Funding in Dapple uses the roles you already have — Organisation Administrator, Team Manager and Team Member. On top of these, each fund has two optional lists you choose yourself: Who can approve payments and Who can approve award changes. There's no separate permission system:
Team Managers run funding for their team.
Named approvers sign off payments and award changes in their fund.
Team Members can view.
Reviewers never see funding data.
If a fund's approver lists are left empty, its Team Managers approve.
What can each role do in Funding?
Role | What they can do in Funding |
Organisation Administrator | Everything, across all teams: create and edit Budgets, change organisation funding settings, and edit payments already recorded as paid. |
Team Manager | Run funding for their team: create funds, award, schedule payments, record payments as paid, change awards and edit fund settings. |
Payment approver (named on the fund) | Approve payments in that fund. With two-person sign-off on, can't then record the same payment as paid. |
Change approver (named on the fund) | Approve or reject changes to awards in that fund. |
Team Member | View funding for their team. Read-only. |
Reviewer | Never sees funding data. |
For how these roles work across the rest of Dapple, see What Are the Different User Permissions in Dapple?.
How do I choose who approves payments and award changes?
Approvers are chosen per fund. Set them when you create a fund, or change them later:
Click Funding in the sidebar and click the fund.
Click the Settings tab.
Under Who can approve payments, tick the people who can sign off payments.
Under Who can approve award changes, tick the people who can approve increases, reductions and other changes.
Save.
Leave a list empty to let the team's Team Managers approve. Approvers only have approval rights in the fund they're named on.
What do payment approvers and change approvers do?
Approver | What they do | If none are named |
Payment approver | Clicks Approve on a payment that's Ready to pay. Dapple records who approved it and when. | Team Managers approve |
Change approver | Approves or rejects changes made with Change award. A change doesn't affect any totals until it's approved. | Team Managers approve |
Can the same person approve a payment and mark it as paid?
Not while Two-person sign-off is on. It's a setting on each fund, on by default: "One person approves a payment, someone else records it as paid." The person who clicks Approve can't then click Mark as paid on the same payment.
Dapple enforces this on its servers, not just on screen, so the rule holds in the app, through the API and through connected AI assistants. Turn two-person sign-off off on the fund's Settings tab only if one person handles your awards alone.
Who can see funding data?
Who | What they see |
Your team | Funding for their team's projects, based on their role. Organisation Administrators can view every team's funds by choosing All Teams in the team selector. |
Reviewers | Nothing. Funding is hidden from Review Accounts. |
Awardees | Only their own award and payment schedule, in their Applicant Dashboard, and only if the project has Show award and payment schedule to applicants switched on. They never see fund names, notes, approvers or who signed off. |
Each award on the Award tab tells you whether the awardee can see it — either "The applicant can see this award and its schedule" or "Hidden from the applicant".
How do API tokens and AI assistants access Funding?
API tokens are limited to their own organisation. A token needs the funding:read scope to read funding data, and funding:write to change anything.
Connected AI assistants can read funding data, for example to answer "What's overdue in this fund?". They can't change anything. See Connecting an AI tool to Dapple using MCP.
Best practice
Name at least two payment approvers per fund, so one person being away doesn't hold up payments.
Make sure someone who isn't a payment approver can record payments as paid, so two-person sign-off never leaves payments stuck.
Name change approvers on funds where increases need a second pair of eyes.
Give colleagues who only report on funding the Team Member role, which is read-only.
Check each fund's Settings tab at the start of every round, and remove anyone who has left.