🔍 What Is a Reversed Permissions Issue?
When you first set up your Search Atlas account, you may have been prompted to define your role or relationship to the workspace. If the wrong option was selected at that step, your account can end up with a lower permission level than intended — for example, being treated as a guest or team member instead of the account owner.
The most common symptom is being unable to see or access the Billing tab, even though you created the account and pay the subscription. This happens because billing access is reserved for the Owner role only.
⚠️ Common Signs Your Permissions Are Reversed
- The Billing tab is missing or greyed out in your settings.
- You cannot invite or remove team members.
- Another linked email address appears to have higher privileges than your primary account.
- You receive a permissions error when trying to manage the subscription.
🗂️ Understanding Account Roles in Search Atlas
Search Atlas uses a role-based permission system. Each seat in a workspace is assigned one of the following roles:
- Owner — Full access including billing, subscription management, and all settings.
- Admin — Can manage team members and most settings, but cannot access billing.
- Viewer — Standard access to tools and projects only.
If your account was set up with a secondary email accidentally assigned the Owner role, that email controls billing while your primary email is locked out.
🛠️ How to Check Your Current Role
- Click your avatar in the top-right corner of the platform.
- Select Team Members from the dropdown menu, or navigate directly to /settings.
- Locate your email address in the team list and check the role displayed next to it.
- Also check whether any other email addresses in the list are assigned the Owner role.
If you see a different email holding the Owner role — or if your own email shows Admin or Viewer — your permissions are reversed and need to be corrected.
✅ How to Fix Reversed Permissions
Role corrections that affect the Owner seat require action from our support team to ensure account security and prevent unauthorized changes. Follow these steps to get it resolved quickly:
- Log in to Search Atlas using the email address that currently has the higher permission level (the one that can access billing), if you have access to it.
- Navigate to your avatar → Team Members at /settings.
- If you can change roles from this view, update your primary email to Owner and demote or remove the unintended account.
- If you cannot make the change yourself, contact our support team immediately using the steps below.
Important: Do not remove any email addresses from the workspace before confirming your primary account has Owner access. Removing the only Owner account will lock you out of billing entirely.
💡 Tips to Prevent This in the Future
- Always use your primary business email when creating a new Search Atlas workspace.
- During onboarding, select I am the account owner when prompted about your role.
- After setup, visit /settings → Team Members to verify your role before inviting others.
- Keep a record of which email address holds the Owner role for your workspace.
🆘 Need Help From Our Team?
If you are unable to access the Team Members page, both email addresses are locked into incorrect roles, or the role dropdowns are not editable from your current permission level, our support team can manually correct the ownership assignment on your account.
If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.
When you reach out, please have the following ready to speed up the process:
- The email address that should be the Owner.
- The email address that is currently assigned the wrong role.
- A brief description of what you see on the Team Members page.