ChatGPT Business admin setup: the first week after you buy (October 2026) — owner account, members, roles, seats, data, apps, SSO and offboarding

This is the after-purchase manual. Ordering is covered in how to buy Business seats, picking seat types in Standard vs Premium, team-size recipes in buying for a company. Every feature below was checked against OpenAI's Help Center on 2026-10-23; menu names are OpenAI's own so you can find them. Since October 21 the same settings are also in Admin Console (admin.openai.com): select your Business workspace. Your role's permissions are the same there, and it doesn't add Enterprise features.

Day 1: sign in as owner and lock the account down

1. Sign in with the delivery email's details and pick the Business workspace in the profile menu (the sidebar on mobile). Open Workspace settings → Billing and check the seat count matches your order. Look only: don't buy, change or cancel anything.
2. Change the password to a strong one only your company holds, stored in a password manager.
3. Turn on MFA: Settings → Security and login → Multi-factor authentication. Options are an authenticator app, push, SMS / WhatsApp and passkeys; set up two. OpenAI says email is not an MFA method, and if you lose every method, recovery means a support verification that takes days, with a one-time recovery that works only once.
4. Don't change the owner account's sign-in email. OpenAI's route for handing over management is that an existing owner invites the other account and gives it the Owner role; a new account does not take the workspace with it.
5. One or two people hold the owner login. OpenAI's terms prohibit sharing credentials, one person per seat; everyone else joins with their own account.

Workspace name and default seat type

In Workspace settings, select the pencil icon next to the name and rename it after your company, so people recognize it when they join (the change can take a while). Then go to Workspace settings → Billing → Seat preferences and set the default seat type to Standard. The reason: OpenAI says admins and members invite people with the default seat type while seats are free, and you currently can't stop members from inviting. With Standard as default, Premium seats only ever get assigned by the owner.

Workspace discovery (Identity & access → User provisioning) is on by default in Business: once your company domain is verified, colleagues signing up with that domain can find the workspace and request to join. Leave "Automatically accept join requests" off so every join passes the owner.

Day 2: the four roles

Business has four built-in roles and no custom ones (custom roles are Enterprise). From OpenAI's permissions table:

A practical split: the owner role stays on the delivered account; the person who handles joiners and leavers (office manager, IT) gets Admin; team leads who only need usage numbers get Analytics Viewer; everyone else is a Member. Roles and seats are separate: any role can hold a Standard or Premium seat, and changing a role doesn't change the seat type. The last owner of a workspace cannot leave it.

Days 2–3: invite members and assign seats

1. Workspace settings → Members → Invite member. Enter emails or upload a CSV in the format email,role,seat type, for example ana@company.com,member,standard.
2. Owners choose a role and a Standard or Premium seat for each invitation. Sending an invitation neither buys nor reserves a seat: availability is checked when it is accepted, and if no seat of that type is free the person can only select "Request to join".
3. Resend, edit or reject from Pending invites / Pending requests. Only owners approve join requests.
4. Adjust later in the Seat type column of Members. Swapping Standard and Premium between two people, or handing a freed seat to someone else, costs nothing; a Premium → Standard change with no free Standard seat waits until the next billing cycle. Who should get Premium is covered in Standard vs Premium.

Tell staff three things before the invites go out (from OpenAI's onboarding guidance). Accept and sign in with the exact email that was invited; a different address creates a different account. When joining they can keep their personal workspace separate or merge it into Business; admins can't force either, but a merge has no undo, so keeping them separate is the safer default. And if they keep a personal Plus or Pro subscription separate, it keeps billing until they cancel it.

What seat changes cost (live prices)

The changes you are most likely to make in week one, under OpenAI's rules and today's price here:

For scale: 5 people (4 Standard + 1 Premium) cost ≈ 295.09 USDT a month here against OpenAI's $225 list price; 10 people (9 + 1) ≈ 459.02 USDT against $350. OpenAI prices are monthly billing in USD before tax and card fees; ours are above them. 1 USDT is taken as 1 USD.

Day 3: what admins can and cannot see

• No browsing of private chats. Each member has their own chat and Codex history; by default admins and owners cannot see all private member chats, and usage analytics and spend controls show usage and credits, not transcripts.
• The data still belongs to the company workspace. Where the Export data option is available, an owner can export a member's data, and OpenAI's managed-account notice says administrators may access, export, retain or delete account data where their configuration allows. Members can't export their own Business data.
• Shared links work only inside the workspace. Outsiders who open one see nothing. Business can't switch shared links off for everyone (Enterprise can); members delete their own links in Settings → Data controls → Shared links.
• No training by default. OpenAI doesn't train on Business workspace content, including content reached through apps, and encrypts it in transit and at rest.
• Locked chats (rolling out since October 20): members can lock chats out of history and search and open them with a 4-digit PIN; workspace policies and retention stay the same.

