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Run an accountancy practice

If you are an accountant or bookkeeper, a practice lets your firm work inside client organisations the professional way: each client grants your firm a defined level of access, you…

Run an accountancy practice

If you are an accountant or bookkeeper, a practice lets your firm work inside client organisations the professional way: each client grants your firm a defined level of access, you decide which of your staff serve which client, and everyone signs in as themselves. No shared passwords, no seats consumed on any client's plan, and every action your team takes is attributed to the person who took it.

This guide is for the practice side. If you are a business granting access to your accountant, see Give your accountant access.

Before you begin

  • Creating a practice requires billing management permission on your billing account (Owner, Admin or Billing role), because the practice is created on your firm's own account. One practice per billing account.
  • Two-step verification is mandatory for practice work. Every practice member must set up an authenticator app before any practice screen — or any client organisation — will open. There is no way around this: your clients' books are behind it.

Create your practice

  1. Open Settings → Run an accountancy practice in the sidebar (you can also go there directly by adding /practices to your site address, for example https://your-site/practices). That menu item shows only while you don't yet belong to a practice — once you do, the practice appears by name in your sidebar instead, just under Dashboard.
  2. Under Create a practice, enter your firm's name and select Create practice. You become the practice's first Owner.
  3. If you have not set up an authenticator yet, you will be shown the two-step verification page — complete it, then return.

Once created, the practice appears in your sidebar on every page, and its screens have six tabs: Clients, Members, Client roles, Firm roles, Tax profiles and Settings.

Ownership and firm roles

Every practice has at least one owner — a structural position, not a role. An owner can do everything in the firm, ownership moves only by explicit transfer, and the last owner is protected. Every other member holds a firm role that says what they may administer within the firm: the built-in Administrator (full firm administration) or Staff (none — the default, and all a working accountant needs), or a custom role you author on the Firm roles tab from five firm permissions (manage staff, manage client relationships, assign staff to clients, manage roles, manage sponsorships).

This is covered in depth — including the "you can only hand out what you hold yourself" rule — in Control what practice staff can do. Three rules are worth knowing even if you read nothing else:

Note: Neither ownership nor any firm role grants client access by itself. Access to a client is always an explicit assignment (below), so "who can see this client's books" is always a list you can read, and removing someone is always a visible act.

Note: You can only create, edit or assign a firm role whose every permission you hold yourself — no member can use role management to give themselves, or anyone else, authority above their own.

Note: Practice authority and billing authority are separate. Transferring practice ownership moves none of the firm's billing-account permissions, and managing the firm's card grants no access to client data.

Invite your team

On the Members tab (needs the manage staff firm permission):

  1. Enter the person's email, choose their firm role — the built-in tiers and any custom roles within your own authority are offered; when in doubt, Staff is right — and select Send invitation.
  2. They receive an email link, sign in with (or create) their own account, set up two-step verification if they have not already — acceptance itself requires it — and accept. They arrive holding exactly the role the invitation carried.

Pending invitations can be re-sent (each re-send issues a fresh link; re-sends are capped) or withdrawn. Invitations expire after 7 days.

Members can later be deactivated (their client access ends immediately; history kept) or reactivated, and their firm role changed at any time from the role picker on their row. An owner can Transfer ownership to another member (the outgoing owner becomes an Administrator — step-by-step here), or step an owner down by picking a role and selecting Demote. The last active owner is protected — you cannot demote or remove the only person who can run the practice.

When a staff member leaves

Deactivate (on the Members tab) is the right first move the moment someone leaves: their access to every client ends immediately, on their very next request. But deactivation and assignment are two separate things, and the difference decides the rest of your offboarding:

  • Deactivation does not unassign. The person still appears under Assigned on each of their clients' pages — and on each client's own panel, marked Deactivated — until you also Unassign them. Deactivation itself sends no notice to clients; unassignment does (every unassignment is emailed), so removing the assignments is also how the departure becomes visible to your clients.
  • Reactivation restores everything still assigned. Because assignments survive deactivation, reactivating someone restores their access to every client they were still assigned to, all at once. That is exactly right for leave or a sabbatical — deactivate on the way out, reactivate on return, and their client list is intact. For a permanent leaver it is why you tidy the assignments too: otherwise a reactivation months later, for whatever reason, would reopen every old client.
  • An owner cannot simply be deactivated out. Deactivating the last active owner is refused — Transfer ownership first, then deactivate the outgoing owner.
  • Nothing about their past work is lost. Everything the person ever did in a client's books remains in that client's audit history, attributed to them by name — deactivated, unassigned or long gone.

So the checklist for a permanent leaver: transfer ownership if they held it → Deactivate (access ends now) → Unassign them from each of their clients (clients are notified; panels are clean). For a temporary absence, deactivation alone is the whole procedure.

