As a System Admin in the User Subscription Model, you're responsible for managing user access and making sure your plan includes only the Members you actually need. This article walks through where and how to manage users, including the differences between available admin tools and key best practices.
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Where to manage users
There are two main places in the Admin Center for managing users:
Tool | When to use it |
|---|---|
Use during reconciliation to review and update seat types, or anytime to manage users who were added to the plan based on permission levels plus a qualifying action. This page shows all active users associated with the plan who have signed in to Smartsheet at least once. | |
Use anytime, to add users, remove access or deactivate users, see users who were auto provisioned, and export user data. |
Reconciliation and true-up charges are paused.
Use the True-up tab to view and manage only Members and Provisional Members. Use the All users tab and the User Management page to manage your complete user list.
During reconciliation, the True-up tab shows a frozen snapshot of users. It only includes Provisional Members from the most recent usage period. New users added or changes made in the User Management page don’t appear here, though they still affect your plan’s overall user count and cost.
How to add users
When someone shares a core item with a collaborator, that person is added to your plan as a Viewer or Guest. Depending on their access level, some Viewers and Guests can take a qualifying action that will make them a Provisional Member. See the Understand provisional access article for details. As a System Admin, you can add users to your plan anytime. See the Admin Center: Add users article for more information.
How to change seat types
You can downgrade users’ access depending on their activity and your plan’s needs.
To change a user’s seat type:
- Sign in to the Admin Center.
- Go to the Seat types and true-up page.
Select the True-up tab (during reconciliation) or All users tab (outside reconciliation).
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Use filters to find the users you want to change.
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Select a user (or multiple users).
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- Choose Change seat type and select the appropriate option.
Changing a user to Viewer or Guest will remove them from any groups with higher-level permissions. Their permissions on core items will also update to reflect the new seat type.
When downgrading an external user to Guest, you’ll be asked to choose their new permission level: Commenter or Editor. If you don’t specify one, Smartsheet will assign Editor - can share as the default.
How to change seat types in bulk
Bulk actions are helpful when you want to downgrade or adjust access for many users at once, especially inactive users.
To bulk update users:
Navigate to the True-up tab.
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Use filters like Last active to find a specific group (such as users inactive for 6+ months).
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- Tick the checkbox next to Name to select all visible users (up to 200 per page).
- Choose Change seat type and confirm the update.
You may need to repeat this for multiple batches if more than 200 users match your filter criteria.
Best practices for managing users
- Set a recurring schedule to review user activity and permissions.
- Downgrade users who haven’t used Smartsheet in a while (such as users who haven’t been active in the last 180 days).
- If you have an Enterprise plan, use a custom welcome screen to display internal policies before users access Smartsheet for the first time.
If you’re on a Business or Enterprise plan and need to manage many users programmatically, consider using the Deactivate User API. It allows you to revoke access while preserving permission data and group memberships.
For help identifying inactive users, use these filters in your seat type report:
- Number of asset comments = 0
- Number of asset edits = 0
- Number of created assets = 0 (over the past 180 days)
What happens when you downgrade a user
When you downgrade a user’s seat type (for example, from Member to Viewer), the following changes occur:
- The user sees reduced permissions across all core items to match their new seat type
- The user is no longer part of any groups with higher-level access
- They lose roles such as Plan Asset Admin or Group Admin (if applicable)
- If they were the only Admin on an item, that item no longer has an Admin
Smartsheet notifies you about these changes before applying them, whether you’re updating one user or many.
You can’t undo these changes. Save a copy of the Seat type report before making updates, especially when performing bulk changes. If you need to restore access, you need to manually reassign permissions, groups, or roles.
Always ensure that important items have more than one Admin and assign a Plan Asset Admin to avoid access requests coming to you if someone is downgraded or leaves the organization.