Delegation — Cypress on your behalf

For: Org admins · Fleet Managers · Cypress Managers

Cypress is a managed platform: for most organizations, the Cypress team runs the day-to-day — onboarding vehicles, pricing, listing, negotiating — while the organization keeps the decisions that spend its money or sign away its vehicles. Delegation is how that split is made explicit. Three switches on your organization say exactly what Cypress may do for you; everything else is yours alone, no matter who is logged in.

The three switches

Your admin manages these at the top of Settings → Organization → Permissions. Each one matches a colored badge you will meet all over the app — on the Cypress side they appear in the acting-for bar, the organizations grid, and this manual's own banners.

The defaults follow the money. Running your account is the service you came for, so Lifecycle is on until you turn it off. Accepting an offer disposes of your vehicle, and making one spends your budget — so Sell and Buy stay off until your admin explicitly grants them.

What can never be delegated

One line survives every combination of switches: going below your floor price is your own Fleet Manager's decision, always. The floor is your standing consent. Cypress can counter an offer for you at or above the floor, but not below it: a counter binds you if the buyer takes it, so a counter under the floor is a below-floor sale in waiting, and only your FM can waive the floor and take the money. The same line holds for an app or an agent your organization connected (Apps, agents and MCP). The app enforces this server-side; it is not a courtesy.

A useful way to hold the whole model in your head:

• Lifecycle = working the account (nothing changes hands)
• Sell = closing within the range you already priced (floor → target)
• Below floor = never Cypress's, full stop

How you see what Cypress did

Delegation without a trail would be indistinguishable from someone else using your account, so every on-behalf action leaves three marks:

1. The audit badge. Every activity entry a Cypress Manager writes under delegation carries an amber Cypress · on behalf badge — on the vehicle timeline, the offer history, and your organization's activity feed. Done for you never reads as done by you.
2. A notification to your Fleet Managers, the moment it happens — an accepted offer, a declined one, a counter sent. You hear about decisions when they are made, not when you next log in.
3. The Updates feed on the vehicle itself, where an accepted offer is posted as accepted by Cypress on your behalf.

Where the app tells you before anything happens

Delegation is enforced when an action is attempted — but the app says who may act before you get that far:

• Offer pages carry a banner naming who can decide each offer (your FM, or FM + Cypress when Sell is on) and where to change it.
• The floor-price editor says who may set the floor for this org.
• The CSV import marks an opted-out organization as blocked on its very first screen — before a file is chosen.
• On the Cypress side, the acting-for bar shows the three badges for the org being worked, with a "what we can do" summary, and buying controls are disabled outright for orgs that have not granted Buy.

For Cypress Managers

Your authority comes from the organization's switches, not from your role — a ROOT admin is subject to them the same as a CM. The acting-for lens narrows what you see to one org; the delegation switches decide what you may do there. Buy-side actions additionally require the lens, so an offer you make lands unambiguously in the right organization's name. When an org has not delegated a lane, the app shows you a read-only view with the reason — the refusal is the server's either way.

Worked example

Harrington Motors runs on the defaults: Lifecycle on, Sell and Buy off. Their Cypress account manager imports thirty vehicles, prices them with Maria's floors, lists them, and — when an offer of $21,800 arrives against a $21,700 floor — counters at $22,500 on Harrington's behalf. All of it is badged and Maria is notified at each step. What the account manager cannot do is accept: the offer sits in the review range, and Sell is off, so the offer page shows "sell decisions not delegated — the Fleet Manager decides." If Harrington later enables Sell, Cypress may close review-range offers too; if the buyer instead comes back at $21,500 — below floor — no switch in the product would let anyone but Maria take it.

Business rules

• Lifecycle defaults on for every organization; Sell and Buy default off. Any admin change takes effect immediately.
• Below-floor acceptance is never delegable, under any combination.
• Buy requires the Cypress Manager to hold the acting-for lens on your org — no ambient, un-scoped buying.
• Every on-behalf action is audited with the badge and notifies your FMs; switch changes are audited with before/after values.
• Countering is part of Lifecycle (negotiation), and also granted by Sell; accepting and rejecting belong to Sell alone.