Connect clients

On the Clients tab (Owner/Admin), under Invite a client:

  1. Enter the client contact's email — just the email; you never name their organisation, because which organisation to connect is their choice to make at acceptance.
  2. Choose the proposed access — a suggestion the client can keep or change. See the profile descriptions in Give your accountant access.
  3. Say whether the client already has an organisation here or is new — new clients are invited to register and set up first.
  4. Select Send invitation.

The invitation appears under Pending invitations (re-send or withdraw as with members) until the client accepts. When they do, they pick the organisation, confirm the access, and the client appears in your list immediately.

Clients can also come to you. A client can send your practice a request from their own settings, using your Practice ID — the 26-character code on your Settings tab. Give that code to any client who wants to initiate the connection. Their request arrives by email to your practice's owners; follow the link and Accept the client (or decline).

Assign staff to a client

Open a client with Manage. The Staff access card (needs the assign staff to clients firm permission) has two parts:

  • under Available to assign, tick one or more members, optionally choose the Works under client access role they should have there, and select Assign to this client;
  • under Assigned (each row badged with a green tick), select Unassign to remove someone.

Note that neither ownership nor any firm role puts someone under Assigned automatically — even you, as owner, appear under Available to assign until you assign yourself.

The other direction works too: on the Members tab, Assign to clients puts one member onto several clients in one action, again with one role choice.

Each assigned member's row then carries its own controls:

  • Works under + Set role — which client access role narrows their work in this client (Full access profile = everything the client granted);
  • Customise — fine-tune this one person's access for this one client, within the client's grant. Exceptions are badged on the row and listed on the Client roles tab, so they are never invisible.

The client is notified by email of every assignment change — access never appears silently on their side — and role and customisation changes are recorded in the client's audit history. Unassignment takes effect on that member's next request.

Your clients at a glance

Each client row on the Clients tab carries a summary line of headline figures, refreshed hourly in the background:

  • overdue — how many issued invoices are past due, and their outstanding total in the client's own currency;
  • drafts — sales invoices waiting to be issued;
  • unreconciled — imported bank statement lines not yet matched or excluded;
  • failed emails — outgoing emails that could not be sent (shown only when there are any);
  • last activity — the last action a person took in the organisation. Background work (payment reminders, imports, this refresh itself) never moves this date, so a dormant client genuinely looks dormant.

These are deliberately summary figures only — no document detail ever appears on the practice screens. To see or work on the documents behind a number, open the client.

Every summary line says when it was computed ("as of …"); if it is more than a couple of hours old it is highlighted, and the small refresh button recomputes it on the spot (repeated clicks within a minute are ignored — the hourly refresh covers the steady state).

Note: Members see summary figures only for the clients they are assigned to; owners and members whose firm role includes manage client relationships see them for every active client.

Work in a client's organisation

On the Clients tab, members with an assignment see an Open button (everyone else sees You're not assigned). Opening a client takes you into their organisation with:

  • a permanent banner naming the client and your practice, with a link back to your practice screens;
  • the ordinary pages — dashboard, invoices, banking, reports — showing exactly what your effective access permits, nothing more: the client's granted profile, narrowed by any client access role or customisation your practice applied to your assignment, minus anything the client has restricted for you personally. Client administration (their members, settings, branding) is never available to practice users, whatever the profile;
  • your own identity on everything: the client's audit trail records which practice and which person did what, and sensitive actions (voiding, write-offs, reversals, exports) are additionally logged every time they are used.

You can work in several clients at once in separate browser tabs — each tab is pinned to its client by the address, so there is no risk of acting in the wrong organisation.

Note: The client controls the relationship. They can change your access level, suspend it (a suspension imposed by the client can only be lifted by the client), or revoke it entirely — each takes effect on your next request. You will also lose access instantly if you are unassigned or deactivated.

Step back from a client

On the client's Manage page your practice can also:

  • Suspend our access — freeze your own firm's access (only your practice can resume a suspension it imposed);
  • End relationship — permanent, reason required. Re-engaging later needs a fresh invitation.

Your practice can pay for a client's subscription on its own card — useful when the software is part of your service package. Paying never changes your access to their books: money and access are entirely separate.

What it costs. Running a practice and working in the books of clients who pay for their own plan costs your firm nothing; sponsorship is optional, and decided client by client. Sponsored plans are a separate family, Client Edition — Client Essentials, Client Standard and Client Complete — each covering one client organisation, priced per organisation per month and billed to your firm. They are deliberately not the plans a business buys for itself (those cover a whole account with several organisations and users), so don't compare the two line by line. A client with several organisations needs one sponsorship per organisation. The current prices are always on the pricing page and beside each plan on the offer form — this guide does not repeat them.

