How to give your accountant and staff access without giving away everything

You can give your accountant and staff access to your books without showing them everything. Use roles to decide what each person can do, data access to decide which companies, years, ledgers, godowns and cost centres they see, and hidden values for figures such as cost price, margins and bank balances. Add entry mode and approvals for control, and check the audit trail. Set this up before you send the first invitation, not after.

Start with least access

Give each person what their job needs, and nothing more. It is easy to add access later; it is impossible to take back what someone has already seen. A sales executive needs his customers and the stock he sells, not the bank balance. An outside accountant needs the books, not the power to remove your staff.

Roles: what someone can do

Every Auditer workspace has one Owner, who can do everything. Some actions belong to the Owner alone: buying credits and seats, transferring ownership, and resetting or closing the workspace.

Everyone else gets a role. The built-in roles are templates you can rename and change:

Role	What it can do by default
Admin	Everything except the Owner’s own actions
Accountant	All screens; vouchers, masters, stock entries and PDFs; GST, e-invoice and e-way bill actions
Sales	Dashboard, sales, ledgers and receivables; sales invoices, orders, delivery notes, credit notes and receipts
Collection	Receivables and ledgers; receipts and PDFs
Inventory	Inventory screens; items, godowns, stock transfers and adjustments, barcodes
Viewer	Read-only screens and PDFs

There is also a read-only role that includes the audit trail, for someone who reviews the books. For anything else, create a custom role on the web portal, with View, Create and Manage rights set module by module.

Give Admin to very few people. An Admin can pair TallyPrime with the workspace, approve a Hard Sync and set up the GST connections.

Data access: which data they see

For each member you choose All, Selected or None for:

• companies, if you keep several in TallyPrime;
• financial years;
• ledgers and parties, for example only the customers in one territory;
• godowns;
• cost centres.

A role decides what someone can do; data access decides where they can do it. A sales executive limited to 40 customers works with those 40 and no others.

Hide sensitive values

Some figures are sensitive even on screens a person is allowed to open. For each role you can hide:

• cost price and stock valuation;
• margins;
• bank and cash balances;
• credit limits;
• tax identity numbers;
• purchase values.

Hidden values appear as a dash. By default, the Sales and Collection roles do not see cost price, stock valuation, margins, bank and cash balances or purchase values.

Entry mode and approvals

Entry mode is set on each role and decides how its entries reach TallyPrime: Regular only, Optional only, or both. An optional voucher is saved in TallyPrime but does not affect the books until someone makes it regular there. Giving a new staff member a role set to Optional only gives your accountant a review step before anything touches the books.

Approvals protect actions that change a lot at once. A Hard Sync, which rebuilds the synced data from TallyPrime, needs the approval of the Owner or an Admin. Restoring the workspace on a new PC needs the Owner’s approval.

Check with the audit trail

My Entries lists the entries created in Auditer and their status in TallyPrime: pending, posted or failed. Members see their own entries; the Owner and Admins see everyone’s and can filter by person. The day book shows what reached the books. Each member can also open My Access to see their own role, data scope and hidden values, which settles most questions about why someone cannot see a figure.

Three sample setups

	Sales executive	Storekeeper	Outside accountant
Example	At a steel trader in Bengaluru	At a pharma distributor in Indore	From a CA firm in Pune
Role	Sales, without credit notes	Inventory	Accountant
Companies	Trading company only	Main company	All
Financial years	Current	Current	Current and previous
Ledgers and parties	His 40 customers	None	All
Godowns	Peenya godown	Main warehouse	All
Hidden values	Cost, margin, bank and cash, purchase values	Margin, bank and cash	None
Entry mode	Optional only for the first month	Regular	Both

The sales executive creates orders and invoices at customers’ sites and records receipts. Taking credit notes out of his role means discounts go through the office. Starting him on a copy of the Sales role set to Optional only lets the accountant check his work for the first month before it counts.

The storekeeper records stock transfers and adjustments for one warehouse, and sees stock, not money. He needs no parties at all.

The outside accountant works on the whole books, including bank balances for reconciliation and the previous year for finalisation. She does not need Team or Billing; the Owner keeps those.

Common mistakes

• Sharing the Owner’s login. Every person should sign in with their own number, so the audit trail shows who did what.
• Making the outside accountant an Admin by default. The Accountant role covers the books; Admin adds team and connection settings.
• Hiding bank balances from the person who reconciles the bank. Hide figures by role, but give each role what its work needs.
• Forgetting people who leave. A quarterly review of members takes five minutes.

Before you invite anyone

1. Buy a seat for each member: 100 credits a month. The Owner’s seat is free.
2. Choose or create the role.
3. Set data access and hidden values.
4. Check the role’s entry mode.
5. Send the invitation from the web portal. It expires after 48 hours.
6. Ask the member to check My Access after joining.
7. Review members every quarter, and suspend or remove anyone who leaves on their last day.

How Auditer helps

Auditer gives the Owner roles with view, create and manage rights for each module, data access by company, financial year, ledger, godown and cost centre, and per-role hiding of sensitive values. Entry mode adds a review step through optional vouchers, approvals protect Hard Sync and restore, and My Entries lets the Owner see each member’s entries and their status in TallyPrime. Team management happens on the web portal. See Team and permissions and Security.