Freshbooks Accountant Center – Overview for the Accountant / A single place to view your clients' FreshBooks accounting reports and Journal Entries.

Freshbooks writes: Accountant Center provides a smarter way to work with your small business clients by giving you, the Accountant, access to all of your clients’ Reports and Journal Entries from your own portal in FreshBooks.  The service was created based on feedback and requests from our customers and their Accountants looking for an easier way to share their business information, communicate more effectively throughout the year and reduce the stress of tax time.

With Accountant Center, you get on-demand access to cleaner data from your clients, helping them run a more effective business, and freeing up your time to provide more high-value services.  You can sign up for your own Accountant Center here to start connecting with all of your clients’ FreshBooks accounts. You will also be able to find common questions at the bottom of this FAQ.

Setting up your account

Setting up your Accountant Center account is done in two ways, (a) signing up without an invitation from a client and (b) signing up through a client invite. Let’s walk through both processes below.

(a) Signing up without an invitation

1. Head over to https://my.freshbooks.com/service/auth/sign_up

2. Enter your email address and a password, then click “Create My Account”.

3. On the following page, enter in your contact information (this will be visible to the client, and you can always change it later) and click “Get Started”.

4. You can now start inviting and accepting invitations from clients to connect!

(b) Signing up through a client invite

1. You will have received an invitation via email from your client to connect.

2. From this email, click on the green “Accept Invitation” button.

3. You will then come to a signup page where you can enter your email address and password, then click “Create My Account”. *

4. On the following page, enter your contact information (this will be visible to the client, and you can change it later) and click “Get Started”.

5. After connecting, you will be automatically connected to your client and can now access their Reports and Journal Entries.

* If we detect you have signed up for an account in the past on the same computer we will notify you of this on the signup page.

Sending and accepting invitations from your account

From within your account you can easily send out invitations to connect with your clients. You can also easily accept invitations from clients who use FreshBooks.

Sending invitations

1. In your account click on the green “Invite Client” button.
2. Simply enter in the client’s email address and send off the invitation.
3. Your client will then receive the invite via email asking them to accept your invitation.
4. You will be notified via email as soon as your client accepts the invitation.

Accepting invitations

Your clients can send you invitations to connect from their own FreshBooks account via email. Once submitted you will receive an email to connect

1. In the email your client sent you, click on the green “Accept Invitation” button.
2. If you are already logged in to your account, we will immediately connect you after accepting.
3. If you are not logged in, choose the option to “Log In” next to the green “Create My Account” button.
4. When you log in, you will then be automatically connected to your client and can start viewing their Reports and Journal Entries!

How It Works

Reports

This is the part that Accountant Center is all about! After you are set up and have a client connected to your account, you can start viewing their Reports and download copies for your records. Reports in FreshBooks can be filtered in various ways so you can get the easily data you are looking for.

Accessing Reports

1. In your Accountant Center dashboard, click on the grey “Access Account” button for the client in question.
2. In the drop down menu choose the “View Reports” option.
3. You will now be taken into the client’s reports.

Viewing Reports

1. On the left, you can access specific report categories, and on the right you will see the list of all relevant reports for the selected category.
2. Click on any report to view the account information.  Within each individual report you can also click the “Export” button to download the report to Excel, or as a CSV.
3. When finished accessing their reports, you can click on the “Accountant Center” tab at the top left of the screen to get back to your Accountant Center dashboard.

Journal Entries

The Journal Entries feature will allow you to see every financial action your client makes in their FreshBooks account for a selected date range. This includes actions like creating an invoice, adding a payment or deleting an expense.

Exporting a client’s Journal Entries

1. In your Accountant Center dashboard, click on the grey “Access Account” button for the client in question.
2. In the drop down menu, choose the “Export Journal Entries” option.
3. Select the date range you would like to export, and click on “Export Journal Entries”.
4. Choose the .IFF file if you will be importing to QuickBooks, or .CSV if you will be opening in Excel or another program.

Check out our useful journal entry guide designed for the accountant here: Journal Entries – An Overview for the Accountant

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I log in if I already have an Accountant Center account?

1. Head over to https://my.freshbooks.com/service/auth/login
2. Enter your email address and password to log in (to quickly log in again later, you can also bookmark the link above).

I forgot my password for my account, help!

1. Head over to https://my.freshbooks.com/service/auth/login (this is seprate from your clients’ FreshBooks login page).
2. Enter the email address and password tied to your Accountant Center account.*
3. Your login credentials will be emailed to you. Click on “Reset Password” in this email and retry logging in.

* If you are having trouble click on “Forgot your password?” and enter the email address you created the account with or give a Support Rockstar a call at 1-866-303-6061.

I sent an invitation to the wrong email address, how do I cancel?

1. In your Accountant Center dashboard, you should see all pending invites with the message “Your client hasn’t accepted your invitation yet”.
2. Click on the blue “Cancel Invitation” link for the client in question.

I sent an invitation to my client but it hasn’t been accepted, how do I resend?

1. In your Accountant Center dashboard, you should see all pending invites with the message “Your client hasn’t accepted your invitation yet”.
2. Click on the blue “Cancel Invitation” link for the client in question.
3. Now resend your invitation again by clicking on the green “Invite Client” button and entering their email address.

How do I remove a client from my Accountant Center?

1. In your Accountant Center dashboard, find the client in question.
2. At the bottom of their card, simply click on the blue “Remove Client” link.
3. After confirming you want to delete the client, they will be removed from your account.