Day 4: GPTs, projects and sharing

Projects are the easiest way to share team material: chats, files and instructions in a project are available to everyone in it. In Business you can invite the whole workspace with a link (chat access by default, edit access granted per person); a workspace project takes up to 100 collaborators and 40 files.

GPTs can be created by every role. Sharing levels are invite-only, anyone at your workspace with the link, your workspace, anyone with the link and the GPT Store, with Can chat / Can view settings / Can edit permissions; workspace GPT settings are owner-only. OpenAI plans to retire custom GPTs in favour of plugins, on December 11, 2026 for affected Enterprise workspaces, with other plans expected to follow; watch your workspace notices. So build new shared workflows in projects rather than a fresh GPT library.

Day 4: apps, plugins and Company Knowledge

• Apps are on by default in Business. Admins change workspace-wide availability in Admin Console → Plugins (up to 25 at a time) or Workspace settings → Apps. Business switches an app on or off for the whole workspace; per-role app access is Enterprise / Edu.
• Go through the list and switch off what your company doesn't use. OpenAI notes that Docs, Sheets and Slides actions through the Google Drive app are on by default in Business; turn off actions you don't want to authorize. ChatGPT for Word is on by default since October 1 and can be turned off in the admin console.
• Company Knowledge is a plugin: set its Installation policy to Installed, then each member authorizes their own Google Drive, Slack and other accounts. It only retrieves what each person can already see in the source.

Day 5: SSO and MFA

OpenAI states that SSO (SAML and OIDC) and domain verification are included with Business. You need to be an owner, able to verify your members' email domain and able to configure your identity provider. The steps: Workspace settings → Identity & access → Identity & provisioning → Verified Domains, verify the domain → Single Sign-On → Set up SSO → enter the workspace's values in your identity provider → sign in with one test user → invite members with their identity-provider email.

Watch for these: SSO controls sign-in only, it doesn't invite people or assign seats; Business has no SCIM, so joiners and leavers are still handled in Members; to invite contractors from another domain the owner turns on Allow External Domain Invites; and OpenAI warns to confirm another owner or recovery method before changing sign-in requirements, or you can lock everyone out. A team under ten without a central identity system can skip SSO and have everyone turn on MFA on their own account.

Day 5: model access, spend limits and usage

• Models: OpenAI says Business admins may control which models members can use. When someone says a model is missing, search them in Admin Console → Models → Test to see their effective access and which setting decides it; the test changes nothing.
• Spend limits: after a seat's included usage runs out, activity can draw on workspace credits. Owners and admins set monthly credit limits per seat type in Workspace settings → Billing, plus per-user overrides; there are no limits by default, so set them. Buying credits and automatic reload charge the payment method on file: ask us first.
• Usage: Analytics Viewers, admins and owners can view workspace analytics; which reports appear depends on the plan. The full analytics dashboard, Analytics API, Compliance API and audit logs are listed under Enterprise in OpenAI's feature table.

Every week after: offboarding and renewal

1. Export: for anything you must keep, the owner selects Export data in the leaver's ••• menu in Members (when the option is available).
2. Remove: same menu, Remove member. Access ends immediately. Admins can remove people with a lower role.
3. Hand over: in Business a removed member's chats and files are kept indefinitely and come back if they are re-added; their projects and GPTs move to a workspace owner, but the owner can't see their chats or files. Move important work into shared projects before the last day.
4. Refill: invite the next person into the freed seat, no charge. Removing someone doesn't reduce paid seats; don't schedule reductions in Manage seats yourself, tell us.
5. Renew: each order covers 30 days; message Telegram @ccnb1937 with your order ID before they end. Price and seat count are confirmed at that time.

What is Enterprise-only

ChatGPT Enterprise is sold only by OpenAI's sales team; we don't offer it.

First-week checklist

OpenAI's rules and the risks

Plainly: OpenAI's terms prohibit sharing account credentials and reselling access, OpenAI may restrict access when it sees misuse, and misusing seat assignments can get a workspace deactivated. OpenAI also says access from outside its supported countries and territories may get an account blocked or suspended (see supported countries). We can't change those rules. We are not OpenAI and not an authorized OpenAI reseller; menu names and features are whatever OpenAI's interface shows. If anything goes wrong, message Telegram @ccnb1937 or the bottom-right live chat with your order ID promptly.

Buying for a company

Payment on the site is USDT on TRC20 or BEP20 (how paying with USDT works). If your finance team needs an invoice, a bank transfer or annual terms, we confirm what is possible case by case before you order; none of it is promised in advance. Email support@claudemax.shop with the subject "Business purchase" or message Telegram @ccnb1937 with your seat count and paperwork needs. Orders of 100+ seats go to a person first. We have served 90+ company customers (as of September 2026, self-reported).

OpenAI's own pages: members, seats and roles, billing and seats, data and privacy, SSO, apps, data after a member is removed.