Your Workspace, Navigation & Team Roles

A tour of the Admin Panel layout — the sidebar, top bar, and notification centre — plus how roles and your plan shape what you see.

Before you dive into orders, products, and campaigns, it helps to know the cockpit you'll be working from every day. The Admin Panel is one consistent workspace — one screen, one navigation structure, every tool a click away.

The workspace at a glance

Everything lives in one dashboard — refunds, storefront design, and revenue reports, without switching apps.
The left-hand navigation is your table of contents for the whole platform, and it adapts to your role.
Features above your plan appear with a lock icon instead of disappearing, so you always know what upgrading would unlock.

A tour of the workspace

When you sign in, you land in a clean three-zone layout: a collapsible left-hand navigation panel, a slim top bar, and the main content area where every screen lives.

The sidebar lists every major section of the platform in labelled groups — Dashboard, Sales, Products, Customers, Online Store, Marketing, Vendors, Analytics, Finance, Plugins, and Settings. On the new admin skin (v2) a Team group sits alongside them for owners and Store Admins. These groups map directly to the product's capabilities, so the sidebar doubles as a table of contents for everything you can do.

If your store has a hosting plan, a Hosting group also appears, sitting between Online Store and Marketing, with a Hosted Apps link into your hosting sites. It's hidden entirely for ecom-only stores.

Two features make it faster to use once you know your way around:

Quick search — a search bar at the top of the sidebar jumps straight to any screen by name, no menu-hunting required.
Collapse to icons — a toggle shrinks the sidebar down to icon-only mode to reclaim screen space; hover over an icon to see its label again. Each section and page has its own distinct icon, so the rail stays readable (for example Suppliers, Leads (CRM), Store team and Counter devices no longer share one generic people icon).

On the new admin sidebar, the collapsed rail keeps a compact footer, top to bottom: a small plan ring, the Settings icon pinned above the bottom button (hover it for a flyout that opens with the Settings hub and lists every settings page), and the sign-out button. The store name tile and its switcher only appear while the sidebar is expanded; expand it to see them. If the sign-out button carries a small amber dot, your plan needs attention: see Plans & Billing for what the dot means and how to clear it.

Two entries are worth knowing by name. Team → Team (new sidebar) is the one place for people and roles; in the classic sidebar the same page opens from the Settings hub. A vendor account sees a Team link instead, and it opens Vendor teams for their own staff. Activity (also in Settings) holds the Store events and Team actions tabs. At the bottom of the Plugins group, BuBu is marked Planned: it opens a preview, not a working assistant (see BuBu, your store assistant (Preview)).

At the foot of the new admin sidebar a plan card shows your plan and a message such as "Renews in N days" (auto-renew on) or "Expires in N days" (auto-renew off), with a matching Renews [date] or Expires [date] line beneath it, and a thin progress bar. The Renew link replaces Upgrade when auto-renew is off or 7 days or fewer remain; a trial shows "Trial · N days left" with Upgrade. The link opens Settings → Billing & Plan, and the whole card is hidden for Staff and vendor accounts. In the 390-pixel drawer the date line is dropped to save room. See Plans & Billing for turning auto-renew on or off.

The sidebar also understands your role. A vendor partner logging in sees only the sections relevant to their shop, and a staff member's menu adapts further still, as described next. The menu you see is always the right menu for who you are — there's no way to accidentally browse to a screen you don't have permission to use.

What a Staff member sees

A team member's navigation adapts to their role at your store, and you don't need to configure anything — it's detected automatically:

If they're set up as a service provider (they have their own availability/calendar because Takes bookings is switched on for them on the Team page, i.e. they're linked to a bookable resource), they land on My Day when they log in and their sidebar shows only Appointments (their own schedule and My Availability), Customers, Support Tickets, and Activity. Dashboard, Orders, Inventory, Products/Categories and Analytics are hidden — a provider's job is running their calendar, not the storefront.
If they're not linked to a bookable resource (a front-desk/retail team member), they see the fuller retail-floor nav: Dashboard, Orders, Inventory, Customers, Documents, Returns & refunds, Shipments, Abandoned Carts, Reviews, Appointments, Support Tickets, and Activity. Analytics and Products/Categories stay admin-only either way.
If your store has no Appointments add-on (and has never recorded an appointment booking), every Staff login gets the second view, landing on Dashboard, and Appointments is left out of the sidebar in both the classic and the new theme. Opening /appointments directly redirects to Dashboard. See Staff and Appointments.

