Why can't I see a button?
A friendly explanation of why a colleague sees a button or section that you don't — it's almost always your role, not a fault.
Now and then a colleague will point at a button — "just click Record income" — and you'll look at the same screen and not find it. Or a whole section is in their sidebar and missing from yours. This is the most common "is something broken?" question we get, and the answer is reassuring: it is almost always your role, working exactly as it should — not a bug, and not something you've done wrong.
This page explains why that happens and what to do about it. It's the friendly companion to the full roles reference.
Who can do this. Anyone can read this page — it explains the everyday experience of using WAQAF. Only an Owner or Org Admin can actually change what you're allowed to do, by adjusting your role assignment. See Assigning roles.
The short version
WAQAF gives every person one or more roles in each organisation — Accountant, Finance Manager, CEO, Site Editor, and so on. Your role decides what you can see and do. The dashboard simply hides anything your role can't reach, so the screen stays calm and relevant to your job. That's why two people can look at the same WAQAF and see different menus: they hold different roles.
So when a button or section is missing for you, run through these in order:
- Your role(s) in this organisation don't grant that action.
- You're looking at the wrong organisation — your role can differ per organisation.
- The action belongs to a different approval step than yours.
The rest of this page unpacks each one.
Features are gated by your role
Almost every feature in WAQAF is tied to a permission. When the dashboard builds your sidebar, it checks your role for each module and only shows the ones you can open:
- Hold a finance role and you'll see the Finance section.
- Hold a website role and you'll see the Website section.
- Hold neither and those whole sections simply aren't there.
The same applies inside a section. For example, the small + quick-add next to Income and Expenses only appears if your role can create finance records; a read-only role sees the lists but not the add button.
A missing section or button is expected, not an error. WAQAF hides what your role can't use rather than showing you a button that would only refuse you. If you genuinely need that feature, the fix is a role change, not a bug report — see Assigning roles.
Seeing and changing are separate
WAQAF deliberately splits looking at something from changing it. So you might be able to open the finance lists but not see an Edit or Approve button, because your role grants reading but not writing. The clearest example is the Auditor, who can open and export even the most sensitive financial detail yet has no button to change a single record. This is by design — it lets people review the books without any risk of altering them.
You might be in the wrong organisation
WAQAF can host several organisations, and your role can be different in each one. You might be a Finance Manager in one charity and a read-only viewer in another. So a button that's there in one organisation can be absent in another — same you, different role.
The organisation you're currently working in (the active organisation) is shown at the top of the sidebar, with its name and logo. Everything on screen belongs to that one organisation only.
Check which organisation you're in
Look at the top of the sidebar. The name and logo there tell you which organisation is active — and therefore which set of your roles is in force right now.
Switch, if you belong to more than one
If you're a member of more than one organisation, the organisation name at the top of the sidebar has an up/down arrow and opens a menu. Click it and choose the organisation you meant to work in.
Re-check for the button
After switching, the dashboard reloads with that organisation's data and the roles you hold there. The button you were missing may now appear — or a different one may now be hidden. That's the per-organisation role at work.
If the organisation name at the top of the sidebar has no arrow and won't open a menu, you belong to only one organisation — so there's nothing to switch to, and "wrong organisation" isn't the cause. Move on to the role and approval-step explanations.
Approval steps: you can approve, but not at this point
Some buttons are visible to you but only become active at the right moment. Expense approval is the clearest case. In WAQAF every expense runs through a fixed chain of sign-offs — Accountant, then Finance Manager, then CEO. Your role decides whether you can approve at all; the chain decides whose turn it is right now.
So if an expense is sitting at the Finance Manager step, the CEO won't yet see an active Approve button for it — not because they lack permission, but because it isn't their turn in the chain. Once the earlier step is done, the expense moves on and the next approver can act.
A Finance Manager may approve the CEO step on the CEO's behalf when the CEO is unavailable, so the chain doesn't get stuck. This is a deliberate fallback, not a loophole.
You can hold more than one role
People in a charity often wear more than one hat, so WAQAF lets one person hold several roles at once — for example Finance Manager and Auditor. When you do, your permissions are combined: you can do anything that any of your roles allows. There's no need for a separate login per job, and the roles never cancel each other out — they only ever add up.
This is also why the cure for a missing button is usually small: rather than swapping your whole role, an Owner or Org Admin can simply add the one role that grants what you need.
How to get the button back
If you've checked the three causes above and you still need a feature your role doesn't grant, the next step is a quick word with whoever runs your charity:
- An Owner or Org Admin opens your member record and adjusts your role assignment.
- They can add a role, swap one, or remove one — it takes effect the next time you reload.
- You can't change your own role, and neither can a colleague at your level. This guard is intentional: it keeps sensitive access in the hands of the people responsible for it.
See Assigning roles for the exact steps your Owner or Org Admin will follow, and the roles reference for what each role can do.