User Roles and Permissions for Dealership Teams

A dealership is a salesperson, a manager and an owner, each needing a different view of the same store. User Management gives each one the right seat in about a minute.

User Management is the screen in LeadLocate CRM where a dealership adds each person on the team, gives them one of three roles, User, Manager or Master Administrator, and sets the handful of per user options that shape their day: which notifications they receive, their Quick Access PIN, and the default file folders they work from. The role decides how much of the store a person sees. The per user settings decide how the CRM behaves for that one person.

That is deliberately simple. Some CRMs ship a permissions matrix with dozens of checkboxes per user, and the result at most stores is that nobody is sure who can see what, the general manager has the same rights as a green pea because somebody clicked the wrong template, and the vendor charges for a consultant to sort it out. Three roles map to how a dealership actually works: people who work leads, people who run those people, and the person who owns the account. The LeadLocate CRM is built around those three seats, and everything else on this page is what each seat carries with it.

A new salesperson starts at nine. Before he sits down, the sales manager opens User Management, adds him as a User, turns on the notifications she wants him to get, texts and new leads on his phone but not every email, sets his Quick Access PIN, and points his default file folders at Customer Handouts and Inventory. He installs the phone app, signs in once, and is texting leads by ten because the CRM already looks the way the store wants a new rep's CRM to look. His personal phone number never touched a customer, because the store's tracking number and the softphone did the work.

The same afternoon a BDC agent gives notice. The Master Administrator removes her access in User Management, once, and it is gone from the desktop CRM, the phone app, SecureWebX, Inventory Link and the account portal together, because there was only ever one login to remove. Her leads are still in the CRM, the texts she sent are still in each customer's conversation, and her call recordings are still on the calls, because none of that belonged to her login. It belonged to the store. That is the whole argument for roles in a system that owns the work rather than the person owning it.

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User Management is one of the items under Billing and Admin in the desktop CRM, next to DNC Blacklist, Automated Templates, Follow Up Processes, Voicemail Drop Files, Lead Feeds Manager and Account Settings. It is the administrative layer of the CRM, which is why it lives with the other things a manager sets once and a rep never needs to see. Open it and you see the store's users, each with a role and the per user settings beside it.

On the phone app there is no separate administration screen, and there should not be; roles carry over from the desk, so a person opens the LeadLocate mobile app and sees what their role allows. A Master Administrator who needs to add someone from the road does it from the desktop CRM in a browser. The account portal, My LeadLocate, has its own access page that says which users can launch which apps, so the person who owns the account can see the whole roster from the billing side as well as the CRM side.

A User is a salesperson or a BDC agent: someone whose job is to work leads, text and call customers, book appointments and desk deals. This is most of the store. A Manager is a sales manager, a BDC manager or a finance manager: someone who runs a team and needs to see the team's leads and activity, not just their own, and who sets up the things a team runs on, such as channels in Team Chat and the store's file folders. A Master Administrator is the dealer principal, general manager or the person they trust with the account: the seat that owns Billing and Admin, adds and removes people, and decides how the store's CRM is configured.

Three roles are enough because the CRM handles the harder question, which lead belongs to whom, elsewhere. Round robin assignment, global lead distribution with rules and distribution lists, and routing rules per rooftop decide who gets a lead. The role decides what a person can see and change once they have it. Keeping those two questions apart is why a store rarely needs a fourth role: an assistant manager who should get leads like a rep but see the floor like a manager is a Manager in a distribution list, not a custom permission set.

The role is the big switch. The per user settings are the small ones that decide whether a person likes working in the CRM. Notification toggles are set per user in User Management and refined by the user in their own preferences: which events notify them, on which device, with which sound, so a rep who lives on the phone gets texts and new leads there and the manager who lives at the desk gets on screen toasts. The lead notifications and alerts page covers the choices.

The Quick Access PIN is a short code per user for getting back into the CRM and the phone app quickly at a shared desk or on the lot, set in User Management alongside the role. Default file folders point each user at the part of the file library they use, so the Files menu opens where their work is. Each user also records their own voicemail greeting, and each user is a name a Master Administrator can put on the Forward Calls To ring list, so the phone rings the people who are actually on the floor. None of those live in the role. They live on the person, which is why a rep moving from one rooftop to another in a group keeps the CRM they are used to.

