# Owners and employees

Two roles and exactly one difference between them — an employee can fill in every part of an application, and an owner is the one who sends it.

Updated: 2026-09-12

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Everyone on your team can see and work on your business's applications. There are two roles and
one difference:

- **Owners** can do everything, including sending an application to us and inviting other people.
- **Employees** can open any application in progress and fill in any part of it — but an owner
  sends it.

<Shot src="portal-team" alt="The Team screen listing the people with access to the business's applications, their roles, and a line explaining that owners can do everything including sending an application while employees can fill in any part of it." />

## Why sending is the line

Filling in a form is work. Sending it is the moment the business asks somebody for money. That is
a decision for whoever is entitled to make it, which is why an employee who reaches the review
step is told plainly — only an owner can submit this, ask one of them to send it — rather than
being handed a button that bounces.

Nothing an employee has filled in is lost when an owner takes over. It is the same application,
and they do not have to redo any of it.

## Who becomes an owner

Whoever starts the team — they signed up to borrow, so they are the one who can sign. After that,
owners choose. You can invite someone straight in as an owner, or change a role later from the
Team screen.

Every role change is read from the database at the moment it happens rather than from whatever
the screen last showed, so a demoted owner with a stale tab open cannot still hand out
invitations.

## The one rule that cannot be broken

**A team always keeps at least one owner.** The last owner cannot be removed or demoted, because
a team with nobody who can submit is a team whose applications can never be sent.

## In the app

The **Team** tab shows the same people and the same roles, and an owner can do the same things
there: change somebody's role, remove them, invite somebody new, or cancel an invitation. An
employee sees the list and no controls.

The rules are the server's, not the app's, so the two surfaces cannot drift apart on who may do
what.

<Shot src="ios-team" phone alt="The Team tab in the Spark app, showing the business, the line you can send applications and invite people, and the list of people with their roles." />