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Karen,

What is it that you are trying to understand about roles and security in general?

The out of the box roles and tasks are a good starting point for most organizations.  There are reports within GP to show what tasks make up a roll, assignments, etc. (Administration/Reports/System/Security)

With that being said, you may want to customize the roles and/or tasks for your organization.
If this is the case, I recommend copying the task/role to a new role/task and work from there rather than changing the out of the box versions (Prefixed with *).

There are a lot of different approaches to security but what I have found best is starting with the spreadsheet that FastPath makes available and going from there:GP Security Matrix

Karen,
Shawn is right.. there is no single document from Microsoft that details all the security roles & tasks in GP.. this is a movig target (in army jargon :-) ).. as it may change with every release as new functions and features are added to GP.
However, the FastPath document is one starting place, but you can also use some of the SQL scripts about GP security from Victoria Yudin to build Excel reports:
https://victoriayudin.com/2009/03/12/sql-view-to-show-security-roles-and-tasks-in-dynamics-gp-10/
Though it was written at the time of release 10, it's still valid, since the tables haven't changed.

There is also the excellent GP Power Tools (defunct SDT) that I can warmly recommend as it is a real life safer for GP Admins when it comes to manage & tackle all the security aspects of GP.
Here is an old blog post from David Musgrave about GP Security and how to report on them:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/developingfordynamicsgp/2008/11/11/how-to-identify-the-security-tasks-and-security-roles-associated-with-a-specific-window-or-report/
and how to use SDT/GPPT to track them down:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/developingfordynamicsgp/2010/08/30/update-how-to-identify-the-security-tasks-and-security-roles-using-the-support-debugging-tool/

SDT is no longer distributed and maintained, but has been replaced by GPPT, which you can get the latest build from Mekorma with a full 30-days trial key.
https://winthropdc.wordpress.com/gp-power-tools-portal/

Good luck with your project.

PS: I created my own reports for GP security outside of GP, as the built-in report that Shawn mentioned are useless...

Karen,

What is it that you are trying to understand about roles and security in general?

The out of the box roles and tasks are a good starting point for most organizations.  There are reports within GP to show what tasks make up a roll, assignments, etc. (Administration/Reports/System/Security)

With that being said, you may want to customize the roles and/or tasks for your organization.
If this is the case, I recommend copying the task/role to a new role/task and work from there rather than changing the out of the box versions (Prefixed with *).

There are a lot of different approaches to security but what I have found best is starting with the spreadsheet that FastPath makes available and going from there:GP Security Matrix