Permissions decide what you can reach on a yacht. The yacht's plan decides what exists on that yacht at all. They are separate gates, and mixing them up is the usual reason a support question goes round in circles.
What the plan controls
Each yacht sits on a licence, and that licence carries a set of areas. The areas that can be switched on or off this way are Maintenance, Inventory, Tasks, Finance, the ISM area (all forms, the SMS module and Risk Manager), Vessel's Documents, Vessel's Certificates, Work/Rest hours, Leave Requests, Guests, Messaging, Safe Manning and Charters.
The standard plans offered on the Billing page include:
| Plan | Areas |
|---|---|
| Lite | Maintenance, Inventory, Vessel's Documents, Tasks, Leave Requests, Messaging, Guests |
| Standard | Everything in Lite, plus Finance |
| Plus | The same areas as Standard, for larger vessels |
So Leave Requests, Messaging and Guests are on every yacht with a standard plan. A custom licence can carry any combination of areas.
If an area is not in the yacht's plan:
- it does not appear in the vessel sidebar — for anybody, including the captain and management users;
- opening one of its pages from a saved link shows nothing;
- its group disappears from the crew permission list, because there is nothing left to grant;
- the matching tab disappears from Vessel Settings, and its widgets drop off the dashboard, the calendar filters and the notification settings.
That last point is the giveaway. If a whole group is missing from a crew member's Permissions tab, the yacht does not have that area — no amount of ticking will bring it back.
Which gate is hiding your page?
| Symptom | Cause |
|---|---|
| A colleague on the same yacht can see the area and you cannot | Your permissions |
| Nobody on the yacht can see it, including the captain | The yacht's plan |
| The permission group is missing from the crew Permissions tab | The yacht's plan |
| You reach the area but a button is greyed out or absent | Your permissions, or an on-board-managed vessel |
| The area is there on one yacht and not on another | The two yachts are on different plans |
Where to check the plan
Open the yacht and go to Vessel Settings → Subscription. The tab shows the licence the vessel is currently on. It is only visible to management users — licensing is a company matter, so people on the yacht never see a vessel's plan.
A Management Admin can move a vessel onto another licence the company already holds, using Adjust Licence and then Change license. That changes which areas the vessel has, so it is the fastest fix when one yacht is missing something its sister ship has.
Company-wide, the Billing page in the header shows the plans the company holds and lets a Management Admin buy more.
Adding an area the company does not have
The ISM and forms area, Vessel's Certificates and Work/Rest hours are not in any of the standard plans and come only with a custom licence. To arrange one, use the Superyacht banner on the Billing page and its Book a call button.
Messaging: module and role, no permission
Messaging has no tick on the permission list. If the yacht's plan includes it, everyone on that yacht can use it — Captain, Viewer, crew on any rank (even one with no permissions ticked), and management users who open the yacht. An owner never has Messaging, whatever the plan.