Outsourced bookkeeping tools get compared on features, and the feature comparison never reaches the question that decides the handover. Every app in the stack sits in somebody's billing account, and once the work crosses from your firm to an outside provider, whose account it is decides who can open the file next year.
Xero answers that question in its own terms of use, and the answer is narrower than it sounds. The right to use the service runs for as long as the subscriber keeps paying. The other apps in a bookkeeping stack each publish their own version of that rule, and they are not the same rule.
Outsourced Bookkeeping Tools Sit in Somebody Else's Account
Name the app, then name the account it lives in. Those are two separate facts. The first one is on the product page and the second one is in the terms.
Two questions settle it for any app in the arrangement: whose billing account pays for it, and what one named person's access to it looks like. Naming the layer a product belongs to comes before either, and that is worked through in which layer your firm is buying. The QuickBooks form of the account question, where accountant access is counted apart from billable seats and a bookkeeper can be billed for the client's subscription, is settled in the cost of hiring a QuickBooks bookkeeper.
Whose name the subscriptions are in is already one of the terms to get in writing before anyone signs (what outsourced bookkeeping costs). The products answer it themselves, in public, and the answers differ enough to matter.
In Xero, the Subscriber Owns the Access
Xero gives the account holder a name. Whoever creates a subscription and accepts the terms becomes the subscriber, and the subscriber is the one responsible for paying for it. Anyone else working in the file is an invited user, meaning a person other than the subscriber who has been invited in through that subscription (Xero, terms of use).
The split matters because the two roles hold different things. Xero grants the right to use the service for as long as the subscriber keeps paying, until the subscription is terminated, or, for an invited user, until that access is revoked (Xero, terms of use).
The subscriber also holds the controls. Xero's terms say the subscriber takes responsibility for fully controlling how the subscription is managed and who can access it, decides who is invited and what kind of access they get, and can change or stop that access at any time (Xero, terms of use).
One sentence in that same section is worth reading twice when a provider holds the subscription. Where a partner participates in Xero's partner program and acts as the subscriber on behalf of a client, Xero says it may reasonably direct that partner to provide the client with read-only access to the subscription under its additional partner terms (Xero, terms of use).
Owning the data is a different question from reaching it. When you enter or upload your data into the service, Xero does not own that data, though you grant it a license to use, store and back that data up (Xero, terms of use).
What Happens If the Subscriber Stops Paying
The payment clock is published, and it is short. Xero says that if subscription fees are not paid within 7 days of the date they became due and payable, it may suspend the subscription, and if they are not paid within 14 days of that date, it may terminate the subscription (Xero, terms of use).
Termination is where the file goes quiet. Once a subscription is terminated by either side, it is archived and the data submitted or created in it is no longer available to you, and Xero retains that data for a period consistent with its data retention policy, during which the subscriber can reactivate the subscription and reach the data again by paying the fees (Xero, terms of use).
Read those two facts against who the subscriber is. If the provider holds the subscription, the provider's payment clock is also your access clock, and the person who can switch the lights back on is the provider rather than you. You can own the data and still be unable to reach it.
Xero puts the backup duty on the customer either way: you are responsible for maintaining copies of your data entered into the service (Xero, terms of use).
Receipt Capture Rides on the Ledger Plan, Until It Does Not
Document capture usually arrives bundled with the ledger plan, which is how it ends up with no owner on the access list. Xero includes Hubdoc, its bill and receipt capture product, in the Early, Growing and Established plans, and tells partners that clients on Xero Cashbook or Xero Ledger can still have it at retail price (Xero, partner guide to using Hubdoc).
That difference shows up as a billing decision during setup. For a client on a Cashbook or Ledger plan, Xero's instructions tell the practice to enter credit card details, because Hubdoc is not included in those plans and gets billed separately (Xero, partner guide to using Hubdoc). Whoever types that card number is the one being billed for the client's document store, which on a Cashbook or Ledger client is the practice.
The step that decides who can reach that store is a checkbox. When a practice creates a client's Hubdoc organization, Xero's guide describes an option to send the client an email invite, and says to leave the box clear if you do not want the client to have full access to the organization (Xero, partner guide to using Hubdoc).
So a document store can exist, fill up with a client's source documents, and never have the client in it. That is a defensible way to start an onboarding and a bad thing to forget, so put the client invite on the same checklist as the first bank feed.
Dext Bills the Practice by Client and the Business by Plan
Dext, a receipt and invoice capture product, is sold on two different meters, and the one an arrangement sits on decides who the customer of record is.
The practice route is priced by client. Dext quotes its Essentials and Advanced practice plans per client per month and applies a 10-client minimum, which makes the accounting or bookkeeping practice the customer of record (Dext, pricing for practices).
The business route is bought by the business itself, with an allowance attached to the plan rather than to a client list. The entry business plan carries 250 documents a month and 5 users, and scales from there (Dext, pricing for businesses).
Neither route is wrong. What causes trouble is an arrangement where the practice pays and everybody assumes the receipts are the client's to take. On the practice route the practice is the paying customer of record, so settle in writing what happens to the stored documents when that plan ends, while nothing is at stake.
