How to prevent my company customer/client list from being compromised when giving access to an accountant/Firm in quickbooks online?

Hey there, @jdrawbaugh-tried. I can assist you in preventing users from accessing your client or customer list.

We can achieve this by managing user roles and access rights. By doing so, you can control what users can see and perform within various areas of QuickBooks (QB), such as customers and sales, or vendors and purchases.

Here are the roles that restrict customer access:

• Standard no access - This user can't use any of the accounting features in QuickBooks Online (QBO). They can only submit timesheets.
• Track time only (needs to be connected with QB Time) - They can only enter timesheets for themselves. And they will only have access to timesheets and time reports.
• View company reports (available in QBO Plus and Advanced) - This user can see all reports except those that display payroll or contact info. They can’t access the audit log. They can also create custom reports and add report groups, but they can't view the actual transactions.

QBO Advanced has additional roles that restrict customer access:

• Bill payer - Users with this role can view and pay bills, and edit vendor info. They can't add bills or take any other action related to bills.
• Expense submitter - Users added to this role can only upload expense receipts.
• Bill approver - Users with this role can only approve bills. They can't pay bills or take any other action related to bills or payments.
• Bill clerk - Users with this role can add bills and mark bills as paid, but can't approve or pay bills.
• Expense manager - Users added to this role can access all expense transactions, vendors, products and services, sales tax, and currencies.
• Payroll manager - Users added to this role can manage employees, run payroll, and perform other payroll tasks.
• Inventory manager - Users added to this role can view and edit the products and services list and perform other inventory tasks.

To manage user roles or permissions, you can follow these steps:

1. Go to the Gear icon, then select Manage Users.
2. Look for the user you want to edit.
3. Choose Edit under the Action column.
   • You can modify the user role from the Roles dropdown.
   • You can't edit the Time tracking only roles. Instead, delete them, then add them again with the correct role.
4. Choose the account management settings you want to manage.
5. Click Save.
6. Ask the user to sign out and then sign back into QBO to see the updates.

If you're a QBO Advanced user, you can create a custom role where the user has no access to the Lists section containing employees, vendors, customers, and currencies. It's important to note that only administrators can manage users, and some fields are read-only and automatically included in a role for your information.

In case you want to learn about special tools for accountant users, you can check out this article: Use accountant tools and features in QuickBooks Online Accountant.

If you still have questions besides managing user roles, feel free to message us back here by leaving a comment below. I hope you have a nice day ahead!