Everything you need to run EMPOBase.

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

Each organisation gets its own EMPOBase tenant — its own subdomain, its own database, its own file storage in Google Cloud Storage. Tenants do not share rows; there is no cross-tenant query path.

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 tenant's first super_admin.
• 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, 500 MB 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 platform-level, not tenant-level

There is exactly one super_admin per EMPOBase deployment — typically the operator who owns the Cloud Run instance. They always act as Owner inside any tenant, regardless of role assignments. Inside the tenant itself, all authority flows through the Owner role and the permission catalog. Tenants never see or assign super_admin; it lives at the platform layer.

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

Name, designation, duty station, line manager, contract type, contract end. Filter and search; HR exports CSV per station.

Leave & compensation

Per-station public holiday calendars; leave types you define (annual, sick, R&R, study). Compensation tab is HR-only and is gated by per-row permission so finance can't read someone else's salary band.

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.

Safeguarding declarations

Renewable record, not a one-time PDF. Surface a banner at sign-in when a declaration is due. Logged immutably for audit.

Project budgets

Line-item budget per project with budget-vs-actuals updated as procurements land. Variance highlighted at >10%.

Procurement workflow

PR → PO → invoice → payment, with approver routing by designation. Free and Starter get the basic single-approver flow; Team adds multi-step; Pro adds custom approval matrices.

Donor reporting

Donor reporting pack varies by tier — Basic (Starter+), Standard (Team), Advanced (Pro), Custom (Enterprise). IATI XML export ships on Pro+.

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. All auditor reads are logged.

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

admin and super_admin can switch tier from this page. 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. Access flows through an authenticated 15-minute signed URL — there are no public file URLs. Per-tenant bucket isolation is on the roadmap.

KoboToolbox / ODK

Map a form to an indicator. Every new submission auto-creates a field-report row + bumps the indicator numerator. 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. BYOK calls (Team+) are not counted against the quota.

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.