Documentation/ Account and plan/ Practices: adding clients
Accountancy practices: adding clients
A practice can organise its clients two ways: register them as companies inside one account, or give each client a user of their own. Both work, and you can mix them. Which you want depends on who brings the paperwork in.
On this page
The two approaches side by side
| Companies in one account | One user per client | |
|---|---|---|
| Who uploads | The practice's own staff | The client |
| Where the client is registered | In Clients / Companies | As a user, under Users |
| Does the client get into the application | No | Yes, with their own sign-in |
| Does it use up users from the plan | No | Yes |
| How documents are kept apart | By the company that received them | By user |
Companies inside one account
Each client is registered as an entity under Clients / Companies, with its registered name, its tax number and its accounting details. Documents land against whichever one was identified as the recipient.
This is the approach when the paperwork comes to the practice, by email, on paper or in a shared folder, and your own people upload it.
To set up a whole book of clients at the start there is importing from Excel, which saves creating the cards one by one.
One user per client
Each client has their own user and uploads their documents themselves. The Client role exists for exactly this: a restricted profile, meant for bringing paperwork in.
Two settings on the user matter a lot here:
- Assign documents to: sends what the client uploads through to whoever at the practice is going to work on it.
- Default project: puts a project on their uploads without the client having to pick one.
This approach uses up users from your plan, which is what limits it with a large book of clients.
Mixing the two
They are not exclusive. A practice can keep most of its book as companies in one account and hand out users only to the clients who want to upload for themselves.
Setting a client up
The usual order for taking on a new client:
- Add the entity under Clients / Companies, with its tax number and its trading name if it goes by a different one.
- The bank account on that card, needed for the cash receipts and payments on their documents.
- The client's chart of accounts, which can be imported from Excel rather than keyed in account by account.
- A user of their own, if the client is going to upload.
- A first upload, to check the recipient is being identified properly.
If the supplier on that first upload comes out as the client's own name, the entity is not registered properly under Clients / Companies. It is the same situation described in Correcting the supplier.
What counts as one unit
On accounts set up as an accountancy practice, the plan is used up by invoice processed, not by page. So the rule for uploading is the other way round: put the whole document in and leave the pages alone.