Short answer: Your firm has exactly one owner, any number of co-founders, and everyone else is a teammate. What a teammate can reach depends entirely on what has been shared with them. "Ops lead" and "delegate" are not separate account types; they are just names for how much has been shared.
Two separate things decide what someone can do in the portal:
Their role, which decides what they can run: managing the team, connecting integrations, handling documents.
Whether they are a founder, which decides what they can see: the firm's financial position, and their own private reflections on where the firm is going.
Keeping those apart is what lets you bring in a bookkeeper who sees the numbers but doesn't run your team, or an operations lead who runs a lot but never sees the numbers.
The owner
There is exactly one owner per firm, and it is the person the firm was set up around. The owner can do everything in the portal.
Four things are the owner's alone:
Billing and the subscription.
Making someone a co-founder.
Appointing an admin.
Being the single point of contact the firm is registered against.
Co-founders
A co-founder is a founding peer: someone who owns the firm alongside you. Only the owner can designate one.
A co-founder sees what a founder sees:
Financials, the same figures you see. A firm's numbers are shared between the people who own it.
Their own Vision & Leadership entry, which is private even from you. Each founder answers it separately, and founders cannot read each other's answers.
A co-founder also runs the firm's day to day in the portal. They can invite and remove teammates, adjust what people can reach, connect and disconnect Xero, manage documents, and share sections with others, including Financials.
They cannot touch billing, appoint an admin, or make someone else a co-founder. Those stay with the owner.
Note: Being a co-founder is about ownership, not seniority. A long-serving practice manager is usually a teammate with a lot shared with them, not a co-founder.
Ops leads
"Ops lead" describes a teammate who has been handed every section that can be shared, so the onboarding can proceed without the founders doing the typing. It is a pattern of sharing, not a separate kind of account.
An ops lead can open and complete every shareable section. They still cannot see Financials or Vision & Leadership, and handing them more ordinary sections never adds up to financial access.
Note: If you want your ops lead to do the Financials section too, a founder shares that section with them specifically. See below.
Delegates and the finance seat
A delegate is simply a teammate who has been given one or more specific sections. They see the status of all nine sections on the dashboard, but can only open the ones shared with them.
A finance seat is the particular case of a teammate who has been given Financials: a bookkeeper, a finance manager, or an ops lead who handles the books. Because completing Financials means connecting your accounts, that person can also connect Xero and pull your figures in.
They cannot disconnect Xero. Disconnecting revokes the connection and deletes stored payroll salary data, so it stays with the owner and co-founders.
How sharing a section works
Sharing happens in the delegate panel, reached from the portal dashboard. A few rules apply to every share:
Viewing and editing travel together. There is no way to let someone read a section without also letting them fill it in.
Seven of the nine sections can be shared by the owner, a co-founder, or an admin.
Financials can only be shared by a founder, and appears badged CONFIDENTIAL. An admin who is not a founder sees it locked, reading "Confidential - only a founder can share it".
Vision & Leadership can never be shared, by anyone, under any circumstances.
Financials is also the one share you can cleanly take back: a founder can revoke it from Settings, then Team, without removing the person from your firm. For the other sections, changing access means removing the person and re-inviting them with a narrower set.
Quick comparison
Billing: owner only.
Make a co-founder or an admin: owner only.
See Financials: owner, co-founders, and anyone a founder has shared it with.
Share Financials: owner and co-founders only.
Connect Xero: owner, co-founders, and a finance seat.
Disconnect Xero: owner and co-founders only.
Vision & Leadership: each founder's own entry, private even from each other. Never shareable.
Invite or remove teammates: owner, co-founders and admins.
Employee base salary and discretionary pay: restricted, and not included when you hand over the rest of Your Team.
Tip: If you are deciding what someone needs, start from the sections rather than the title. Share the sections they will actually complete, and add Financials only if they genuinely do your numbers.