Working With an Accountant or Bookkeeper

If an outside accountant or bookkeeper helps with your books, you don't need to share a login or use up one of your user seats. Accountant Access connects their GoodBooks accountant account to your organization: they work in your books under their own name, you see everything they do in your activity feed, and you can turn their access off with one click.

Where: Settings → Organization → Accountant Access (top-right button). Only System Administrators can manage accountant access. It's available on every plan.

Connecting with your accountant

A connection always takes both sides: one side sends the request, and the other side approves it. Nothing is shared until the approval happens.

If you invite them: on the Accountant Access page, enter the email address your accountant uses to sign in to GoodBooks and click Send Invite. They'll see your invitation on their Clients page (and their account owner gets an email). Once they accept, they're connected.

If they invite you: their request appears at the top of your Accountant Access page under "Waiting for Your Approval," and your account owner gets an email. Click Approve to connect, or Decline if you weren't expecting it — declining is always safe, since no access exists until someone at your organization approves.

Your accountant needs a GoodBooks accountant account (a special account type for accounting and bookkeeping firms — there's nothing for them to buy). If they don't have one yet, have them contact GoodBooks support and we'll get them set up. You can connect more than one firm — say, a bookkeeper for the monthly work and a CPA for year-end.

What your accountant can and can't do

Once connected, your accountant can work in your books just like a member of your team: the checkbook register, journal entries, donations and deposits, contacts, bank reconciliation, budgets, invoices, and every report. They see the same features your plan includes.

What they can't do — by design, no matter what:

• Change your organization settings (name, fiscal year, Stripe/online giving, branding, anything under Settings)
• Add, remove, or edit your users
• Approve, extend, or manage their own access — that stays with you

Your books are theirs to work in; your organization is yours to run.

Seeing what your accountant does

Everything your accountant does is recorded under their real name, exactly like your own users. In your activity feed and on records they've touched, their name carries a small accountant badge — hover over it to see their firm's name. There's never any question about who entered what.

Removing access

On the Accountant Access page, click Remove Access next to the firm. It takes effect immediately: if they're working in your books at that moment, they're returned to their own account on their very next click. Their past work stays in your records and audit trail.

You can reconnect later — either side just sends a new invitation, and the other side approves it again.

For accountants and bookkeepers

If you're the accountant: your firm gets its own GoodBooks account with a Clients page instead of books of its own. From there you can request access to a client (they approve it on their end), open any connected client's books, and switch between clients with the switcher in the top bar. Everyone at your firm shares the same client list.

Running reports across your clients is built in: open Reports, pick the client, and every report — income statement, balance sheet, trial balance, and the rest — runs against their books. See A Guide to Your Financial Reports for what each report shows.

To get your firm set up as an accountant account, contact GoodBooks support.

Good to know

• Connected accountants don't count toward your user limit — seats are for your own team.
• If your accountant should also be an approver for two-person approval, that's a role for your own users — accountant access doesn't include approving payments.
• If someone at your organization also wants day-to-day access, add them as a regular user instead — see Users and Permissions.