Specialist manager roles are designed for high-level oversight. These are ideal for HR or People team members who manage employee profiles, or people who handle travel bookings for the entire organization or just specific people. 

• Travel manager

• People manager

For more information, see Roles and permissions.

Travel manager

The travel manager role is designed to let you delegate travel management tasks to a specific person within your company.

Travel managers are responsible for booking trips on behalf of other people and adjusting travel arrangements, if required. For example, an executive assistant who books flights and accommodation for the CEO’s trips.

They can view and edit upcoming trips for the people they manage and see past trips. They are the main point of contact for all travel arrangements, meaning that if cancellations occur, travel managers receive notification and can act to solve any issues with the booking.

They can edit specific information in travelers’ profiles, such as travel documents, loyalty programs, and discount cards.

When a trip is booked by a travel manager, the approval process can be automatically skipped if desired. Travel managers can choose to send for approval or to skip and book. Approvers are notified that approval has been skipped for the traveler’s trip, and the action is tracked in the reporting page.

When you assign the travel manager role, you choose whether they perform the task for a specific company or all companies, and if they manage everyone or only specific people. 

For more information, see Set up the travel manager role.

People manager

People managers are responsible for managing employees, guests, and other users in Perk.

This role is usually associated with HR processes, as it provides access to sensitive personal data such as names and addresses, travel documents, government-issued IDs, and HR reporting. They can also determine the roles and permissions of other people in Perk.

The people manager role lets you flexibly manage users and their profiles, without granting access to company and account settings. People with this role have access to a dedicated space to do what they need to without exposing themselves and the business to unauthorized access to sensitive data.

If you have been assigned the people manager role, you can access the People page, where you can invite and activate new people in your account and assign roles and permissions. You can also maintain user information such as personal details and other travel-related information, and assign approval and travel policies.

As a people manager, you can't create or change company or account-level settings such as cost objects or approval processes. You can only assign people to existing options.

Note: While the people manager can manually invite people to Perk, you can also automatically add people using an HRIS integration or with SCIM. Any people added using an integration are displayed in the People page, but you shouldn’t edit any details manually.

By default, a people manager manages everyone in the account. On Pro accounts, an account admin, a company admin, or a people manager with a wider access level can limit a people manager to specific companies or to a specific list of people.

Some settings are always available, regardless of which people or companies are assigned:

• Line manager — the people manager can assign any line manager in the account.
• Delegates (invoice and approval) — the people manager can assign any delegate.
• Travel policies and approval processes — the people manager can see and assign all existing policies and processes across the account.

Note: People managers can assign existing policies and approval processes, but they can't create new ones or edit existing ones.

People managers assigned to specific people

For stricter security and compliance, Perk lets you limit a people manager to a subset of the people in your account. An account admin, a company admin, or a people manager with a wider access level assigns a specific list of people to that people manager, who can then see and manage only those people. Anyone new they add is assigned to them automatically, and they can't see or manage anyone else in the account.

People managers assigned to specific people can:

• Do everything a people manager can do, but only for their assigned people.
• Assign the No access, Employee, and Guest roles.

People managers assigned to specific people can't:

• See or manage anyone outside their assigned people, even in the same company.
• Assign any role other than No access, Employee, and Guest.
• Use the Assigned people or Assigned companies columns within the CSV user import in Manage data → Import data.

Note: A people manager needs at least one assigned person before they can add anyone else. Until then, Perk shows the message "You can't create users yet. Please ask an admin to assign you at least one user first". An admin assigns one person from the target company first, and the people manager can then add the rest themselves.

Combining with the travel manager or analyst role

If someone holds the people manager role together with the travel manager or analyst role, the same access level applies to every role they hold. Someone can't be a people manager for one group of people and a travel manager for another.

For example, Alex is a travel manager for Ana and Joan, but not for Jose. If Alex is also made a people manager, Alex can manage Ana and Joan only, and can't be the people manager for Jose. To change that, an account admin or a company admin adds Jose to Alex's assigned people.

To learn more about combining roles, see Roles and permissions in Perk.

Caution: Downgrading removes these limits. If the account moves from Pro to Premium, people managers keep the role but can manage everyone in the account again, so a people manager who was limited to 12 people becomes a people manager for the whole account. Review these people managers before or after a downgrade. Downgrading to Starter turns the people manager role into employee or submitter instead.