https://www.aerscheduler.com/docs/maintenance-all-inspections.png)

> **Note:** This is deliberate, not a broken page. Knowing which aircraft is unserviceable is a
> dispatcher's job. Declaring it fixed is a technician's. A dispatcher who has been told to
> "close that squawk out" needs to hand it to an admin or a technician.

Dispatchers can still file a squawk, book maintenance, and run the fleet reports. They are
not sent maintenance or squawk notifications.

Dispatchers see customer aircraft, their owners and their hangar bookings, but not the work
orders behind them: no **Open jobs**, no prices and no shop reports. A maintenance booking that
holds a job shows them the customer and a grounded mark, not the request.

## Instructors, students, and renters

These roles cannot open the Maintenance page. In the console the sidebar link is not there,
and following `/maintenance` anyway redirects to your own page.

They can still read a squawk. Open the aircraft, then **Squawks**. That list is the open
defects on that tail, so you can see whether someone already filed the crack you just
found. Click a row for the write-up and photos. Adding a note, verifying, and resolving
stay with the shop.

They can also open the aircraft **Papers** when the school has put a POH or weight and
balance on that tail. See [Aircraft papers](https://www.aerscheduler.com/docs/maintenance/aircraft-papers).

A `/maintenance/squawks/123` link (from a notification or a colleague) opens that same
write-up. It does not dump you on Home.

They do also see what matters at the moment of booking: the grounding reason and the
open-squawk count on the airworthiness notice. See
[Why can't I book this aircraft?](https://www.aerscheduler.com/docs/maintenance/why-cant-i-book-this-aircraft).

To file a squawk from the console, use **Log** on that Squawks card, or **Report a squawk**
on a booking's close-out. The iOS app still has Report Squawk on the aircraft and at
close-out. See [Report a squawk](https://www.aerscheduler.com/docs/maintenance/report-a-squawk).

## Admins and owners

Everything above, plus what nobody else can do: editing an aircraft's details and meters,
adding customer aircraft and owners, choosing who a job is billed to, pricing lines, raising
the invoice and setting the shop's rates. Owners get everything an admin gets, and only an
owner saves sales tax rates.

## Verify and resolve are two different stamps

Both belong to admins, owners and technicians, and both are on either surface. Verifying
records that somebody checked the fault; resolving records what was done about it. Neither
requires the other, so a squawk can be resolved having never been verified. The **Verify**
button disappears once a squawk carries either stamp, so verify first if your shop uses it
as a second signature.
