How to Give Your Accountant Access to Your Invoices (Without Handing Over Everything)
Sharing your login is the wrong answer. Here's how to give an accountant, assistant, or business partner exactly the access they need using roles and permissions, and what each person should actually be able to see.
It is the end of the tax year and your accountant needs your invoices. So you do what almost everyone does: you send them your email and password over WhatsApp.
It works. It is also a bad idea for about five separate reasons, and the fix takes two minutes.
Why Sharing a Login Goes Wrong
You cannot tell who did what. If an invoice is edited, a payment recorded twice, or a client deleted, there is one account and no way to know whose hands were on the keyboard. That is uncomfortable when something goes wrong and genuinely serious if money is involved.
You cannot revoke access cleanly. When the engagement ends, your only option is changing the password, which logs out you, your assistant, and anyone else at the same time.
They see everything. Your accountant needs your numbers. They do not need your branding settings, your client contact list, or the ability to send invoices under your name.
The credentials sit in a chat thread forever. WhatsApp history gets backed up, phones get sold, accounts get compromised. Your business finances should not be one recovered chat away.
Nobody can work at the same time. Shared logins mean coordinating who is "in", a small friction that becomes constant during a busy month-end.
Decide What Each Person Actually Needs
Before granting anything, work out the smallest set of permissions that lets someone do their job. It is a good habit generally, and it makes the decision easy.
Your accountant needs to see invoices, recorded payments, receipts, and reports. They almost never need to create or send invoices, and they should not be changing your branding. View and export is usually the right level.
An assistant or junior may need to draft invoices and add clients, but should not be recording payments or deleting anything. Create and edit, without financial confirmation.
A business partner typically needs the same access you have. That is fine, but give them their own login, so the audit trail still distinguishes you.
A contractor helping temporarily should get the narrowest access that works and be removed the moment the engagement ends. Put a reminder in your calendar, because nobody remembers this on their own.
Set It Up Properly
In Beeterty, you invite people by email and each one gets their own login with scoped permissions. Your accountant can see the numbers without being able to redesign your invoice or send one under your name.
The practical steps are the same in any tool worth using:
- Invite by email, so the person has their own credentials rather than yours
- Assign the narrowest role that still lets them do the job
- Check what that role can actually see before you tell them it is ready. Assumptions about permission levels are frequently wrong
- Remove access when the work ends, not eventually
If You Run More Than One Business
This is where shared logins fall apart completely.
If you run a consultancy and a photography business, your accountant may handle one and not the other. With a single shared password there is no way to express that. They either see everything or nothing.
With per-business access you can give someone the books for one venture while another stays private. If you are juggling several ventures, managing them from one account with separate access is considerably less painful than separate tools with separate passwords.
What to Do Before Tax Season
Do this in the quiet part of the year rather than the week your filing is due.
- Invite your accountant now, with view access, so they are not blocked later
- Make sure every payment is recorded, not just invoices sent. Invoices show what you billed, payments show what you collected, and only one of those is income
- Check your receipts are issued, since they are the proof behind each payment
- Confirm your tax rates are correct on recent invoices, especially if rules changed during the year
- Run an export so you know it works before you are relying on it
The Short Version
- Never share your password. Invite people with their own logins
- Give the smallest access that does the job. For accountants, that is usually view and export
- Separate logins give you an audit trail of who changed what
- Remove access the day an engagement ends
- Per-business permissions matter if you run more than one venture
- Set it up before tax season, not during it
Your accountant should see the numbers. They should not be able to accidentally redesign your invoice. Those two things are entirely compatible, and it takes about two minutes to arrange.
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