A user added in User Management is a user everywhere. Ecosystem single sign on means one login launches the CRM, Inventory Link, SecureWebX and the account portal, so the finance manager who was given a seat in the CRM opens the credit application console from the SecureWebX button on the dock without a second username. The salesperson who needs to add a photo to a unit opens Inventory Link from My Inventory the same way. The phone app adds biometric login on top, and the account portal adds passwordless login by magic link or text message. The single sign on page covers that side in detail.

The practical consequence is that adding or removing a person is one act, done once, in one place. A store that has ever discovered a former employee still had a working login to the inventory tool six months after leaving knows what that is worth. It also means the roster the owner sees in My LeadLocate, the users a manager sees in User Management, and the people a rep sees in Team Chat are the same list, which is a small thing until the day it is not.

Per seat pricing, first. Many CRM vendors price by user, then price the manager tier higher, then charge again for the administrator seat. A store that adds a summer hire pays for the seat for the summer and forgets to remove it in the fall. LeadLocate plans are priced by plan, not by seat, on the pricing page, from CRM Only at $199 a month up through the plans that include exclusive local leads, so the sales manager adds the new rep in User Management without asking anyone about a purchase order.

The second cost is the support ticket. In a lot of dealer software, adding a user, changing a role or resetting a login is a request to the vendor and a wait. In LeadLocate it is a Master Administrator's job in User Management, done in the time it takes to type a name. The third cost is quieter: the shared login. Stores that pay per seat share logins to save money, and then every text, call and deal in the CRM is attributed to a name that is not the person who did it. Roles that are free to assign remove the reason to share a login, and the reports, the communications log and the call recordings start meaning what they say.

The compliance value of roles is not the role. It is that every person has their own identity, and that the identity can be removed once. When a text goes out under a rep's name, when a call is recorded on a rep's softphone, when a customer deal page is shared from a rep's desk, the CRM knows who did it, and activity reporting shows it by user. That record is what a store needs when a customer disputes what was said, when a manager reviews a conversation, or when a regulator asks how the store handles do not call requests. A shared login turns all of it into a shrug.

Removal matters as much as creation. A departing employee's access is turned off in User Management and is gone from every product at once, while the customer conversations, the deals and the recordings stay where they were, in the store's record. The customer information itself sits in the Customer Profile with personal information encrypted, read by the deal and the desk, and the DNC Blacklist with its live do not call lookup applies to every user regardless of role. Roles keep the store's people straight; the CRM keeps the store's customers protected.

Roles exist from the first login. The person who signs the store up is the first Master Administrator, and the first hour is spent in User Management adding the team: each manager as a Manager, each salesperson and BDC agent as a User, with notification toggles, a Quick Access PIN and default file folders for each. The help center article shows the clicks. From there, new hires are added the morning they start and departures are removed the afternoon they leave, and the roster stays honest.

Pair it with round robin and distribution lists, which decide who gets which lead once the people exist. Pair it with the Forward Calls To ring list, which is built from the same users. And pair it with My LeadLocate's account access page when the owner wants to see, from the billing side, exactly who can launch what. If you would like to see a store being set up before you sign up, the pre-recorded live demo shows the CRM in use, and the contact page reaches a person who can talk through how a store your size usually assigns its roles.

What roles does LeadLocate CRM have?

Three: User, Manager and Master Administrator. A User works leads, a Manager runs a team and sees the team's work, and a Master Administrator owns the account and the Billing and Admin menu, including User Management.

Where do I add a user or change a role?

In User Management, under Billing and Admin in the desktop CRM. The same screen sets each user's notification toggles, Quick Access PIN and default file folders.

Does adding a user cost extra?

Plans are priced by plan rather than by seat, so a Master Administrator adds a new hire in User Management without a purchase decision. Current plans are on the pricing page.

Does a user need separate logins for SecureWebX and Inventory Link?

No. Ecosystem single sign on means one login launches the CRM, Inventory Link, SecureWebX and the My LeadLocate account portal. Removing a user in User Management removes that access everywhere.

What happens to a salesperson's leads and texts when they leave?

They stay in the CRM. Leads, conversations, call recordings and deals belong to the store's record, not the login, so removing the user removes their access and nothing else.

How do I decide who gets which lead?

That is a separate setting from the role. Round robin assignment, global lead distribution with rules and distribution lists, and routing rules per rooftop decide who receives a lead; the role decides what they can see and change once they have it.

User Management is part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan, month to month. See a store being set up in the demo, or ask us how a dealership your size usually assigns its roles.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.