Quick answer: An owner can invite a manager from Business Profile settings → People and access → Add. Enter the recipient’s Google Account email, choose Manager and send the invitation. The recipient must accept it. For everyday profile work, review whether Manager provides the access needed before granting ownership.
You have hired an agency, brought a colleague into the business or asked someone to help with reviews. The next step is access to the existing Google Business Profile. Forwarding your login may look convenient, but it creates confusion about who made changes and makes the eventual handover harder.
This guide covers the invitation itself and the practical checks around it. I recommend treating access as a small onboarding process: identify the profile, confirm the person, agree the scope of work and test the result. Those checks are especially useful when the business has several locations or several Google Accounts.
Before you send an invitation
Start with the public Maps link for the location you want the person to manage. If you have a chain, list each relevant location. A business name can be ambiguous, and an agency may already have another client with a similar name. A direct reference reduces the risk of discussing different profiles.
Ask the recipient which Google Account they will use for the work. Do not assume the email address on a proposal is the account they use to manage profiles. Confirm the spelling with them before entering it. Record the agreed address in your access inventory so another person can understand it later.
Also confirm that you are signed into the account with owner access to that profile. Finding your business in Search does not establish that the active account controls it. If you can edit business information but cannot add people, check your current role before treating the missing option as a technical fault.
For a new agency relationship, agree what the person will do before inviting them: update opening hours, prepare posts, answer reviews, monitor suggested changes or maintain location data. Access enables actions; it does not define the approval process for those actions. The owner and agency should make that process explicit.
Manager, owner and primary owner: choose deliberately
Google’s owners and managers documentation distinguishes the roles. Managers can perform most routine profile tasks, but cannot add or remove users or remove the profile. Owners have broader control. A profile can have several owners and one primary owner. Each person should use their own Google Account; Google Groups cannot be invited as profile users.
That makes Manager a sensible starting point when someone needs operational access. I would review the actual assignment before giving an external collaborator owner access. If the relationship requires ownership administration, explain that requirement separately rather than granting the broadest role because it seems easier.
Primary ownership is a different decision. Bringing in a marketing agency is not, by itself, a reason to transfer it. The business should understand who holds primary ownership and what will happen when the contract ends. Treat a change of business ownership as its own handover, with a written checklist and a clear responsible person.
An access inventory can be simple: person, account email, role, location, purpose and review date. Include a note explaining unfamiliar agency account names. The point is to avoid a list of users that nobody can confidently interpret six months later.
How to add the manager
Use the current Google invitation instructions: open your Business Profile, choose More, then Business Profile settings and People and access. Select Add, enter the email, choose Manager under Access and select Invite. The invited person needs to accept. The same panel shows current users and pending invitations.
Before selecting Invite, read the address and role one more time. If the business has several locations, check the profile reference as well. These are small checks, but correcting an invitation is more cumbersome than preventing a mistyped account or inviting someone to the wrong branch.
Tell the recipient which business and location to expect. A short onboarding message could say: “I have invited your agreed Google Account as Manager for the Riverside location. Please accept, confirm that the existing profile appears and let me know when you can review it.” No password is needed in that message.
Do not describe the task as complete just because you sent the invitation. Keep it pending in your own checklist until the recipient confirms acceptance and the correct location appears in their account. That distinction is useful when a launch or a holiday-hours update depends on access being available.
Check the result without making unnecessary changes
Once the invitation is accepted, ask the new manager to identify the profile and confirm their role. Their first check can be observational: business name, address or service area, website and current hours. There is no need to change a real customer-facing field merely to prove that access works.
If an update is genuinely required, agree a small task and its approved value in advance. For example, the owner can confirm special opening hours for a forthcoming holiday. The manager then applies that authorised update and records it in the work log. This combines access testing with useful work.
For an agency, save a baseline of the current business information before starting a larger cleanup. Distinguish existing inaccuracies from changes your team makes. When the owner later asks why an address or category changed, a baseline and change log are much more helpful than a recollection of what the profile looked like.
Set expectations about which edits need approval. A correction to a confirmed phone number and a proposed business-name change are different decisions. I would ask for explicit owner confirmation before significant changes to identity, operating location or the way the business is represented.
If the invitation does not arrive
Work through the basics in order. Confirm the invited address, ask the recipient to check the account they are actually using and inspect the pending invitation in People and access. An agency may have several browser profiles, so the active Google Account deserves a deliberate check.
