Every now and then you’ve got someone who wears two hats — they’re part of your crew on some jobs, and a subcontractor you hire out to on others. Naturally you’d want one profile in Eano Pro that covers both. Today that isn’t possible, and if you’ve tried to set it up you’ve probably run into a wall without a clear explanation of why. This article walks through what’s going on, the two reliable ways to handle it in the meantime, and how to let us know if it’s holding you back.
The short version up front: in Eano Pro, each person’s profile is either an internal team member or an external subcontractor/vendor — not both at once. It’s a real limitation, it’s on our roadmap, and until it’s lifted the cleanest approach is to give that person two separate logins, one for each role.
The same rule catches a second situation that looks unrelated but isn’t: you can’t be your own client either. If you’ve tried to add yourself to a project as the homeowner, or to have one company you own send a quote to another, there’s a section on that below.
Why This Happens
Eano Pro identifies every person by their email address and phone number, and each of those belongs to exactly one profile — not just on your account, but across Eano entirely. So the same email or phone can’t be saved twice, once as a team member and once as a vendor. That’s the reason a single login can’t currently carry both roles: the moment you try to add someone a second time, Eano sees a phone or email it already has on file and stops you with a message along the lines of “The mobile phone number already exists, please change it and try again.”
It isn’t a glitch or a setting you’ve missed — it’s just how profiles work today. And it’s something we’d like to make more flexible down the line; more adaptable role assignments are on our radar for a future update.
The Same Rule Applies to You
This trips people up in a second, less obvious way: you can’t add yourself as a client on your own project. Your email and phone number are already spoken for by your contractor login, so when you try to use them as a client Eano turns you away — for an email it says outright that the address is already registered as a GC and asks for a real homeowner’s email.
It’s the same collision as the team-member-and-subcontractor case, just pointed at yourself, and it shows up in a few real situations:
Testing your own quote flow. Wanting to see exactly what your client sees is a completely reasonable instinct — but adding yourself as the client isn’t the way to do it. Use the Preview button on the project instead. It shows you the client’s view of the quote without needing a second account, and it’s the tool built for exactly this.
Quoting between two companies you own. If you run a GC business and a separate entity — a development company, a property LLC, a supply outfit — and you want one to formally quote the other, Eano needs the receiving company to have its own contact details. Whichever email and phone are already tied to your contractor login can’t do double duty as the client’s.
Being your own homeowner. Building or renovating your own place and wanting to run it through Eano as a job lands in the same spot.
The fix is the same trick as above: give the client side its own identity. An email alias like [email protected] and a second phone number are enough for Eano to see a separate person, and everything downstream — the quote, the portal, the signature — behaves normally from there.
Workaround 1 — Give Them Two Logins
If you genuinely need the same person working both as internal crew and as a subcontractor, the most reliable approach is to set them up with two separate profiles — add them once as an internal team member and once as an external subcontractor/vendor. The only rule is that each profile needs its own email or phone number, since Eano keeps those unique. The person then switches between the two depending on which hat they’re wearing on a given project.
The easiest way to pull this off is an email alias. Most email providers — Gmail, Outlook, and others — let you add a +tag to an address, and it still lands in the same inbox:
To Eano those read as two different addresses, so you can create both profiles — but every message still arrives in the one mailbox. It takes most of the friction out of juggling two logins. A second phone number works just as well if that’s easier for you.
Workaround 2 — Just Pick the Role That Fits Best
If two logins feels like more than it’s worth, you can simply choose the single role that matches how this person mostly works with you — an internal team member if they’re effectively part of your crew, or an external subcontractor/vendor if they bid on and get assigned work like any other partner. For most people, one role honestly covers the way they operate day to day, and you can always change a profile’s role later under People > My Team if their relationship with you shifts.
A Few Things Worth Knowing
The two profiles are completely separate. Activity, assignments, and history under one login won’t show up under the other — as far as Eano is concerned, they’re two different people. That’s the trade-off of the two-login approach.
Aliases aren’t only for email. If a second email feels fiddly, a different phone number does the same job of telling the two profiles apart.
Roles can be changed, but not merged. You can switch a single profile’s role whenever you need to, but there’s no way to fuse two existing profiles into one combined account.
Need This to Work Differently? Tell Us
We know a single profile for both roles would be simpler, and we’d genuinely like to know if this is getting in your way. More flexible role assignments aren’t something we can promise a date on, but the clearest signal that we should prioritize it is hearing from the people who actually need it.
If this limitation is slowing you down, send us a message in the chat and ask to talk to a person. Tell us how you’re using dual roles and what you wish worked — that feedback goes straight to our product team and genuinely helps us weigh what to build next.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can the same person be both a team member and a subcontractor under one login? Not today. Each profile in Eano Pro is either an internal team member or an external subcontractor/vendor, and a single email or phone number can only belong to one profile.
Why does Eano reject the second profile? Because it shares an email or phone number with the first one. Eano keeps those unique across your account, so it won’t let the same email or phone be saved twice.
What’s the easiest workaround? Give the person two logins using an email alias — for example [email protected] and [email protected]. Both deliver to the same inbox, but Eano treats them as separate profiles. A second phone number works too.
Can I add myself as the client on my own project? No. Your email and phone number already belong to your contractor login, and Eano won’t accept them as a client’s — it’ll tell you the address is already registered as a GC. If you need it for real, give the client side its own email alias and phone number. If you only want to see what your client sees, use the Preview button instead.
I own two companies and want one to quote the other. Can I do that? Yes, but the receiving company needs contact details of its own. Whatever email and phone are tied to your contractor login can’t also be the client’s. Set the other company up with its own address — an alias like [email protected] works — and the quote, portal, and signature all behave normally from there.
Can I merge the two profiles later? No — there’s no way to combine two profiles into one. You can change a single profile’s role under People > My Team, but the two accounts stay separate.
Is full dual-role support coming? It’s on our roadmap, but without a set date. If you need it, reach out in the chat and let us know — that’s the best way to put it on our radar.