Five minutes, start to finish
The steps to add a manager.
To add a manager to your Google Business Profile, sign in as an owner, open Business Profile settings, choose People and access, click Add, enter the person’s email address, set the role to Manager and send the invite. The person accepts from their email, and they can start working on the profile.
Step 1. Sign in with an owner account. Use the Google Account that owns the profile. If you sign in with a manager account, the option to add people won’t appear.
Step 2. Open your profile. Search your business name on Google, or open Google Maps, while signed in. Your profile shows up with the owner tools above it.
Step 3. Open People and access. Choose the three-dot More menu, then Business Profile settings, then People and access. You’ll see everyone who has access today and any invites still waiting.
Step 4. Add the person. Choose Add, type the email address tied to their Google Account and pick Manager under Access. Choose Invite.
Step 5. Confirm it worked. The invite shows as pending until the person accepts it. Once they accept, their name appears in the list with the role you picked.
Google’s owner and manager instructions show the current screens for desktop and mobile. Google renames menus from time to time, so check that page if a label on your screen doesn’t match.
If you run several locations from Business Profile Manager, the dashboard Google provides for multi-location businesses, you can open each location’s settings there or share access to a group of locations at once. Check Google’s help page for the current steps before you invite someone to every location.
Owner, manager or primary owner
Which Business Profile role fits the person?
Google gives three levels of access. Pick the lowest level that lets the person do their job. That keeps control of the profile inside your company while everyone else gets their work done.
Primary owner: one per profile
Can do everything, including transferring primary ownership and removing the profile. This should be the business owner, signed in with an account the company controls.
Owner: profile work plus user control
Can edit the profile and add or remove other users. Give this to a co-owner or a partner who needs to manage access.
Manager: day-to-day profile work
Can edit hours and details, reply to reviews, add photos and publish posts. Cannot add or remove users or remove the profile.
Here is how that plays out in a typical service business. Your office manager, who updates holiday hours and answers reviews, gets Manager. Your marketing agency gets Manager. A business partner with an equal stake gets Owner. You stay primary owner.
Each person signs in with their own Google Account. That is the whole point of user roles: you never have to share the owner’s password, and when someone leaves you can cut off their access without changing a thing for anyone else.
When the invite doesn’t land
Fix the four most common invite problems.
Most failed invites come down to the wrong email address or the wrong signed-in account. Check these before you send a second invite.
- The email never arrived. Have the person check spam and promotions folders. Then read the address back to them. A typo in one letter sends the invite nowhere.
- They accepted but can’t see the business. They are almost always signed in to a different Google Account than the one you invited. Have them switch accounts in the top-right corner of Google and look again.
- You can’t find the Add button. Your account is a manager. Only owners can invite people, so the primary owner has to send it.
- The profile says someone else manages it. That is an ownership problem, not an invite problem. Follow our claim and edit guide to request access from the current owner.
One more thing to know: Google can hold back a few sensitive actions from a newly added user for a waiting period, such as removing other users or transferring primary ownership. Routine work like editing hours or replying to reviews isn’t affected. If a button is grayed out for a new owner, check Google’s help center for the current waiting period before you try again.
Working with a marketing company
Give your agency manager access, never ownership.
An agency needs manager access to do Business Profile work: updating services, posting photos, replying to reviews and fixing details that drift out of date. It does not need to own your profile.
Owners get burned by this every year. An agency sets up the profile under its own account, the relationship ends, and the business has to fight to get its own listing back. Avoid that by creating or claiming the profile yourself, then inviting the agency as a manager.
Keep a short access record: which accounts have access, what role each has and who at your company approves changes to hours, phone number and service areas. Review it whenever you hire or fire an agency or an employee.
At Lithium, Business Profile work is part of our SEO service . We ask for manager access, and you keep ownership. If we ever part ways, you remove us in a few clicks.
Removing people and changing hands
How to remove a manager or transfer ownership.
To remove someone, go back to People and access, choose the person and remove their access. Do it the day an employee leaves or an agency contract ends. Their past edits and review replies stay on the profile.
A manager invite never transfers primary ownership. That is a separate action only the primary owner can take, and Google’s transfer guidance walks through it. The new primary owner needs to be on the profile already, so add them, wait for them to accept, then make the transfer from People and access.
Use a transfer when the business is sold or the original owner steps away for good. For everything short of that, an owner or manager role does the job and keeps the primary owner in place.
If you are about to hand the profile to a new helper, also look at the jobs they’ll take on. Our guides on replying to Google reviews and optimizing a Business Profile make good onboarding reading.
