Roles and Capabilities

WooCommerce user roles

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WooCommerce adds two user roles—Customer and Shop Manager—and extends the existing Administrator role with store management capabilities. Use these roles to control who can manage products, view reports, and configure store settings.

To assign roles, go to Users > All Users in the WordPress admin, select a user, and choose a role from the Role dropdown.

Administrator capabilities

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WooCommerce adds several capabilities to the existing Administrator role. Two of them are:

• Manage WooCommerce — Access to WooCommerce settings and configuration.
• View WooCommerce reports — Access to all WooCommerce analytics and reports.

Customer role

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People become Customers when they register via the checkout or sign-up process. This role has limited access, similar to a standard WordPress Subscriber.

Customers can perform the following actions:

• Read most site content.
• Edit their own account information.
• View past and present orders.

Shop Manager role

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The Shop Manager role allows someone to manage your store without granting full Administrator access. Shop Managers have all the permissions of a Customer, plus these additional capabilities:

• Manage WooCommerce — Full access to all WooCommerce settings and configuration.
• View WooCommerce reports — Access to all WooCommerce analytics and reports.
• Manage products — Create, edit, delete, and publish products, including product categories and tags.
• Manage orders — View, edit, and delete orders, as well as process refunds.
• Manage coupons — Create, edit, delete, and publish coupons.
• Manage customers — Shop Managers can view user details for all roles. When editing another user, a Shop Manager can update a customer account only if every role assigned to that user is editable by Shop Managers. If a role is not editable by Shop Managers, ask an Administrator to make the change.

Shop Managers also have general WordPress editor capabilities, such as creating and editing posts and pages.

Modify user roles and capabilities

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If you need to customize what each role can do, you can use an extension or plugin to adjust permissions without editing code. The following options are available as suggestions — WooCommerce does not endorse any specific third-party plugin:

• User Roles Editor for WooCommerce — A WooCommerce extension that allows you to add, assign, and switch user roles within your store.
• Capability Manager Enhanced — A WordPress plugin that provides a detailed interface for editing role capabilities.
• Members — A WordPress plugin for managing user roles, capabilities, and content permissions.
• Groups — A WordPress plugin for managing group-based access control and permissions.

WooCommerce support does not cover third-party plugins. For details, refer to the WooCommerce support policy.

Developer reference

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To let Shop Managers edit users with additional roles, see Developer guide: Allow Shop Managers to edit selected user roles. The guide explains the role allowlist and how to validate it safely.

Questions and support

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Do you still have questions and need assistance? 

• If you’re looking to extend the core functionality shown here, we recommend reviewing available extensions in the WooCommerce Marketplace.
• Need ongoing advanced support or a customization built for WooCommerce? Hire a Woo Agency Partner.
• Are you a developer building your own WooCommerce integration or extension? Check our Developer Resources.

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