What this article helps with: Understanding exactly who at your firm can draft, review, approve, and manage disbursements, plus how to add and remove approvers 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 approve a payment or add an approver.

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.

Key Terms

What do you mean when you say...

Role = the standard Hona role every user already has: Team User, User, or Admin.
Disbursement permission = an extra permission granted on top of a role. There are two: Approver and Disbursement Admin.
Drafting = creating a disbursement. This does not send anything or move any money.
Approving = signing off on a drafted disbursement. This is what generates the client's payment link and sends it.

How the permission model works

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

Your Hona role: Team User, User, or Admin. Every user already has one.
Your disbursement permissions: Approver and/or Disbursement Admin. These are optional and can be granted to any role, including a Team User.

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

The three rules that matter most

Anyone can draft. Only Approvers can approve. This is deliberate. It means a case manager or paralegal can queue up a payout without ever being able to release funds.
Only a Disbursement Admin can add or remove Approvers, or appoint and remove another Disbursement Admin. No other role or permission combination can do this, including a firm Admin who is not a Disbursement Admin.
Being a Disbursement Admin does not let you approve payments. Approving requires the Approver permission specifically. A Disbursement Admin can grant Approver to themselves, but the two permissions are separate.

Full permissions matrix

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

Capability	Team User	User	Admin	+ Approver	+ Disb. Admin
Access the Disbursements tab	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Draft / create a disbursement	Own cases only	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
View disbursements, including the audit log	Own cases only	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Review a disbursement	Own cases only	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Approve a disbursement	No	No	No	Yes	No
See who the approvers are	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Add or remove approvers	No	No	No	No	Yes
Add / remove other Disbursement Admins	No	No	No	No	Yes
View connection status and connected bank accounts	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Manage the Confido connection	No	No	No	No	Yes
Rename bank accounts	No	No	No	No	Yes
Edit the client messages on a disbursement being drafted	Own cases only	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
View the default client message templates	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Edit the default client message templates	No	No	Yes	No	Yes

A note on the Team User role

Team User is a case-scoped role. On its own, a Team User can draft, view, and review disbursements only for the cases they are a member of, and they do not see the firm-wide Disbursements tab at all.

If you grant a Team User the Approver or Disbursement Admin permission, they get that permission's full access, including the Disbursements tab. So permissions are not limited by the role they sit on top of.

The Disbursement Admin

How it gets assigned

Your firm's first Disbursement Admin is assigned automatically to the person who completes your firm's enrollment and bank connection. Nobody hands it out manually.

Once your firm is live, any Disbursement Admin can add or remove other Disbursement Admins. So you are not stuck with whoever clicked first, and if that person leaves or was the wrong choice, an existing Disbursement Admin can hand it to someone else without involving support.

How to find out who yours is

Go to Manage Connection at app.hona.com/disbursements/connection. Your firm's Disbursement Admins and Approvers are both listed there.

If your Disbursement Admin has left the firm, another Disbursement Admin can add whoever should take over. If they were your only one, email [email protected] and we can reassign it.

What a Disbursement Admin controls

Adding and removing other Disbursement Admins
Adding and removing Approvers
Managing the Confido connection
Renaming connected bank accounts
Editing the default client message templates

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.

Approvers

How to add or remove an approver

Make sure you are a Disbursement Admin. If you are not, nobody else can do this for you except another Disbursement Admin.
Go to Manage Connection at app.hona.com/disbursements/connection.
In the Approvers section, pick the team member you want to grant the permission to. If they are not in your Hona org yet, a Hona Admin will need to add them as a user first.
Removing an approver works the same way, from the same screen.

Who should be an approver

In most firms, approvers are the people who would otherwise be signing or printing the checks: someone on the accounting or finance team, an office manager, or a partner. Case managers and paralegals typically draft but do not approve.

A note on internal controls. Hona does not force separation of duties. If a person holds the Approver permission, they can draft a disbursement and approve their own draft. If your firm wants a second set of eyes on every payout, you will need to enforce that as a process rather than relying on the software to block it. 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.

FAQs

I clicked to add an approver and nothing happened. Why?

Almost always because you are not a Disbursement Admin. Only Disbursement Admins can grant the Approver permission. Check the Manage Connection page to see who your Disbursement Admins are and ask one of them, or contact [email protected].

I am a firm Admin in Hona. Why can I not add an approver?

Because adding approvers is tied to the Disbursement Admin permission, not to the Hona Admin role. This is intentional: it keeps control of who can release client funds narrow and deliberate rather than tied to general system administration. A Disbursement Admin can grant Disbursement Admin to you.

Can we have more than one Disbursement Admin, or more than one approver?

Yes to both. Most firms have at least two approvers so payouts do not stall when someone is out, and more than one Disbursement Admin for the same reason. Any Disbursement Admin can add another from the Manage Connection page, so this is something your firm controls directly.

Can a case manager change the message our client receives?

On the specific disbursement they are drafting, yes. Anyone who can draft can adjust the client messages for that one payout, which is useful when a case needs a personal note.

The reusable default templates are more locked down: only a Hona Admin or a Disbursement Admin can change those. If your firm would rather nobody edited per-disbursement messages, note that approvers see the message content in the review screen before approving, so it can be caught there.

Does the audit log show who did what?

Yes. Each disbursement carries its own audit log showing who drafted it, every field that was edited with the before and after values, who approved it, and the payment events from Confido. Anyone who can view a disbursement can see its audit log; there is no separate permission for it.

Conclusion

The short version: anyone can draft, only Approvers can approve, and only Disbursement Admins can decide who the Approvers are. Everything else is set from the Manage Connection page. Questions? Chat with our support team or email [email protected].

Disbursements Permissions: Disbursement Admin and Approvers