Organizations and members

A Business Account (organization) gives your team one shared library, one billing trail, and one place to manage who has access to what. This page covers how to set it up, how to invite people, and the difference between the two roles — Admin and User.

If you're a single reader and not part of a team, you can keep working on a personal account and skip this page entirely.

What an organization gives you

One shared library. Every standard purchased under the organization — permanent PDFs, E-Library reads, Subscriptions — is visible to every active member.
Volume discounts that follow the team. Buying multi-license documents for an organization triggers volume tiers automatically (see the Purchasing Standards guide for the per-line mechanics).
Centralised billing. Invoices are issued to the organization, payable via card / PayPal / bank transfer per the standard Checkout flow.
Role-based access with two simple roles (Admin, User) — see below.

What an organization is not:

It is not a per-seat license. Adding someone to the org gives them visibility of the org's library, but each PDF/E-Library/sub still has its own license count that governs concurrent reads.
It is not a paid plan. Memberships are free; you only pay for the standards you buy.

Creating an organization

If you don't already have one:

Go to Account → Organizations.
Click New organization.
Fill in the company name, address, VAT/Tax ID (if applicable), and optional website.
Save. You're now the first Admin of that organization.

You can belong to multiple organizations at the same time — useful for consultants, contractors, or anyone who works under more than one corporate identity. The account selector at the top of the checkout (and other places) lets you pick which organization an action belongs to.

The two roles

Every member of an organization is either an Admin or a User. There are no other roles.

Admin

Admins can do everything. Specifically:

Invite new members and manage outstanding invitations.
Approve or reject join requests from people who found the organization on their own.
Promote a User to Admin.
Demote another Admin to User (with one safety rail — see below).
Remove any member from the organization.
Buy standards, manage Subscriptions, edit billing details, download invoices.
Edit the organization's profile (name, address, VAT, etc.).

Admins typically include the team lead, a finance/procurement contact, and at least one technical owner. We recommend at least two Admins so the organization isn't blocked if one is on leave.

User (regular member)

Users are the team's readers. They can:

See and read every standard in the organization's library — permanent PDFs, E-Library reads, and Subscription content.
Annotate standards opened under a Subscription via the Engineering Workplace (with the same Private/Shared model described in the Engineering Workplace guide).
Download permanent PDF copies they have a license seat for.

Users cannot:

Invite or remove members.
Change anyone's role.
Make purchases under the organization.
Edit billing details or the organization profile.

The "last admin" safety rail

The platform will not let an organization end up with zero admins:

The Demote button on the only remaining admin is hidden.
The Remove button on the only remaining admin is hidden.

If you genuinely need to step down as the sole admin: promote someone else to Admin first, then demote or remove yourself.

Inviting members

Admins invite by email from Account → Organizations → [your org] → Invites.

Click the + button (top right of the invites panel).
Type the invitee's name and email, plus an optional personal message.
Click Invite. The recipient gets an email with a link to accept.
The invite shows in the Invites panel as Sent — [date].

When the recipient clicks the link in the email and signs in (or creates an account) they're added to your organization as a User (not an Admin) by default. Promote them later if needed.

You can remove an outstanding invitation at any time from the Invites panel — the link in the recipient's email then no longer works.

Approving join requests

Some people find your organization without an invitation (typically through a colleague's referral). They can request to join from the organization's profile page; admins see the request in the Requests panel and approve or reject it.

Approving a request promotes the requester to User. Rejecting it declines the request and the requester is informed.

Promoting and demoting

From the Members panel:

Each row shows the member's avatar, name, and contact details.
Admins are marked with an Admin ribbon at the top-left of the row.
The toolbar on the right of each row shows the actions you can take on that member.

Promote a User to Admin. Click Promote on a User row. Confirm the dialog. The Admin ribbon appears immediately and the member gains admin powers right away.

Demote an Admin to User. Click Demote on an Admin row. Confirm the dialog. (Hidden if this is the last admin — see the safety rail.) The Admin ribbon disappears and the member's powers shrink to the User set.

Remove a member. Click Remove on any row. Confirm. The member is detached from the organization and loses visibility of its library. The standards they read while a member stay in the organization's library — they don't take licenses with them.

Note. Removing yourself from an organization is the same flow as removing anyone else. If you're the only Admin, promote someone first.

What happens when a member leaves

The member loses access to the organization's library immediately.
Standards purchased under the organization remain with the organization, not the departing member.
Annotations the departing member published under any Subscription remain visible to the team (see the Engineering Workplace guide for details on the post-departure annotation policy).
Their Engineering Workplace private annotations stay attached to their account and reappear if they ever rejoin.

Frequently asked

Is there a per-member fee? No. Memberships are free. You pay only for the standards (and Subscriptions) the organization buys.

How many members can an organization have? There's no hard cap. Add as many as you need.

Can a single user belong to two organizations? Yes. Each membership is independent — different role in each, if you like.

Can a User see what's been purchased recently? Users see the organization's library (every readable document) but not the billing/order history. Order history and invoices are admin-only.

A teammate accepted an invite but I don't see them in members. Refresh the Members panel, or check whether the invitation was addressed to the email they actually signed in with. If they signed in with a different email, the invite is still pending; remove it and re-send to the correct address.

An invite expired or was lost. Remove the existing invite from the Invites panel and re-send a fresh one.

Can I move purchases from a personal account to a business account (or the reverse)? Not directly. Each purchase is tied to the account that paid for it. For new purchases, pick the right account at checkout up front.

Tips

Always have at least two Admins. Single-admin organizations get stuck the first time the admin is on leave.
Promote selectively. Admins can spend money on behalf of the organization. Keep the Admin role to people who should be able to do that.
Use organizations even for small teams. Two engineers reading the same standards already justifies a Business Account — the first volume discount typically pays for the setup time many times over.
Pick the right account at checkout. Personal-account purchases live with you; business-account purchases live with the team. Switching after the fact is awkward — see the Checkout guide for the account selector.