Staff see Activity as a single link and it opens the Store events tab only; the Team actions tab is not offered to them. Vendor accounts have no Activity page.

Both views apply the same way whether the team member is using the classic or new admin theme. If a staff member tries to open a page outside their view directly (e.g. by bookmark or a shared link), they're redirected to their My Day or Dashboard automatically rather than seeing an error.

The top bar

The top bar stays fixed as you move between screens. It shows your subscription status at a glance, a language switcher, and quick access to your profile and sign out.

If you use Shiprocket for shipping, a wallet-balance chip also sits in the top bar, showing your current Shiprocket wallet balance. It's colour-coded so a problem is visible before you try to ship an order: grey at 500 or above, amber between 100 and 499, and red below 100. Click the chip to jump straight to the Shiprocket plugin page and top up. On the new admin, an amber or red chip also adds a small warning symbol and names the tier in its label ("Low: top up soon" or "Critical: shipments may fail"), so the state is not conveyed by colour alone.

On the new admin, the top bar also has a Quick find field that opens the command palette. At 1200 pixels wide and above you see the full field with a magnifier, the Quick find… hint and a ⌘K badge. Between 768 and 1199 pixels it shrinks to a magnifier icon alone, so it no longer crowds the wallet chip; click the icon (or focus it and press Enter or Space) and the Command palette opens just the same, instantly and with no fade, announced to screen readers as "Command palette". Below 768 pixels it is hidden. On any screen you can also press Ctrl+K (⌘K on a Mac) from anywhere in the admin to open the palette, except inside the Store Editor, which keeps that shortcut for its own palette.

Between 1024 and 1199 pixels the top bar also hides your name and role next to your avatar to make room. The avatar and the small arrow stay, and clicking them still opens the profile menu (Profile, Account Settings, Sign out). Widen the window to 1200 pixels or more and the name and role return.

Troubleshooting: where did the search box and my name go?

Nothing is broken. On a narrower window the top bar trades text for space: the Quick find field becomes a magnifier icon (and disappears under 768 pixels), and from 1024 to 1199 pixels your name sits behind the avatar. Widen the browser window to 1200 pixels or more, or zoom out, to see both again. Pressing Ctrl+K or ⌘K opens the search at any width.

On the new admin, screens narrower than 1024px move the version switch (classic or new admin), the wallet chip and the language switcher into the navigation drawer under its header. The wallet and language tiles there appear for Owner and Store Admin accounts only; the version switch is shown to every role.

Editors need a larger screen

The Store Editor, Landing page editor, Site builder, Email template builder and Invoice template builder are desktop-only on the new admin. On a phone-width screen (under 768 pixels) their sidebar links are hidden, and opening one by direct link or bookmark shows Open this on a larger screen with three actions: Copy link, Email me the link and Back to dashboard.

Widen the window, rotate the phone to landscape, or open the link on a laptop and the editor loads without a reload. The check runs once when you open an editor: if you are already editing and the window later shrinks, the editor stays open, so unsaved work is never discarded.

Troubleshooting: why is the editor missing from my phone menu?

It is hidden on purpose below 768 pixels. Everything else in the menu still works on a phone; only the editors are filtered out. If you need the editor right now, use Email me the link and open it on a computer.

Banner messages and Details

Status banners sit across the top of the new admin: a grace-period notice ("Your subscription has expired. N hours remain to renew." with Review billing), the store-details retry banner ("We couldn't load your store details…" with Retry), the failed-shipments notice on Orders and the shipment pages, and the impersonation banner. Each shows one line on desktop and up to two on a phone. When the message is longer than the space, a Details link appears beside it: select it to read the full text and select Hide details to fold it back. If the message already fits, there is no Details link, which is normal.

The notification centre

A bell icon in the top bar shows a live badge whenever something needs your attention. Click it to open a panel with two tabs:

Action Required — shipment issues (a booking that failed and needs a decision from you). This tab opens by default because it's the one that can lose you money if ignored. It catches every shipment-failure notification regardless of exactly how it's classified internally — a booking failure never lands in Updates just because it arrived under a type this list hasn't been explicitly taught about yet.
Updates — everything else: new orders, payments received or failed, refunds initiated or completed, low-stock/out-of-stock/restock alerts, new customer registrations and complaints, new product reviews awaiting moderation, and support ticket activity.

