Giving your accountant review-only access
How an advisory practice appoints its accountant or reviewer in Achekam with read-only access, what bookkeeping access adds, and how it ends.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Financial services businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
An advisory practice's accountant needs to see the books. That does not mean they need to be able to change them. Preparing the annual financial statements, reviewing the management accounts, or an outside reviewer's look at the records are all jobs that can be done by reading, and read-only access removes the worry that a figure moved while someone was "just looking".
Achekam lets a business appoint its accountant, auditor or another adviser into its own books with a chosen level of access. This article explains how that works, where the limits are, and what to agree with the firm before you switch it on.
Appointing the firm by its address or code
You appoint a firm using its Achekam address or its firm code. In the appointment you choose the role the firm will play, one of accountant, auditor, tax practitioner, payroll provider or adviser, and an access level. The firm then accepts or declines.
The firm must already be on Achekam. There is currently no way to invite an accountant who is not, so if your accountant works in other software, they need their own Achekam firm workspace before you can appoint them. Ask them for their firm code once they have one.
Bookkeeping access or review access
| Access level | What the firm's people can do in your books |
|---|---|
| Bookkeeping | Work in the accounting, but not with your users, settings or payment gateways |
| Review | Read only: they can look, and they cannot change anything |
Use review for an auditor, an outside reviewer, or an accountant whose task this year is to examine rather than to post. Use bookkeeping where you have really handed the bookkeeping to the firm. Even then, the firm cannot add or remove your users, change your settings, or touch the payment gateways your clients pay through. Those stay with your own administrators, which is where they belong.
If you are unsure which to choose, start with review. Raising the level later is a small step; discovering that someone posted to a reported month is a larger one.
The role matters as well as the level. Recording a firm as your auditor rather than your accountant makes plain, to your own staff and to anyone looking at the appointment later, what that firm is there to do. Where one firm keeps the books and another reviews them, each appointment should say so, and the reviewing firm should have nothing more than read-only access, so that the work it reviews is never its own. The ethics behind that line are set out in the IESBA's International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants, which covers the five fundamental principles, the International Independence Standards and the conceptual framework for addressing threats.
Your own sign-in rules apply to their people
Anyone from the firm who opens your books must meet your business's own IP allowlist and two-factor sign-in rules. If you restrict access to particular networks, or require two-factor sign-in for everyone, the firm's staff are held to the same standard as your own.
Plan for that before the first visit. If your allowlist only covers your own office network, the firm's people will not get in from theirs. Agree with the firm which addresses to allow, and remove them when the engagement ends.
They work in your ledger, not a copy
An appointed firm works directly in your own ledger. No copy is made. Whatever a firm with bookkeeping access posts appears in your accounting screens, and a firm with review access sees exactly the figures you see.
That ends the old cycle of exporting the books, waiting for the accountant's adjustments, and re-importing them, with two versions drifting apart in the meantime. It also means the firm's staff, who may be moving between many clients, need to know whose books are open. Achekam shows a coloured bar for that, and people who work in several workspaces switch between them from the header.
Ending the appointment and keeping the books
Either side can end the appointment. When it ends, the firm loses access and the books stay with you. Nothing leaves with the firm.
Changing accountants means ending one appointment and appointing the new firm. There is no managed handover screen between an outgoing and an incoming firm, so arrange the handover of working papers, open queries and prior-year files between the two firms directly, and set a date for the old appointment to end.
What to agree in the engagement letter
The software sets the access; the engagement letter sets the expectations. For an accountant or reviewer you appoint into your books, agree in writing:
- the role and access level the firm will have, and which of its people will use it;
- whether the firm may post anything and, if so, what, for example year-end adjustments only;
- how proposed adjustments reach you if the firm has review access only;
- which periods the firm is expected to examine;
- that the firm meets your sign-in rules, and which network addresses you will allow;
- that the appointment ends when the engagement ends.
A reviewer who finds a problem should tell you rather than fix it quietly. With review access that is the only route open to them, which makes the line between their work and yours easy to see.
Before the reviewer arrives
Read-only access is most useful when the books are tidy. Make sure receipts are allocated to invoices before the reviewer starts; one client payment covering several invoices covers the common traps. And if the review will lean on client documents, showing a filed document has not changed explains how stored files can be shown to be the files you received. On the firm's side, the steps it takes to accept your appointment are described in accepting a client's appointment.
Ask your accountant for their firm code, decide what access the job actually needs, and set it to review unless there is a clear reason for more.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
