> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.myclerkbook.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Collaboration
> Share a book by email invite, with two independent access controls and a complete activity log.
Collaboration lets a Premium account share access with someone else: an
accountant who needs to read the year, a partner who works in the same book, a
contractor who should see one project and nothing else.
**The person you invite never needs a plan of their own.** They need a
myClerkBook account, which is free to create, and a viewer seat costs nothing.
You pay so that someone can change your book, not so they can look at it.
## Inviting someone
The screen lists everyone with access, what they can reach and what they
can do there.
They receive the invitation on that address and accept it with their own
myClerkBook account.
Every book you hold, or only the ones you name.
Viewer, Contributor or Editor, applied inside that scope.
## Two controls, not one list
Scope and role are separate on purpose. Conflating what a person can reach with
what they may do once they are inside is what makes access lists hard to reason
about, and dangerous to get wrong.
| Control | The question it answers | What you can choose |
| --------- | -------------------------- | -------------------------------- |
| **Scope** | What can they reach? | Every book, or the ones you name |
| **Role** | What can they do in there? | Viewer, Contributor or Editor |
Both run at once, and you can mix them: a bookkeeper across every book, and a
contractor holding one.
## What each role can do
| Role | Can | Cannot |
| --------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Viewer** | Read every screen in scope, export, read the activity log | Create, change or delete anything |
| **Contributor** | Everything a Viewer can, plus add entries and upload or parse documents | Change or delete entries they did not create, change groups, widgets or alerts, change settings |
| **Editor** | Everything inside their scope: change and delete any entry, manage groups, widgets and alerts, arrange dashboards | Invite or remove people, change billing, delete a book, change the plan |
**The last row is owner-only, always.** There is exactly one owner of an
account, it is the billing identity, and the role cannot be handed to anyone.
A model where a guest can remove the owner is a model with a hole in it.
**Effective access is the narrower of the two controls**, and the interface
always states both. A collaborator's row reads **Editor, 2 dashboards**, never
a role on its own, because a role alone does not tell you what it reaches.
**Removing access takes effect immediately** and ends any session that person
has open. It does not wait for them to sign out.
## Working in the same book at once
Where two of you are in a book together, each of you sees the other: an avatar
in the top bar, and a marker on the record being edited. A field someone else
is holding cannot be edited by you at the same time, and it names who has it,
rather than silently discarding one of the two changes.
Presence is live only. It is never written into the activity log.
## The activity log
A book of account is a history, so the log is written as one.
* **Every change is recorded** with who made it, when, which field moved, and
both values. Creating and deleting are recorded the same way.
* **It reads as entries rather than a diff.** `Amount changed from R1,200.00 to
R1,450.00 · Kagiso · 12 Jun 14:22` is a line an accountant can read. A
coloured line-by-line comparison is a programmer's habit.
* **Any recorded state can be restored, and the restore is itself recorded.**
Nothing is ever removed from the log, including by the owner. A log with a
delete button is not a log.
* **Attribution is always there**, including when you work alone, so the record
has no gaps in it and no ambiguity about who did what.
* **You can read it at either scale.** An entry's own panel shows that entry's
history, and the Collaboration screen shows the whole book's.
History never crosses account boundaries. What you can see is your own books
and the books you were invited into, and nothing else, whoever else those
collaborators work with.
## Basic and Premium
| | Basic | Premium |
| ----------------------------- | ------------------------ | ------------------------------- |
| Sharing a book | Not included | Invite by email |
| Scope | Not applicable | Every book, or named books |
| Roles | Not applicable | Viewer, Contributor, Editor |
| Cost to the person you invite | Not applicable | None, they need only an account |
| Activity log | Every change, attributed | Every change, attributed |
## Related features
Scope is expressed in books, so it is worth knowing how they divide.
Which plan carries collaboration, next to every other limit.
Basic, Premium and the Agent add-on, with every limit side by side.