Assign Staff to Client Books

Last updated: 2026-09-12 Summary:

• Assignment is what grants a Manager or Member a client’s books, and removing it takes the access away.
• Firm Owners and Admins reach every client book under the firm, assigned or not.
• Firm roles set what someone can do across the firm; assignments set which clients they touch.

Firm roles vs. client access

Two separate things control what a staff member can do:

• Firm role — Owner, Admin, Manager, or Member — set when you invite them. It governs firm-wide ability (managing books, staff, billing). See the role table in the firm overview.
• Client-book assignment — which client companies that person can open. A Member assigned to three clients sees those three and no others.

Where the two meet matters, and it is the thing firms most often get wrong. Assignment is the boundary for a Manager or Member: one with a firm role but no assignments cannot open any client book, and each assignment is the deliberate step that grants one. It is not a boundary for an Owner or Admin — those two roles carry firm-wide reach and can open every client book under the firm whether or not anyone assigned them to it. If a client’s books must stay out of someone’s view, the firm role you give them is the decision that settles it; the assignment list will not.

Assign staff to a client

1. Go to the Staff page under your firm settings.
2. Pick the staff member (or pick the client, and assign several staff to it at once).
3. Grant them the client books they handle, and the role they hold inside those books.
4. Save. The access takes effect on their next request — they don’t need to sign out and back in.

Removing an assignment revokes the underlying access to that client’s book at the same moment.

Temporary access

An assignment can carry an expiry, and the platform enforces it: once the date passes, the assignment stops granting access and is cleaned up automatically. It is the right shape for audit-season help or a contractor on one client’s catch-up work.

Set it on the Staff page, in the Access expires field beside the role. The date you pick is the last day the access works — it ends at the end of that day, Philippine time. The field applies to the grants you are making in that save, so it is a property of the batch rather than of a staff member: leave it empty and those grants last until you remove them, which is the default and what every assignment made before this field existed does.

Changing the expiry on an assignment that already exists is not supported yet — remove the assignment and grant it again with the date you want. Removal is immediate.

Where firms get tripped up

• Assuming a firm role grants no client access. For an Owner or Admin it grants all of it. Assignment limits Managers and Members; if you need someone confined to named clients, give them one of those two roles.
• Assuming a firm role grants client access. The mirror image, for Managers and Members: they need assignments to open a specific client’s books — check assignments when someone “can’t see” a client.
• Assuming an expiry applies to assignments you already made. It doesn’t. Access expires stamps the grants in the current save only — assignments made earlier, and any made with the field left empty, stay open-ended until you remove them.
• Over-assigning. Assign staff only to the clients they work on. One client’s books should never be open to a staffer who has no reason to see them — that’s the boundary clients trust you to keep, and for Managers and Members the assignment list is where you keep it.

See also

• Add and manage client books
• Invite and manage users