In the world of B2B commerce, it's important that your webstore can react to the diverse needs of different types of customers. Roles is a powerful feature that allows you to personalize the store capability for every logged in user.

To access roles go to the main menu of your Admin and click on Customers → Roles

You will now be presented with a list of 5 system roles. To understand what capability each system role provides, click on the view role button to get a list of the features that are associated with that role. 

It's important to note that system roles cannot be edited, however they can be cloned. Once a role is cloned, it is completely editable and can be customized to your needs.
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This would not only allow you to edit account module permissions, but also allow you to edit global permissions. 

This global permission allows the option to hide credit card payment methods during checkout for users assigned to that role.

Once you become familiar with the roles and their capabilities, you can now start to assign them to users. This can be done one of two ways. The first way is to go to the customers > all users section in the Adminscreen, select a single user or multi select users, and then from the dropdown box select change user role. Now select the appropriate role from the dropdown and click update. All users selected will now have the capabilities associated with this role. 

The second way of achieving this is to edit a user profile and apply the role there. This can be done by selecting customers > accounts from the Adminscreen. Now select the account which has the user in it. Now select the user tab from the navigation and click on the user you want to set the role for. If you now click the edit button against that user you can set the role by selecting one of the options in the assign a user role dropdown. Don't forget to click save!

Finally, as customers register themselves on the storefront the system can auto assign them a role. This is controlled based on the options selected in the store settings > general > store preferences > roles settings area of the adminscreen
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For unique, one-off role requirements, administrators can configure any combination of permissions and save it directly to an individual user. These settings are private to the user and don’t require creating a new named role, allowing specific configurations without cluttering the role list.

This reduces the number of general roles, keeping roles straightforward and scalable across the organisation.

Private roles are not visible in the general roles list and cannot be shared across multiple users. If needed, a user can be switched from a private role to a standard role via the role dropdown in the user profile settings.

To create a private role, navigate to the user profile settings and select 'Create Private Role'.

The base role can be cloned from an existing role and then configured as needed.