Sharing login and password

Support
1

Hi all,
My search for some Accountants to help me get on with Quickfile led to some candidates. One of the Accountants with whom I am in dialogue with asked for my login and password. I am just wondering what is a safe way to grant access to the accountants?
Many thanks
Solar

2

The ideal way would be they sign up to the Affinity platform and connect to your account that way.

However, you can also create a secondary account for them and set specific permissions for them

1 Like
3

Thanks Parker.How can I create a secondary account set specific permissions for providing access to the Accountant?
Many thanks
Solar

4

If you go to Account Settings and select Team Management:

Click to add a new team member:

Donā€™t click this box - it will give the new user full access (you will also lose it too)

Once created, click the padlock icon:

Tick the boxes to grant that permission:

Hope that helps! :slight_smile:

1 Like
5

As an aside, a question to @Glenn - what is the reasoning behind only permitting one ā€œadministratorā€ account per QuickFile instance? I can see why you would need to enforce at least one admin per instance, but why at most one?

6

Thanks Parker. If you do give a third party access to your Quickfile, I assume your bank account is safe? has anyone shared login and password with their accountant?
Many thanks,
Solar

7

QuickFile isnā€™t linked to a bank account, so yes they should be safe

8

I notice from a few posts on the forum that it would appear that some people have. As @Parker1090 describes above the recommended way is to provide them with a separate account. There is no reason to share your login and password with anyone, for anything, ever.

2 Likes
9

@ian_roberts having one admin user makes it easier to resolve account ownership disputes. We donā€™t want to be arbitrating over disputes between partners as to who owns the account or be in situation where we are asked to block access to another team member or delete the account entirely.

Weā€™ve had situations where company directors have insisted in very strong words that we hand over control of a given account to them whereby the account was originally setup and managed by their accountant. Clearly itā€™s not a good idea for us to be getting involved in these kinds of situations. The ownership question therefore is very simple, if you control the email address for the admin user you control the account.

Having multiple admins would complicate this process and also any non-admin user without restricted privileges would still be able to do anything the admin user can, except delete the account and modify the user credentials.

1 Like
10

Am I right in saying that if your accountant is already using their email address in conjunction with ā€˜a quickfile accountā€™, they cannot be associated to any other quickfile account? Unless they sign up to the Affinity platform??

11

Generally speaking, yes. QuickFile operates a one account per email address policy. Itā€™s the way itā€™s designed. Plus, Affinity is affordable and helps fund future development.

Although, if you search through the forum there are workarounds

12

Hi Parker,

Iā€™ve not been able to find the threads for the workarounds, do you have any links? I need to allow my accountant access to both of my companies and am having the same issue.

Thanks,

Nick

13

Hi Nick,

Generally speaking the workaround is use a different email address.

However, given that your accountant is just that, Iā€™d highly recommend you encourage them to sign up for Affinity.

14

The accountants are a Sage reseller and I canā€™t see them doing thatā€¦ (although my actual accountant seems ok with QF, better than a bunch of spreadsheets as he says!)

I have 2 email accounts which is fine as one for each but my accountant only has his company email address to use, so for my second account I have had to give him my credentials which I despise as an IT administrator! This is not the solution.

Glenn - Would it not make sense for a non-admin account to be able to be used in various QF companies?

15

What you need to do is get hold of your email admin and get him to give you another email address to use for the accountant rather than sharing credentials (which as I have already mentioned is not to be recommended, for anything, ever).

Hopefully you were joking when you say you are the email admin and IT administrator.

16

Hmmmā€¦ :disappointed:

I am an IT Admins and I would not create an email address on my server for an uncontrolled 3rd party to use. I see compromised companies and email servers all the time and this is much more of a risk than giving the accountant access to my small QF account as my login (after changing the password to something temporary!).

Bear in mind that the email address used in QF is basically an arbitrary name used for the login and should his network, PC or email accounts be compromised whether accidentally or through negligence it will not expose my infrastructure as the only details he has are some access details within an email, not an email account linked through his address book/email settings. After he has produced my accounts, the password will be changed and the details useless.

Granted this is still a form of risk and one I would rather not make hence why I posted in the first place! Just because you only see the world from your aspect does not make your view the only or indeed correct oneā€¦

17

The one email, one account policy has been there since the beginning as a way to limit bulk users. It was never favourable for us to have accountants create 100s of accounts with a single email, as essentially our model was based on end-user lead generation and the software has always leaned more towards the needs of business owners rather than accountants.

In light of the above we have spent several years developing Affinity and providing a dedicated set of tools for managing multiple accounts, rather than a spreadsheet of 100s of passwords and login URLs.

I appreciate this can cause some difficulty for those accountants who have heavily vested interests in other applications. Although we also have a duty not to undermine those that have paid to use Affinity, removing this policy would do exactly that.

One solution you could use is to register your accountant on Affinity and use the free Ā£10 credit to link to your account. There are no obligations to continue using Affinity once the credit has expired.

1 Like