Accounts Payable Comes With Roles Built for Outsiders
Paying bills is the layer that publishes its roles in advance, so the access decision is a choice from a list rather than a negotiation. BILL, an accounts payable and receivable product, publishes six pre-defined roles: administrator, accountant, clerk, approver, payer and auditor (BILL, accounts payable controls).
Naming them is what makes separation possible. BILL says those roles let people inside or outside your company take part in payables and receivables without having to be given access to your bank account or accounting system functions, and that custom roles may also be available for more granular permissions depending on the account's price plan (BILL, accounts payable controls).
A second control sits next to it, on one plan. With Dual Control enabled, a single user can start an action and a second user is required to approve it (BILL, accounts payable controls). BILL's plan comparison marks that control in the Enterprise column only, and Enterprise is the plan it quotes as custom pricing rather than at a listed rate (BILL, plans and pricing).
Granting access by role rather than by shared password is settled ground for any handover (how to outsource bookkeeping). What is specific here is that the roles already exist, already named, so an outside preparer can be given one that carries no bank access at all.
The catch is the meter. BILL lists Essentials at $49 per user per month, Team at $65 and Corporate at $89 (BILL, plans and pricing). Every named login in the payables system is a recurring line, and that is the quiet reason an arrangement ends up with one shared login instead of one per person.
The Practice-Side Tracker Belongs on the Same List
The tracker that says whose desk a job is on is the firm's own system rather than the client's, so an access list built client by client can miss it entirely.
It is metered by person too. Karbon, a practice management product, charges per user and says every team member who needs access has to be invited as a user, with the subscription based on the number of users invited (Karbon, pricing).
The published rates make the trade explicit. Karbon lists its Team plan at $59 per user per month paid annually, or $79 per user per month paid monthly (Karbon, pricing).
What that layer owns, and why the job record is the thing being bought, is worked through in what practice management software actually owns. For this decision one question is enough: does the provider's preparer get a named seat in it, or does somebody hand over theirs?
Provision and Deprovision the Whole Stack as One Operation
Treat the stack as one grant and one revocation rather than as five tasks nobody owns.
Write One List, Per Person
Write it once: the ledger, the capture app, the payables system, the portal and the practice tracker, each with the account it is billed to and the role that person holds in it. Run the same page as a joiner list on someone's first day and as a leaver list on their last.
Some grants enumerate, which is what makes the leaver list exactly as long as the joiner list. In Hubdoc, a practice user's access is granted client organization by client organization from the practice organization, several at a time on the same screen, and access to a client's organization lets that person edit the client's profile and manage and publish its documents (Xero, partner guide to using Hubdoc). Someone granted every client holds a separate grant for each one, and taking it back is the same list in reverse.
The Meter Decides Whether an Honest Login Is Free
Each product bills on a different unit, and the unit is what sets your access policy in practice.
| Product | What the subscription is billed by |
|---|---|
| Xero | The organization, with no per-user license fees |
| Hubdoc | Bundled with the Early, Growing and Established Xero plans, billed separately for Cashbook and Ledger clients |
| Dext practice plans | Each client, per month |
| BILL | Each user, per month |
| Karbon | Each user, per month |
Sources: Xero, pricing plans, Xero, partner guide to using Hubdoc, Dext, pricing for practices, BILL, plans and pricing, Karbon, pricing
Where the meter runs per organization, a named login for each person costs nothing on the subscription, and there is no excuse for a shared one. Adding practice staff to a Hubdoc practice organization carries no cost either, and access to each client is granted from there (Xero, partner guide to using Hubdoc). Where the meter runs per user, the honest version has a price, and that price is where shared credentials come from.
The Trigger Is a Person Leaving, Not a Contract Ending
Providers rotate staff, and a preparer who moved to different work last quarter can still hold every login nobody switched off. Ask the provider to tell you in writing on the day a named person comes off your work, and treat that message as the same task the last day of the engagement would have been.
Questions Firms Ask About Outsourced Bookkeeping Tools
Which Tools Does an Outsourced Bookkeeper Need Access To?
Only the ones the monthly deliverable touches. Start from what has to arrive each month, list the apps that produce it, and grant nothing outside that list. An app nobody can tie to a deliverable is an app nobody will remember to switch off.
Should the Provider or the Client Hold the Subscriptions?
Both arrangements exist, and they are not equal. If the provider is the subscriber in Xero, ask for the read-only route in writing, because Xero's terms say it may reasonably direct a partner acting as subscriber on behalf of a client to give that client read-only access (Xero, terms of use). If you hold the subscriptions yourself, nothing about the exit depends on the provider's billing.
Do We Still Need Our Own Export If the Provider Backs Everything Up?
Yes, because a copy somebody else holds only arrives when they hand it over. Xero's terms make maintaining copies of your data your own responsibility (Xero, terms of use). An export you hold yourself, on a schedule, is the copy of the file that does not depend on somebody else's billing staying current.
Write the Account List Before the First Login
Comparing the tools is the easy half, and it is the half a vendor will gladly do with you. The harder half fits on one page: each app, the account it is billed to, the role each named person holds in it, and who switches that role off.
Write that page before anyone signs in, and keep it current as people rotate. It costs an hour at the start of an engagement and it cannot be reconstructed in the middle of one. Choosing the provider is a separate decision, worked through in how to pick an outsourced bookkeeping company.
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