Learn the portal, module by module.

Who it is for

Country offices, INGO field operations, national NGOs, and small CSOs that need a single portal instead of four spreadsheets, two databases, and a folder share. Designed for teams of three through three hundred.

How tenants work

Organizations share one Cloud SQL database. Authenticated organization context, organization-qualified queries, and role-based access controls limit access.

Steps

Open app.empobase.com → Create account.

• Pick Sign up with Google or Sign up with Microsoft (recommended) or email + password.
• Verify your email if you chose password sign-up.
• Land on the Overview dashboard as your organisation's Global Admin — the HQ-level administrator who can appoint Admins.
• Programs → New project → fill the basics (name, country office, donor, start/end dates).

Free vs paid limits

Free covers 1 project, 3 users, 5 indicators, 1 GB storage — enough to kick the tyres. Paid tiers unlock more capacity and module-specific features. Plan & Billing in Settings shows current usage against your cap.

Invite flow

Settings → User Management → Invite user. Enter their email, assign one or more roles (the 7 presets — Owner, Tenant Admin, Country Director, Programme Manager, Finance & Admin Officer, MEAL Officer, Field Officer — or any custom role you have defined), and send.

How seats are counted

Read-only "viewer" users count as half a seat. So a Team-tier tenant with 25 seats can mix 10 editors + 30 viewers (10 + 15 = 25). The Plan & Billing usage block surfaces the math in real time.

Seven preset roles, edit anything except Owner

Out of the box: Owner (full control, immortal — only platform owners can delete or rename it), Tenant Admin (manages settings + users + billing), Country Director (read-only oversight across every module + financial approval + external-auditor invites), Programme Manager (Programs + MEAL + Documents read/write), Finance & Admin Officer (Finance approve + HR — a common dual hat at small/mid Myanmar NGOs), MEAL Officer (MEAL read/write + export), Field Officer (read-only field staff).

• Rename any preset to match your org chart — "Programme Manager" → "Programme Director" in two clicks.
• Tune permissions per role — give your MEAL Officer audit-export rights without elevating them to admin.
• Add new custom roles — "Donor Liaison", "Safeguarding Lead", "Field Coordinator".
• Delete any non-Owner role — the system blocks deletion of roles with active members so you reassign first.

One user can hold multiple roles

Common at small NGOs: one person is both MEAL Officer and Field HR; the Programme Manager covers Finance approvals while the FO is on leave. Assign multiple roles to the same user and EMPOBase grants the union of their permissions automatically. No artificial "MEAL + HR Officer" hybrid roles, no over-grant via Tenant Admin.

32-permission catalog

Per-module read / write / special permissions for HR, Programs, MEAL, Finance, Documents, Logistics, Governance, Announcements, and Policies. Plus cross-cutting: tenant settings, user invite/manage, audit view/export, audit-session create/review, AI use, AI BYOK keys, integrations, data export, and role management itself. Server-curated — every API call verifies against this catalog.

super_admin is a platform operator role, not one of your roles

super_admin belongs to the EMPOBase platform operator, not to your organisation — it is the role used to run the service itself. It does not carry a blanket bypass into your data: a platform principal reaches your records only through an explicit grant, apart from a narrow user- and role-administration allowance. Inside your organisation all authority flows through Global Admin, Admin and the permission catalog. You never see or assign super_admin.

What's in it

Welcome banner with completion progress · Today's alerts · Project KPI cards · Recent activity feed · Quick actions (new field report, new approval, invite staff).

How it routes

Every card has a "go to module" link. The dashboard never holds data exclusively — it surfaces what already lives in MEAL, Programs, HR, etc.

What you get per project

Identification: problem tree, objective tree, stakeholder register, constraints log.

• Planning: log frame (Goal/Outcome/Output/Activity), assumptions, indicators per row.
• Approvals: RACI matrix that knows about your real staff directory.
• Execution: change-control board with versioned approvals.
• Closure: lessons learned, final donor report templates.

How Programs links to MEAL

Every log-frame row that has an indicator pulls the indicator card from the 235-row humanitarian library (or your custom indicators). Updating the indicator value updates the project KPI on the Overview dashboard.

Indicator library

Pre-loaded with WASH, Health, Education, Protection, Food Security, Livelihoods, Shelter, and Nutrition indicators. Each carries documented numerator, denominator, frequency, and disaggregation. Aligned with Sphere, the WASH Cluster, INEE Minimum Standards, the FSC, GBV AoR, and the IATI Standard.

