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# Give a member temporary access

# Give a member temporary access

Temporary access lets you add someone to your account for a limited time. Set an end date or a number of days, and SimplyPrint automatically suspends or removes the member when their time is up, so you don't have to remember to clean up afterwards. It's ideal for a semester, a contractor, a guest, or a trial period.

|| Temporary access is part of the School and Enterprise plans. See the [pricing page](https://simplyprint.io/pricing) for the full comparison.

## What you'll find here
- How temporary access works
- Setting it when you invite someone
- Setting it for a member who's already in your account
- What happens when access expires
- Choosing suspend or remove
- Re-enabling or extending access
- Expiry warning emails
- Good to know

## How temporary access works
A member with temporary access works exactly like any other member until their **expiry date**. On that date, one of two things happens, depending on your account's setting:

- **Suspend** - the member keeps their place in your account but can no longer access it, until you clear or extend their date.
- **Remove** - the membership is removed from your account.

Either way, you set the date once and SimplyPrint handles the rest, including reminder emails before the deadline.

## Setting it when you invite someone

![The Access control in the invite form (Permanent, 1 year, Until a date, For a number of days)](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/-/f/f/2/2/ff22a914001c1000/temporary-access-access-contro_18ss1rr.png)

You can give temporary access at the moment you invite a member, on both email invites and invitation links.

1. Open the **Users** page and click **Invite users**.
2. Fill in the invite as usual (see [How to invite users](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/how-to-invite-users-to-your-account-1gue0zv/)).
3. In the **Access** dropdown, choose one of:
   - **Permanent** - no expiry (the default).
   - **1 year** - expires one year after they join.
   - **Until a date** - pick an exact end date.
   - **For a number of days** - expires a set number of days after they join.
4. If you choose anything other than Permanent, an **On expiry** option lets you keep the account default or override it for these people specifically.
5. Send the invite or create the link.

| "For a number of days" is measured from when each person actually joins, so it works well on a shared link where people sign up at different times. "Until a date" is a fixed calendar date for everyone.

## Setting it for a member who's already in your account

![The Set temporary access dialog for an existing member](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/-/f/f/2/2/ff22a914001c1000/temporary-access-set-temp-acce_23d8ta.png)

![The Access expires column in the Users table](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/-/f/f/2/2/ff22a914001c1000/temporary-access-access-expire_d53znp.png)

1. On the **Users** page, find the member in the table.
2. Open their row actions and choose **Set temporary access**. (You can also tick several members and use the bulk **Set temporary access** action.)
3. Choose **Permanent** to remove any expiry, or **Until a date** and pick the end date.
4. Under **On expiry**, keep the account default or choose **Suspend** or **Remove** for this member.
5. Click **Save**.

A member's expiry shows in the **Access expires** column of the Users table: a date for timed members, **Permanent** for everyone else, and a red **Access expired** badge once the date has passed.

## What happens when access expires
On the expiry date, the member loses access right away. What happens to their membership depends on the behavior you've chosen:

- **Suspend** keeps the member in your account with their group, classes and history intact, but blocks access until you re-enable them. Nothing is lost.
- **Remove** takes the membership out of your account. Their SimplyPrint account and data are kept, but to bring them back you'd send a new invite.

## Choosing suspend or remove
You set the **account-wide default** in **Settings → Data & security**, in the **Temporary access** card:

- **Suspend & keep** (the default) - block access but keep the member so you can re-enable them later.
- **Remove** - remove the member from the account when access expires.

This default applies to every timed member unless you override it for a specific person using the **On expiry** option when inviting or editing them.

## Re-enabling or extending access
For a **suspended** member, getting them back in is quick:

- In the Users table, use the **Re-enable access** action on their row to clear the expiry in one click, or
- Use **Set temporary access** and choose **Permanent**, or pick a new future date to extend them.

Both work on several members at once if you select multiple rows first. For a **removed** member, send a new invite, their data is still there and will reconnect to your account.

## Expiry warning emails
Members with an email address get automatic reminders before their access ends, so the deadline is never a surprise:

- About **30 days** before.
- About **7 days** before.
- The day before, as a final notice.

The emails tell the member when their access ends and that an administrator can extend or re-enable it. If you extend or clear someone's date, the reminder schedule resets for the new date.

## Good to know
- **The account owner is never affected** by temporary access, so you can't accidentally lock yourself out.
- The earliest end date you can choose is **tomorrow**, a same-day date would expire immediately.
- You can only set or change temporary access for members in a group you're allowed to manage, and you need permission to remove users.
- Temporary access controls when someone can reach your account. To control how much they can print or spend while they're in, use [quotas and limits](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/the-quotas-limits-feature-control-how-much-your-users-can-print-1emghhw/).

## Temporary access, or a time-limited workgroup?
These look similar and solve different problems. Pick by asking what should end:

| You want to end... | Use |
| :--- | :--- |
| Their membership of the account entirely | **Temporary access** |
| Only some extra access, while they stay a member | **A time-limited workgroup** |

A [workgroup](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/workgroups-layering-extra-access-on-top-of-a-members-role-qjypld/) is an additive group a member can hold any number of, adding permissions and printer access on top of their user group. Each grant can carry its own **Active from** and **Expires after** dates.

So a student who joins the robotics club for one term gets the club as a workgroup with an expiry on it. When the term ends the club's printers and permissions drop away on their own, and they carry on as an ordinary student - no expiry on their account, nothing to re-invite. Use temporary access instead when the person should be gone altogether at the end, like a contractor or a guest.

The two combine cleanly if you need both: a contractor can have temporary account access *and* a workgroup that expires earlier.

## Related articles
- [Workgroups: layering extra access on top of a member's role](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/workgroups-layering-extra-access-on-top-of-a-members-role-qjypld/)
- [Managing your users: the Users page](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/managing-your-users-the-users-page-15hfca/)
- [How to invite users to your account](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/how-to-invite-users-to-your-account-1gue0zv/)
- [Require 2FA and restrict panel access by IP](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/require-2fa-and-restrict-panel-access-by-ip-nr6fb4/)
- [User groups and permissions](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/user-groups-and-permissions-what-each-one-controls-1284ueh/)
- [Cleaning up and removing users from your account](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/cleaning-up-and-removing-users-from-your-account-1e2a42y/)