Creating and Editing a Client

Most customer accounts create themselves through your public registration form. You will still need to create one by hand from time to time — a migrated customer, an account taken over the phone, a test account — and you will regularly need to edit one. Both happen on the same screens.

Before you start #

Note: Creating an account requires create_clients; editing requires edit_clients; deleting requires delete_clients. Assigning roles is separate again — see the warning below.

Creating a client #

1. Open Users & Roles → All Users and select New User.
2. Fill in the form and select Create User. You are returned to the list with “User created successfully.”

Warning: This screen creates the account silently. No welcome email is sent, no verification message is sent, and the address is left unverified — so the customer will be held at the “verify your email” notice on first sign-in until they request a link. Tell them the password out of band, and expect them to verify before they can use the portal.

Editing a client #

Select Manage on the row, or the customer’s name. The Contact tab holds the editable identity fields; every other tab is a different part of their account.

Warning: Saving the Contact tab clears the account’s affiliate flag, because the affiliate controls now live on the Affiliate tab and the Contact form does not submit them. Existing tracking codes are kept. If the customer is an active affiliate, re-enable them afterwards by generating a tracking code on the Affiliate tab, which sets the flag again.

Who may change roles #

Role assignment is guarded separately from ordinary editing, and the guard is strict:

• You cannot change the roles on your own account, at all.
• You cannot grant or remove the Super Admin role unless you are a Super Admin.
• You cannot assign a role that ranks at or above your own highest role.
• In a default installation the underlying capability is held by Super Admin accounts only. For anyone else the Assigned Roles box still renders and still saves the rest of the form, but the role selection itself is ignored.

Tip: If a role change appears not to have saved, check who made it. Have a Super Admin apply it, or grant the role-assignment capability deliberately from Roles & Permissions.

The rank barrier #

Every action on somebody else’s account — opening a tab, saving the form, adjusting credit, deleting — is checked against the role hierarchy. You may only act on an account whose highest role sits strictly below your own. Customers hold the bottom-ranked client role, so all staff can manage them; a Billing Manager cannot touch an Administrator; nobody but a Super Admin can touch a Super Admin.

Deleting a client #

1. Use the kebab menu on the row in All Users, or the Delete button in the profile header.
2. Confirm the browser prompt. The deletion is immediate.

RackHelm refuses to delete a Super Admin account, refuses to let you delete your own account, and applies the rank barrier. Deleting a parent account also removes its sub-accounts, because those rows hang off the parent.

Warning: Prefer cancelling services and letting the account sit dormant over deleting it. Orders and invoices are kept for audit when a package is removed, but deleting the account itself takes the person’s sub-accounts and their whole sign-in history with it. Their addresses and stored payment methods are not cascaded — those rows are left behind pointing at an account that no longer exists.

Troubleshooting #