Six field-reporting types

SitRep · Activity report · MEAL report · Incident report · Beneficiary registration · Distribution log. Each has its own form; data flows directly into the results framework.

Live dashboards

Filter by camp, district, partner, or donor. Export to CSV, PDF, or (Pro+) IATI-compliant XML.

Staff directory and profiles

Name, designation, duty station, line manager, contract type and contract end, with per-section profile access (personal, employment, family, documents, reporting line) so a manager sees only the sections their role allows. Identity documents — passport, national ID, work permit, visa — are tracked with expiry dates. Filter and search; HR exports CSV per station.

Leave

Leave types and policy caps you define, with public holidays as a built-in type, and self-service requests approved through the reporting line. Overlapping requests and double-spent entitlements are rejected on the server, and team coverage shows availability only, never the reason for leave.

Timesheets and labour cost

Staff read and edit only their own timesheets; approval is limited to the direct line manager and self-approval is blocked. On approval the server derives the labour cost from the salary band it holds, splits it by project, and posts one balanced journal to the Finance ledger — a repeated approval never posts twice.

Compensation and payroll summary

Pay grades and per-staff salary records sit behind dedicated compensation permissions rather than the general HR permission, so finance and HR colleagues cannot read a salary band by default. Pay review cycles, benefit plans and enrolments are recorded, and a payroll summary shows aggregated employer cost per period. Basic equity checks compare pay by gender within each grade and by department against the organisation median, and suppress any cohort under five people. EMPOBase does not compute payroll tax or social contributions, produce payslips or file statutory returns.

Staff lifecycle

Onboarding, probation review, contract decision, role change and offboarding events are derived from each profile's join date, contract end and employment status, so nothing goes stale or gets duplicated. Each event carries a checklist with owners and dates; contract-end and exit dates stay behind HR write access.

Safeguarding, grievance and casework

Signed PSEA and code-of-conduct declarations are a renewable record with expiry, not a one-time PDF, and a banner appears at sign-in when one is due. The safeguarding programme workspace holds policy status, reporting channels, the focal point (visible to every staff member) and a risk register. Grievance and disciplinary cases are handled as confidential casework with their own access rules.

Staff care, emergency planning and surveys

Duty of care and emergency planning in one workspace: emergency sites with routes and communication trees, wardens, drill records, an organisation readiness checklist and reminders to staff who have not filed an emergency contact. Staff Voice runs surveys with a separate respond permission that every staff member has by default; managing surveys and reading the aggregate needs HR write access.

Talent, recruitment, vault and analytics

Talent and development records belong to the staff member, with a manager view by workflow status and HR cycle templates. Recruitment runs an applicant tracking pipeline per tenant. The confidential vault stores documents the server cannot read — encrypted before upload, no administrator shortcut, its own access log. HR analytics shows only figures the server can reconcile with the workspace that owns the data.

Organogram

Drag-and-drop the org chart in Settings → Organogram. Powers the RACI dropdowns in every Programs project so the "who is responsible" cell can't reference a person who no longer exists.

General ledger and journals

Your own chart of accounts with statement classifications. Every journal must balance — the server rejects an entry whose debits and credits differ — and each line can carry a project, a grant and grant budget line, and a fund with its restriction class, so one posting serves the ledger, budget vs actual and restricted-fund tracking at once. Recurring rules prepare draft journals for review; cost allocation and indirect-cost recovery post as journals too.

Approvals, period locks and corrections

Payment requests move through the approval chain and amount ceilings you configure; the final approval posts the balanced journal once. Closing an accounting month is enforced on the server for every role — a posting dated into a closed period is refused, and reopening it is a separate, audited act reserved for finance approvers. Posted entries are never edited in place: a reversal entry corrects them, and claim revisions follow an explicit correction policy.

Multi-currency

Set an organisation functional currency. Each entry keeps its original currency, amount, rate and rate date next to the functional amount. Exchange rates are maintained per organisation by your finance team (not pulled from a live feed), and revaluations post as their own journals so the trail stays visible.

Project and grant budgets

Line-item budgets per project and per grant, with budget vs actual updated as procurements land and journals post. Restricted funds are tracked through commitments and restriction classes, so you can see what is spent, committed and still available per award.

Procure to pay

Requisition → purchase order → goods receipt → payment approval → posted journal, with approver routing by designation and separation of duties across the chain. Approval chains and thresholds are configured per organisation.