Look in the relevant inbox and spam folder, but do not assume that a missing email proves the invitation was never created. Compare what the owner sees in the access panel with what the recipient sees. Record the precise status rather than reporting only “it does not work.”
If the invitation is pending for the wrong account, cancel that invitation and create the correct one through the access panel. If it is pending for the correct account, establish why acceptance is failing before sending repeated invitations. Several unexplained attempts can make troubleshooting less clear.
Never respond to an invitation problem by creating another Business Profile for the same location. A duplicate public record does not fix the access relationship with the existing one. Keep the public listing and the invitation issue as separate parts of the diagnosis.
If the manager cannot find the profile
Ask for the account email and the location they expected to see. Check whether the invitation was accepted and whether the owner can see that user in the access panel. This gives you a common starting point instead of troubleshooting two different accounts at once.
For multi-location work, verify the requested scope. Access to one location does not demonstrate access to every location in the project. Prepare a list with a separate acceptance check for each profile or the agreed group. An agency should not promise chain-wide updates before checking that scope.
Some newly added users face seven-day restrictions on particular ownership and removal actions, as described in Google’s documentation. Do not confuse those limits with a failure of every manager function. Identify the exact action that is blocked, the role involved and when the invitation was accepted.
If the owner cannot access the established profile at all, investigate ownership rather than trying to invite from another listing. Google has a separate ownership request process. Keep records of any previous request and avoid treating a fresh duplicate as a shortcut.
Example: onboarding an agency for one location
Imagine a restaurant owner hiring an agency to maintain hours, posts and review responses. I would first record the existing Maps link and the agency’s agreed account. The owner keeps primary ownership, invites the agency as Manager and asks for confirmation after acceptance.
The onboarding note would include the current hours, the person who approves holiday changes, the review-response tone and the escalation contact for a serious complaint. None of those details is solved by the invitation itself. They determine whether the new access produces consistent work.
For the first week, the agency could review the existing information and send a short proposed correction list. The owner approves factual changes before implementation. This is easier to assess than a large set of undocumented edits followed by a report saying the profile has been “optimised.”
At the end of onboarding, both parties should be able to answer three questions: which profile is covered, which account manages it and which decisions still belong to the owner. That is the useful result of the process, beyond the fact that an invitation was accepted.
Example: replacing a departing employee
A departing employee may have managed the profile for years. Before removing their access, establish which account holds primary ownership and make sure the continuing business team can manage the existing record. Do not wait until the person has left to discover that nobody knows the access arrangement.
Prepare the replacement’s account and invite them with the appropriate role. Confirm acceptance and operational access, then review the departing person’s permissions. If primary ownership needs to change, handle that separately rather than assuming that adding a manager completes the transfer.
Keep the handover focused on the business record and working materials: Maps link, approved information, outstanding support cases, current review-response guidelines and planned updates. There is no need to pass around the departing employee’s personal login to achieve that handover.
When the relationship ends, record what was changed and who confirmed it. A short completion note makes future audits easier and reduces the chance of an obsolete agency or staff account staying on the profile simply because nobody owned the offboarding task.
Access checklist for owners and agencies
- Identify the existing profile with its Maps link and location.
- Confirm the recipient’s intended Google Account email.
- Choose a role based on the work, with a reason for broader access.
- Send the invitation from an account that can administer users.
- Verify acceptance and the correct profile in the recipient’s account.
- Agree factual sources, approvals and a change log.
- Record who holds primary ownership and the escalation contact.
- Review access when people or contracts change.
Common questions
Does the manager need my Google password?
No. Invite their own Google Account through People and access. In practice, separate accounts also make it easier to end access when a working relationship changes. Do not put passwords in an onboarding email or support description.
Should I make my agency the primary owner?
Review that as a separate ownership decision. For routine content and profile maintenance, first assess the Manager role. Keep the business’s long-term control and the eventual handover in view when considering broader access.
Why can I edit information but not invite someone?
Check your role on the existing profile. If you are a manager, ask an owner to administer the invitation. If the account is new, distinguish a role limitation from the specific temporary restrictions described by Google.
Will removing an agency remove its previous work?
Removing a person’s access and changing profile content are separate operations. Review the public information and working materials during offboarding; do not assume an access change performs a content cleanup. Save any outstanding tasks before the relationship ends.
Need help with profile access or an agency handover?
I help business owners and agencies review Google Business Profile access, ownership and operational problems. A useful first description includes the public Maps link, your current role and the action you are trying to complete. Keep account passwords out of the initial message.
Ask for a review of your access situation. You can also explore my Google Business Profile management service for ongoing profile work.