Each tab's label shows a count in parentheses when it has anything in it (e.g. "Action Required (3)"), so you can tell at a glance which tab needs attention without opening either one.

Every notification is a deep link — clicking it takes you to the relevant order, product, or ticket directly, not to a generic inbox. A low-stock alert opens that product's page under Inventory (or the Inventory list when the alert names no product), and a new-review alert opens Reviews pointed at that review (or the Reviews list when it names none). Unread alerts are clearly marked, and you can mark all as read in one action.

Same signal, three places

A failed shipment booking shows up in three places that all read the same underlying failure — the notification bell's Action Required tab, the red banner across the top of the admin panel, and the Action Required cards on the Shipment Overview tab. Acting on it (or acknowledging it) in one place doesn't need to be repeated in the others — they're different views of the same condition, not three separate things to resolve.

Pop-up notifications

Separate from the bell, the new admin confirms what you just did with small pop-up notifications: "Layout applied", a save that failed, a warning before you carry on. They appear in the bottom-right corner of the screen on a computer, stacked newest on top. On a phone they span the width of the screen and sit above the bottom tab bar, so they never cover the tab buttons. Pop-ups are only a confirmation of an action you just took; they are not saved anywhere, so they never appear in the bell panel.

What each kind means and how long it stays

Kind	What it tells you	How long it stays
Success	The action went through.	About 6 seconds, then it leaves on its own.
Info	A neutral heads-up.	About 6 seconds.
Warning	Something needs a second look, but nothing failed.	About 6 seconds.
Error	The action did not go through. Read it, then retry or fix the cause.	Stays until you dismiss it. Errors never time out.
In progress	A spinner while a longer action runs.	Stays until the action finishes.
Success with Undo	The action went through and you can take it back.	About 6 to 8 seconds.

A thin line along the bottom edge of a timed notification shows how much time is left. The countdown pauses while your pointer is over the notifications or while the keyboard focus is inside them, and carries on from where it stopped when you move away, so you can read a long message without it vanishing.

To undo an action

Right after the action, look for the notification with an Undo button (for example, after you apply a layout in the Store Editor's template gallery, Layout applied carries Undo).
Click Undo before the notification leaves. Your previous state is restored and the notification closes.
If it has already gone, the window has closed. Make the change again, or reverse it by hand.

Some failures carry a Retry button instead. For example, when the Store Editor cannot save, the error reads that your changes are still there, and Retry tries the save again. Clicking an action button runs it and closes that notification.

An in-progress notification becomes the result. When an action shows a spinner, the same notification changes in place to a success, or to an error that stays. If you close the spinner before the action finishes, the result still appears afterwards as a new notification, so a failure is never lost silently.

How many show at once. At most three notification cards are visible, and none is removed to make room for another. Any extra ones collapse into a +N more pill after the cards, for example +2 more. When every hidden notification is an error, the pill reads +N more errors (or +1 more error) and is tinted red.

Click the pill to expand: every notification shows, the stack scrolls inside itself if it is long (it grows to about half the window height, never under the top bar), and the pill changes to Show fewer and stays stuck to the bottom edge while you scroll. The empty space around the cards does not block the page behind, so you can keep clicking the screen while the list is open; only the cards and the pill take clicks. Click Show fewer to collapse back to three. The stack also collapses by itself once the notifications fit again.
When more than three are waiting, the three visible slots go to errors first, then in-progress notifications, then everything else, newest first within each group. Errors never time out, so a pile of errors keeps filling the slots until you dismiss them.
A hidden error is still announced to a screen reader the moment it arrives, even though its card is collapsed behind the pill.
If the same message is already on screen, or just appeared a moment ago, it is shown once rather than piling up.

They never hide the last row. While pop-ups are showing, the page keeps extra room at the bottom, as tall as the notifications plus a little air, so you can scroll the last row of a list or form (for example the last Delete button) up above them. The room goes away once the notifications are gone.

Dismiss and reach notifications by keyboard

Click the x on a notification (its accessible name is Dismiss notification) to close it.
Press Tab from the very top of any page: when at least one notification is showing, the first stop is a Skip to notifications link at the top-left corner. Press Enter on it and focus jumps to the newest notification's action button (Undo, Retry), or to its dismiss button when it has no action.
Inside the notifications, Tab moves between the buttons and screen readers announce each new notification (errors are announced immediately; other kinds politely).
Press Esc on a focused notification to close it. Focus goes back to the spot you were working in before you jumped to the notifications, so you carry on where you left off.

