When we first built Frappe CRM, we built it for ourselves. And permissions were intentionally simple. Frappe (the company) has always had a fairly open sales culture internally, so if you were part of the sales team, you could see all Leads and Deals in the system with no filters or restrictions. The idea was simple: visibility helps collaboration.

But as more companies began using Frappe CRM across larger teams, departments, regions, and verticals, open visibility started feeling less like a feature and more like a problem. Managers wanted oversight of their teams. Reps wanted their pipeline to themselves. Turns out both are reasonable things to want. Some customers even jokingly told us, “We don’t want reps stealing each other’s deals.” Fair enough.

As organizations grow, permissions become less about restriction and more about structure. Different teams need different levels of visibility. That's what led us to introduce Sales Hierarchy in Frappe CRM.

But before we get into that, it's useful to understand how permissions already work in Frappe CRM today because there's actually quite a lot happening under the hood.