The flow is deliberately offer-first, so nothing is ever billed by surprise:

  1. Offer — on the client's page, pick a Client Edition plan (its price is shown beside it) and select Offer to sponsor. You need the manage sponsorships firm permission (owners have it automatically) and billing management on your firm's account, and you'll be asked to confirm your identity (a recent-password check). The offer costs nothing and bills nothing; the client is notified.
  2. The client accepts (or declines) — always their explicit choice, made on their own settings page. If they already pay for a plan, the page spells out exactly what would replace it. You are emailed either way.
  3. Complete checkout — after acceptance, the client's page shows Complete checkout. That takes you to a secure payment page where the subscription is charged to your firm's card. Only when the payment completes does the sponsorship activate — the client's organisation switches to the sponsored plan within a minute.

While a sponsorship runs:

  • Its cost appears on your firm's account overview under Sponsored client subscriptions.
  • Change plan (on the client's page, beside Stop sponsoring) moves it to another Client Edition plan. No acceptance is needed: the client agreed to your practice paying, and the tier is the payer's choice; the client is emailed either way. An upgrade takes effect at once — the prorated difference for the rest of the period is invoiced to your firm's card today and the client's features follow the new plan immediately. A downgrade takes effect when the current paid period ends — your client keeps what you have paid for until then, nothing is credited for the remainder, and the row shows "moves to … on <date>" with a Cancel planned change button until it happens. (That asymmetry is deliberate: it stops a sponsorship being hopped up to a richer tier for a day and back for pennies.) Change plan is also how a sponsorship on an earlier price moves to the current one.
  • Resume sponsorship appears on a sponsorship you have stopped while it is still winding down; it lifts the cancellation and the subscription renews as before (the client is emailed). It is not available once the client has taken over billing or the relationship has ended — those need a fresh offer after the old sponsorship has ended.
  • Billing (from your firm's account overview, Accounts → your account → Billing) keeps every sponsorship charge in one place: the next invoice as it stands today — one line per sponsored client, named for the client organisation, plus your firm's own plan and any upgrade prorations — and every invoice already raised, newest first, with a link to the itemised invoice and PDF. It reads the payment provider live, so it always agrees with your card statement. Use it to check what a mid-period upgrade cost, or what next month will be after a planned downgrade takes effect.
  • A winding-down sponsorship shows the date it ends, on your page, the client's advisers panel, their Plan page and your costs card, and in the emails. Until that date it holds the organisation's only sponsorship slot, so a new offer is refused with that date.
  • If a payment fails, the client keeps their subscription for a 14-day recovery window while payment is retried, and you are emailed with the deadline. Fix the card in time or the sponsorship ends and the client falls back to their own plan.
  • Stop sponsoring (on the client's page, same identity confirmation) ends it at the end of the paid period — the client keeps the subscription until then and can take billing over themselves, so there is never a sudden cut-off.
  • The client can take billing back at any time from their own plan page. Their organisation switches to their own plan immediately and your firm's subscription stops at the end of its paid period.
  • If the relationship ends — by either side — any sponsorship winds down the same gentle way: it runs to the end of the paid period, giving the client time to take billing over.

Close the practice

On the Settings tab, a practice Owner who also holds billing management on the firm's account can Close practice. Closure is refused while any client relationship is active or suspended — end them first — and while any sponsorship is still charging (stop it or let the client take billing over first). Closure is permanent.

Troubleshooting

  • "Two-step verification required" keeps appearing. Set up an authenticator app under your profile's security settings, then return to the page (or invitation link) you were opening. The grace period your practice may show covers getting set up — it never allows client access without it.
  • A staff member can't open a client. They need an active assignment to that client (check the client's Manage page), the relationship must be Active (not suspended or ended), and they must have completed two-step verification.
  • The Open button says "You're not assigned" — but I'm the practice owner. By design: neither ownership nor any firm role grants client access, and that badge is about you specifically. Open the client with Manage and assign yourself under Available to assign.
  • A member can open a client but can't do something I expected. Their effective access is layered: the client's grant, their client access role, any customisation, and any restriction the client set on them personally. Control what practice staff can do has the checklist.
  • A Members/Client roles/Firm roles control is missing for me. Each is behind a firm permission (manage staff, manage roles, assign staff to clients…). Check your own role on the Members tab — and remember you can never grant or assign above your own access.
  • Creating a practice fails. You need billing management permission on your billing account, and an account can hold only one practice.
  • A client invitation "expired or already used". Links die after 7 days, one use, a decline, or a withdrawal. Send a fresh one.
  • The invitation was accepted by a different email address than I invited. That's allowed by design: a client invitation can be accepted by whoever legitimately administers the connecting organisation — often you invite an office inbox and the owner accepts from their own account. (Staff invitations to join your practice are different: those are honoured only for the exact address invited.) When the addresses differ, the client's page shows a note with both — glance at it and check the connected organisation is the one you meant; if it isn't, end the relationship and invite again.
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