Reduced motion. If your computer or phone is set to reduce motion, the illustrations stay still and notifications simply fade in and out in a fraction of a second, with no sliding, gliding or countdown line. Timing and behaviour are otherwise the same.

Troubleshooting: I see fewer notifications than I expected

Only three cards show at a time. If a +N more pill sits below them, click it to see the rest, and click Show fewer to collapse again. A red +N more errors pill means the hidden ones are all errors that are still waiting for you.

Troubleshooting: I missed a notification

A success, info or warning leaves after about 6 seconds. Hover over it, or tab into it, to hold it while you read. If it is already gone, check the page itself for the result, such as the new row, the updated status or the saved value. An error never disappears on its own, so if you saw a notification and it is gone, it was a success, info or warning, or someone closed it with the x or Esc. To see a failure again, repeat the action.

Troubleshooting: a notification is covering a button

Close it with its x, or press Esc while it is focused; it also leaves by itself after about 6 seconds unless it is an error. On a computer it sits in the bottom-right corner. On a normal page, scroll to the bottom and the last row clears the notifications; a button pinned to the corner (such as a page's save bar) is covered only until you dismiss it. The Store Editor does not scroll like a normal page, so there dismiss the notification to reach what is under it. On a phone it sits above the bottom tab bar, so if the page content looks covered, dismiss the notification and the content is fully visible again. These pop-ups are part of the new admin; the classic layout shows its own, older notification card in the same corner.

Light & dark theme

A brightness toggle in the top bar switches the whole panel between light and dark mode instantly. Your choice is remembered across sessions.

Your team & roles

BillionBiz is built for teams, not just solo merchants. The moment you add a second person to your account, roles matter. Every team member is assigned one of five roles, which answers one question: what can this person see and do?

Why roles matter

Giving everyone full access is a shortcut that creates real risk — a new hire accidentally deleting products, a vendor partner viewing your profit margins, or a staff member changing payment gateway settings. Roles let you delegate confidently while keeping sensitive areas protected.

Role	Who it's for	What they can do	What they cannot do
Owner / Super Admin	The business owner or primary account holder	Full access to every feature: billing, subscription, user management, finance (payouts, settlements, transfers), store settings, and all operational screens	No restrictions
Store Admin	A trusted manager running day-to-day operations	Orders, products, customers, marketing, online store design, analytics, reports, vendor management	Cannot access billing, change anyone's admin login, see commission, or touch finance screens. Can add people on the Team page (for example a cashier or a bookable stylist with no admin login)
Staff	Frontline team members — pickers, customer support, content writers	Process orders, manage products and inventory, handle customer tickets, use coupons	Cannot access reports, online store design, branding, marketing configuration, finance, or admin settings
Vendor Admin	The owner of a seller shop inside your marketplace	Manages their own products, orders, shipments, coupons, support tickets, and performance data; can add their own Vendor Staff	Cannot see other vendors' data, access store-wide settings, view finance, or touch customer records outside their own orders
Vendor Staff	An employee working inside a vendor shop	Day-to-day tasks within that vendor's scope — orders and products for their shop only	Cannot manage the vendor shop's settings, team, or access store-level data

Roles are only one part of a person's access. On the Team page (Team → Team) every person also has three optional switches: Takes bookings, Counter (PIN) and Commission. A cashier needs only Counter, and Counter does not require Appointments to be switched on. Each person uses one plan seat however many switches are on. Step-by-step setup is in Team: People, Seats & Access. The screens your teammates use to accept an invite are in Signing In, Password Reset & Team Invites.

How your plan unlocks features

Beyond roles, some capabilities are tied to your subscription plan. When a feature sits above your current plan, it appears in the navigation with a small lock icon rather than disappearing entirely — you can always see what the platform offers and decide whether to upgrade on your own terms.

Features gated by plan include advanced analytics, coupon campaigns, customer support ticketing, audit logs, automated workflows, and third-party plugins, among others. See Pricing & Plans for the full breakdown of what each plan includes.

Next steps

Signing In, Password Reset & Team Invites — the screens you and your teammates use to get into the Admin Panel day to day.
Pricing & Plans — what each plan tier unlocks.