Innovating Permissions & Access: Best Production Practices

When it comes to running an effective production, there’s tons to manage. Equipment, transportation, craft services, props, locations—there are a million and one things to consider before anyone says “picture’s up.” But of all the things you need to manage, your team just might be the most important.

When your teams aren’t on the same page, issues can crop up quickly. 

Miscommunication, duplication of key tasks, lack of visibility, security problems—keeping track of who’s responsible for what isn’t easy, but it’s a crucial element of any project’s success. Fortunately, advancements in technology are reshaping the landscape of team management—both on and off set. 

In this blog post, we'll delve into the importance of role management in production teams and explore Wrapbook’s innovations so that production companies can manage their business and people in one place.

The importance of role management in productions

Role management is largely a question of access—that is, deciding who on your team has access to sensitive information and who has the permission to perform important functions across your production company. Striking the right balance between granting team members sufficient access, while also preventing unnecessary access, is crucial. 

Too much access can lead to confusion. Do your talent coordinators need access to your entire team’s payroll history? Probably not, and granting them that access makes it harder—not easier—for them to access the information they actually do need. 

On the other hand, too little access can slow down collaboration and create bottlenecks, which is why spreading out authority for certain tasks across your team can help to lighten the load at the top.

Keep in mind that as your project evolves, your roles and permissions may need to evolve with it. That’s why the best team management strategies are not rigid but flexible, allowing team members to modulate their roles and fill gaps as needed.

Let’s dive into some common roles and see how they can benefit from better team management strategies.

Producers and heads of production

Producers and heads of production are often tasked with managing tasks, keeping track of key data, and marshaling resources to ensure that the production’s goals are met. It should be no surprise then that they’re often faced with the challenge of needing to convert vast amounts of information into actionable decisions. This means having broad access to all the necessary information is key.

Producers and HOPs can also struggle to delegate effectively. Those who are unable to empower their team members with key permissions can end up in the unenviable position of having to carry out tasks and process approvals themselves. This can lead to bottlenecks, delays, and frustration across the team.

The best team-management strategies for producers and HOPs will usually involve:

1. Real-time data. In an industry that moves as fast as production, it’s absolutely critical that decision-makers have the most up to date information possible on their projects. Knowing where your budget was a week ago simply isn’t good enough in 2025.
2. Delegation of authority. It isn’t necessary for a good producer to make every decision on their own—in fact, it usually slows things down. Vesting authority all the way down the on-set chain of command is crucial to keep things moving smoothly.

Production managers, production coordinators & freelancers

Production managers, coordinators, and freelancers play pivotal roles in production operations. To streamline their workflows, it's essential they have easy access to tools and resources. Reducing the need to seek frequent approvals can significantly enhance the production process.

For improved efficiency and clarity for this group, consider:

1. Role-based access control. Ensuring each team member at this level has access to the tools they need will increase efficiency and eliminate confusion.
2. Clear differentiation of roles. Duplication of key roles is common lower down the chain of command. Making sure that each team member has a clear and specific set of responsibilities is crucial.

Production accountants, CFOs, controllers

Financial roles within a production team often encounter obstacles when managing tasks and waiting for approvals. Delays—due to endless back-and-forth communication with the production manager, producer, or HOP—can often slow down production accountants and even cut into a project’s bottom line.

Effective team management should emphasize:

1. Clear communication. The free flow of data from set to the production accountant’s office is key. Strategies that bring production and accounting closer together are good; strategies that place them within a single, logical system are even better.
2. Full transparency. Effective team management strategies for finance teams will seek to improve communication between the finance team and the rest of the production. Keeping all relevant cost data in a single place makes it far less likely that things will fall through the cracks. 

Implementing best practices with Wrapbook

We’ve discussed how effective team management can speed up production, eliminate confusion, and help projects wrap more smoothly. Let’s look at how Wrapbook’s Org Hierarchies and Role-Based Access System gives you the power to implement some of these strategies.

Org Hierarchies in Wrapbook

For larger production companies managing multiple projects simultaneously, Org Hierarchies add a crucial layer of control that makes it easy to manage multiple parts of your business from one place. Organizational units represent divisions or business units within your company like an Unscripted Division and Documentary Division in Wrapbook. They can be created so that you can assign projects—and as such, people—to specific divisions within your organization.

By setting up your organizational units in Wrapbook, you can:

• Separate and organize projects by business division
• Maintain clear boundaries between different units which ensures users from one organizational unit don’t have access to a unit they should not 
• Control who can access specific projects and information based on their position in the organization

For example, a company might want their VP of Production Finance to access financial information across all divisions, while limiting division heads to only see worker, project, and payroll data within their own unit. This hierarchical structure is particularly valuable for:

• Large production companies managing multiple productions simultaneously
• Organizations with complex departmental structures
• Businesses that need to separate different types of production work (e.g., commercials, events, TV)

Role-based access in Wrapbook

Once your organizational units are set, we make it easy for production companies to configure roles & permissions within the organizational unit without sacrificing data security. With built-in flexibility and customizable access controls, our platform grants the whole team the right level of access to get the job done. 

With its configurable role-based access system, Wrapbook empowers teams to create custom roles tailored to their specific needs. With Wrapbook you can:

• Choose from among six preset roles
• Duplicate any preset role to create a custom role
• Create a custom role from scratch
• Assign a custom role to a specific organizational unit 

In each case, you have the ability to determine exactly how much access to give to each individual member of your team. Not only that, you can edit the access you’ve given after the fact, so if circumstances on your project change—and really, has there ever been a project where they didn’t?—you have the flexibility to change right along with them.

Here’s how roles work in Wrapbook:

Each permission is grouped into three levels of hierarchy.

1. Permission sets — These are the top-level groupings that encapsulate multiple permission categories. (Example: Payroll & Financial)
2. Permission categories — These are groups of permissions that encapsulate permissions within each major product area. (Example: Company Settings)
3. Access levels — These are the levels of access that each role can enjoy within a given permission category. (Examples: Full Access, View Only, View Basic)

As you can see, this model gives you complete flexibility into how you allocate permissions across different roles. Want your production accountant to have access to employee financial information without giving them the ability to run payroll? You can do that. 

Want to give production assistants access to basic employee information without compromising more sensitive information? You can do it. Want a producer to have access to everything, but still want to run payroll yourself?

With Wrapbook’s Org Hierarchies and roles and permissions capabilities, you can manage your team in whatever way makes the most sense for you. That not only keeps your production safer, it also keeps your team moving more efficiently, and gives everyone a clear sense of what their role is, and how they fit into the whole. And in a business as collaborative as production, knowing how you fit into the larger picture can make all the difference.

Wrapping up

No matter the size of it, each production requires an exhaustive amount of management for it to run on time and on budget. 

With appropriate team management systems in place, though, you can get more done quickly and accurately without unnecessary or confusing permissions and access—and that’s exactly what Wrapbook’s innovations are providing to production companies.

‍See for yourself how we’re shaping the new possible of production payroll and accounting for more confident and collaborative decision-making.