Financial statements and grant reporting

Statements are built from your chart-of-accounts classifications, including functional expenses (program, management and general, fundraising). Grant finance, sub-grants and a reporting calendar sit alongside them in Finance. IATI XML export ships on Pro+.

Payroll accounting boundary

Payroll allocation records — each payroll run's cost split across projects, cost centres and budget lines — reach Finance as sealed totals per run, period and project, with an exception flag when a split does not add up to 100%; no names, salary rows or bank details cross into the ledger view. Approved timesheets post labour cost per project to the ledger. EMPOBase does not compute payroll tax or social contributions, produce payslips or file statutory returns; that stays with your payroll provider or accountant.

Stock & distributions

Stock at each location, with movement logs that double as distribution evidence for donor reports. Each distribution links to a project + activity.

Asset register

Tag, custodian, location, status (in-use / under-repair / disposed). Required by most donor agreements; usually a separate spreadsheet — here it sits one click away from procurement.

What goes here

Anything you'd otherwise email or stash in Drive: MoUs, contracts, organisational policies, donor templates, training decks. PDFs and Office files are previewed in-app; everything else downloads.

Access control

Folders carry permission flags by designation. The Compensation folder, for example, defaults to HR + ED only. Override per file when needed.

Board & meetings

Board membership roster, meeting minutes, resolutions, attendance. Annual register exports for charity-commission filings.

Conflict-of-interest

Annual declaration cycle, renewed automatically. Staff get a sign-in prompt when due; logged in the audit trail.

Creating an announcement

Top bar → bell → New announcement. Title + body + optional attachment. Choose audience: everyone, designation set, or station.

EN ↔ MY translation

Team+ tiers get one-click translation between English and Burmese (Phase 1.5 AI feature). French / Spanish / Portuguese on the roadmap.

Policy types

One-time (e.g. Code of Conduct on hire), renewable (e.g. annual safeguarding refresher), event-triggered (e.g. updated travel policy on country security level change).

Evidence trail

Every acknowledgement is timestamped + IP-logged + tied to the policy version. Auditor-ready CSV export.

Audit tokens

Each token has a start + end date and a scope (which projects, which years). Revocable at any time. The portal records available actions.

Evidence packs

One-click "evidence pack" generates a PDF bundle of the audit-relevant docs (procurement, beneficiary lists, indicator reports). Designed for compliance reviewers who don't want to learn a new tool.

Usage gauges

Real-time count of users + projects + storage against the tier cap. Bar turns yellow at 80%, red at 100%. Banner suggests an upgrade if you're near the limit.

Changing tier

Global Admin and Admin can switch tier from this page; the platform operator role cannot. Downgrade refuses if current usage exceeds the lower tier's cap (you have to delete or archive first).

Logo upload

PNG, JPG, or WebP. 2 MB max per file. SVG is blocked for security (XSS risk).

Custom domain (Pro+)

Pro and Enterprise tiers can serve at .empobase.com or a CNAMEd domain. Contact support to provision.

Soft delete

Removing a user soft-deletes them — sessions are killed and they disappear from the directory, but their historical actions (approvals, audit-log entries) stay intact. Hard delete is admin-only and irrevocable.

Where files live

Every uploaded file goes to private Google Cloud Storage. EMPOBase checks authorization before issuing a 15-minute signed download URL. There are no public file URLs.

Field data collection

Map a form to an indicator. A new submission lands in the staging queue as pending — it is not a result yet. A reviewer approves or rejects it, and only an approved submission writes to indicator actuals; pending and rejected submissions are never counted. Team gets manual sync; Pro gets automated.

Audit-trail export (Team+)

CSV export of the audit log filtered by date range, actor, or action. Designed for auditor packets and incident investigations.

Daily message quota

Free 10 / Starter 50 / Team 250 / Pro 1000 / Enterprise unlimited, per user per day. Calls made with your own AI provider key are not counted against the quota, on any tier.

What it can do

Indicator suggestion from the 235-row library, EN↔MY translation for field reports + announcements, Weekly Digest, progressive section reveal on Draft-all field reports, Document RAG knowledge base (Pro+).

Where to reach us

Product questions: hello@empobase.com. Security disclosures: security@empobase.com. Privacy / DPA: privacy@empobase.com.

Cadence

One release a month, last Friday. Hotfixes ship as needed and are noted inline. Roadmap drift (e.g. "moved to Q3") is also called out so customers can plan.