Giving an accountant or bookkeeper access to QuickBooks Online without sharing your login

QuickBooks Online has two ways to let someone else into your books, and neither needs your password. An outside accountant is invited from a tab made for accounting firms. A bookkeeper who works as part of your team is added as a user with a role. The role to keep for yourself is primary admin, because that person controls everyone else’s access.

Two ways in

Either way the person signs in as themselves. QuickBooks keeps an audit log of who made each change, and an admin can filter it by user. That only works when each person has their own user. With one shared login, every entry carries the same name.

Inviting an accounting firm

1. In QuickBooks Online, open Settings and choose Manage users.
2. Go to the tab named Accountants or Accounting Firms and select Invite firm.
3. Type in the accountant’s email, or the user ID of their firm, and send the invitation.

What happens next depends on the accountant. The email they get links to your company. A firm already on Intuit Accountant Suite, Intuit’s product for accounting firms, can accept at once, and anyone else signs up first through a link in the same email. You’ll know it worked when Manage users shows them as “Active” where it said “Invited.”

How many firms you can invite depends on your plan. The usage limits page in QuickBooks Help allows 2 accountant firm users on Simple Start, Essentials and Plus, and 3 on Advanced.

The invitation has no step for choosing a role; Add user does. So if you want to limit what an outside bookkeeper can reach, add them as a regular user with a role, if your plan has a billable user left.

Adding a bookkeeper as a user

For someone who works inside your business, such as a part-time bookkeeper, use Add user.

1. Open Settings, then Manage users, and choose Add user.
2. Fill in the person’s name and email address.
3. Pick a role from the Roles list. QuickBooks shows the features that role can reach, so read them before you send.
4. Select Send invitation.

QuickBooks Help sorts roles into billable and non-billable, and the difference is whether the person uses up one of your plan’s users. Bookkeeper, In house accountant, Standard all access and the admin roles are billable. View reports and Track time only are non-billable, and the usage limits page shows that not every plan has them.

Read your own row before you plan who gets what. The primary admin is a billable role, so on Simple Start the one billable user is the primary admin. By those numbers, the accountant invitation is the one way to bring a bookkeeper into Simple Start without changing plans.

Other roles carry conditions of their own. Custom roles need QuickBooks Online Advanced or Intuit Enterprise Suite, and Payroll manager is a role in Intuit Accountant Suite only. Track time only is removed on accounts connected to QuickBooks Time. The Roles list in your own account shows what you can assign.

Pick the narrowest role that covers the work. A bookkeeper who records transactions doesn’t need company admin, which can invite other users. QuickBooks Help spells out the two bookkeeping roles. Bookkeeper can enter bills and invoices, and can also pay bills and write checks. It can’t open the profit and loss, the balance sheet or other financial reports, run payroll, or add or edit vendors. In house accountant can reconcile accounts and see every report except payroll reports, but can’t do payroll, manage other people’s roles, or handle admin tasks.

Someone who only needs to read your numbers, such as a lender or an advisor, fits View reports on Plus or Advanced. That role can run reports but not open the transactions behind them. Simple Start and Essentials have no reports-only users. There, someone who only needs reports takes a billable role, and every billable role that shows reports can also change data.

Keep the primary admin role

The primary admin reaches every part of the account and manages everyone else in it. By default that is whoever set the account up, which is how a bookkeeper or accountant ends up holding it. Check who has it today on the Manage users page.

Two conditions apply while that person is still working with you. The current holder must be able to sign in, because a company admin can’t reassign the role. And the person taking over must already have the Admin role. Then the holder opens Manage users, finds the new person, and chooses Make primary admin under Actions.

On QuickBooks Online Simple Start, the transfer goes through Intuit’s support. If your accountant holds the role, QuickBooks Help has steps for them to hand it back to you.

It gets harder once the person is gone and nobody can sign in as them. The only route left is a request to Intuit’s account protection team: a form, plus papers that tie you to the business.

The request page asks for two kinds of proof. One is your own ID: a driver’s license, a passport or another government ID. The other is a document that fits your type of business, such as a business license for a sole proprietorship or articles of organization for an LLC. If other owners have to confirm the request, Intuit emails them and a clock starts. They have 14 business days to prove who they are and upload their documents. If they miss it, the system declines the request and you file a new one.

So do the transfer first, while the person can still sign in. Put it on the same list as the steps in the checklist for taking back access when a vendor contract ends.

Ending access

To remove a regular user, go to Settings, then Manage users, select the ellipsis beside their name, choose Delete, and confirm. Deleting a user can’t be undone, but what they did stays in the audit log, which keeps each event for two years.

To end an accounting firm’s access, a primary admin or company admin goes to Settings, then Manage users, and opens the Accounting Firms tab. Find the firm, select Delete in the Action column, and confirm. QuickBooks Help gives the result as immediate: the firm can no longer open your company file.

Then look past QuickBooks. A bookkeeper may also work in your payroll service, your tax filing sites and your suppliers’ portals. Each is a separate account with its own rules for adding a person. List what you gave the bookkeeper, close each one, and change any password they knew. Why a shared admin login in HR and payroll systems is a problem covers the payroll side. For the questions to ask the firm, see what to check when a vendor says its team uses one shared login.