What this article helps with: Understanding exactly who at your firm can draft, review, approve, and manage disbursements, plus how your firm's first Disbursement Admin gets designated, how to grant those permissions, and how to find out who your Disbursement Admin is.

Who this is for: Firm admins, Disbursement Admins, and anyone who has hit a permission wall while trying to draft a disbursement, approve a payment, or open the Disbursements page.

When not to use this article: If you are looking for general Hona user roles and how to add staff to your org, see "How to Add/Edit Users in Your Hona Org". This article only covers the disbursement-specific permissions layered on top.

There are two independent things at play, and they stack:

What you can actually do is the combination of both. A Team User who is granted Approver gets everything a Team User can do plus everything Approver unlocks.

This one surprises people, so it is worth stating on its own. A firm Admin who holds none of the three disbursement permissions cannot draft and cannot approve. Firms hand the Admin role out fairly freely for day to day system administration, and moving client money is a different kind of authority. Keeping the two separate is deliberate.

The Admin role holds exactly one disbursement power: designating your firm's first Disbursement Admin, and only before enrollment begins. Once enrollment has started, the Admin role on its own grants nothing here. A firm Admin without a disbursement permission can open the Disbursements page and see it, but cannot draft, approve, begin or continue enrollment, connect a bank account, or change who holds any permission — and they no longer see drafting options in case tables either.

A Hona Admin can still do Admin things, including editing the default client message templates. They just cannot create or release a payment without a disbursement permission.

The three right-hand columns show what each permission adds on top of whatever role the user already has.

* The Disbursements tab appears in navigation only for firm Admins and for team members holding a disbursement permission. There is no setting that widens this, and followers never see it. What the page shows depends on what you hold: the firm-wide page for an Approver or Disbursement Admin, the same page scoped to your own drafts for a Drafter, and a page a firm Admin with none of the three can see but not act on.

† The Team User role does not get the Disbursements tab at all, whichever disbursement permission is granted on top of it. Team Users work from their cases. See the note below.

There is one Disbursements page, and everybody who can reach it gets the same one. What changes is how much of your firm it is showing you.

A Drafter gets the real page, not a cut-down version. Every part of it works the same way it does for an approver. The difference is that it is counting only the disbursements you drafted.

You will never see a row, a count, or a dollar figure that includes somebody else's disbursement.

You will hear when things move. You do not have to keep checking it. You are emailed about every status change on any disbursement you drafted, and that part cannot be switched off, so you find out when something you prepared is approved, lands, fails, or gets canceled. The one exception is the Accessed status: when your client opens their payment link, the status updates in Hona but no email goes out for that step. See "Disbursement Statuses and Notifications" for the rest of the notification settings.

The Disbursements item in the left navigation and the Disbursements tab on a case follow one rule: they are visible only to firm Admins and to team members holding a disbursement permission — Drafter, Approver, or Disbursement Admin. This is not configurable, there is no firm setting that widens it, and followers never see either one.

For everyone else the tab is simply absent rather than visible-but-restricted. Opening the Disbursements page by a direct link without a permission shows who your firm's Disbursement Admins are, with contact details, so you know who to ask.

In practice this means a case manager who fields "where is my money?" calls needs a disbursement permission to see a case's disbursement status. Drafter is the safe one to grant for that: a Drafter cannot release any money.

Your firm's first Disbursement Admin is designated by a firm Admin, before enrollment begins. Enrollment cannot start until someone holds the permission: only a Disbursement Admin can begin or continue enrollment, connect bank accounts, or manage disbursement roles.

A firm Admin does this from the designation panel on the Disbursements setup page, in one of three ways:

The person you designate does not need to be a Hona Admin. Regular users are the typical choice: most firms designate the finance or accounting staff member who will actually run disbursements.

Enrollment no longer assigns the permission automatically. Completing enrollment used to make the submitter the Disbursement Admin at approval; that behavior has been removed, and designation by a firm Admin is now the only way the first one comes to exist. A regular user who opens the setup page before anyone has been designated sees who the firm Admins are, so they know who to ask.

Once the first Disbursement Admin exists, any Disbursement Admin can add or remove other Disbursement Admins. So you are not stuck with the first choice: if that person leaves or was the wrong pick before enrollment has started, a firm Admin simply designates a replacement, and after that an existing Disbursement Admin can hand it to someone else without involving support.

Go to the Settings tab of the Disbursements page at app.hona.com/disbursements/connection. This tab used to be called Manage Connection, and old links to it still work. Your firm's Disbursement Admins, Approvers, and Drafters are all listed there, on the Disbursement Permissions card under Admins, Approvers, and Drafters.

If you do not hold a disbursement permission and are not a firm Admin, you will not see Disbursements in your navigation at all. You still do not need to go looking: opening the page by direct link shows who your Disbursement Admins are, with their email addresses.

If a Disbursement Admin has left the firm, another Disbursement Admin can add whoever should take over. If they were your only one, what happens next depends on where your firm is. Before enrollment has started, a firm Admin simply designates a replacement. Once enrollment has started, or your firm is enrolled, disbursement management locks and the page shows "Disbursement management is locked: no active Disbursements Admin remains at your firm. Contact Hona support to restore access." Only Hona support can restore an admin at that point: email [email protected].

A Disbursement Admin can also draft and approve disbursements without being granted Drafter or Approver separately. The permission includes both.

A Disbursement Admin does not need to be a Hona Admin. Firms often make an accounting or finance staff member the Disbursement Admin while leaving their Hona role as a regular User. External bookkeeping or accounting consultants can hold it too.

You do not need to grant Drafter to someone who is already an Approver or a Disbursement Admin. They can already draft.

One thing to check before you grant: if the person's Hona role is Team User, the permission works but they will not get a Disbursements page, so they draft and track entirely from their cases. If that is not what you want, move them to the User role first.

Drafter is for the people who prepare the payout. At most firms that is the accounting or finance team, since they are the ones computing the settlement, subtracting fees, costs, and liens, and arriving at the client's number. Some firms also give it to case managers or paralegals who handle the client relationship. It is a safe permission to hand out: a Drafter cannot release any money, and they only see what they drafted themselves.

Approver is for the people who would otherwise be signing or printing the checks: a controller, an office manager, or a partner. This is also the permission that opens up the firm-wide view.

Disbursement Admin is for whoever owns the banking relationship and decides who else gets access. Most firms keep this to one or two people.

Small firms often skip Drafter entirely and give Approver to the two or three people who touch money. Drafter earns its keep at volume, where the person preparing forty payouts in a morning should not also be the person releasing them.

A note on internal controls. Hona does not force separation of duties. Anyone who can approve can also draft, which means an Approver can approve their own draft, and a Disbursement Admin can draft, approve, and send a payout alone. If your firm wants a second set of eyes on every payout, split the permissions deliberately: give the accounting staff Drafter only, and keep Approver with someone else. Every draft, every edit, and every approval is recorded in the audit log with the person's name attached, so the trail exists either way.

The short version: drafting requires Drafter, Approver, or Disbursement Admin, and a Hona role alone is never enough. Approvers can draft. Disbursement Admins can draft and approve. Your firm's first Disbursement Admin is designated by a firm Admin before enrollment begins; after that, only a Disbursement Admin decides who holds what. The Disbursements tab, in navigation and on a case, appears only for firm Admins and permission holders: Approvers and Disbursement Admins see the whole firm, a Drafter sees what they drafted, a firm Admin can look but not act, and Team Users work from their cases. Permissions are all set from the Settings tab of the Disbursements page. Questions? Chat with our support team or email [email protected].