How to Share Dubsado Access With Your Bookkeeper
You hired a bookkeeper so you could stop worrying about your finances every month. But if your bookkeeper keeps emailing you asking for reports, transaction details, and invoice records—that's not really handing it off, is it?
If you use Dubsado to send invoices and collect payments, there's a simple way to give your bookkeeper direct access to the financial information they need—without giving them access to anything else in your account.
As a bookkeeper who works with service-based business owners, I use Dubsado access every month to complete my clients' bookkeeping accurately and efficiently. In this post, I'm walking you through exactly how to set it up, what I can see once you do, and why it matters for the health of your books and business.
Why Does a Bookkeeper Need Dubsado Access?
My clients are service providers (coaches, web designers, SEO strategists, wedding planners, and more) who use Dubsado to send invoices and receive payments. That means Dubsado holds a lot of important financial data that I need in order to complete their bookkeeping accurately each month.
Specifically, I use two sections inside Dubsado:
•Transactions: This is where I can see when and how payments were received. Whether a payment came in via credit card, bank transfer, or check, I can see it here. This lets me double-check what's happening in your QuickBooks account and make sure everything lines up. I can also see payment categories, which gives me helpful information to break your income into separate categories on your Profit and Loss report. I also gain access to your Stripe account through Dubsado, which is what processes the payments—this allows me to see payment processing fees that need to be recorded accurately.
•Invoices: Most of the time, I get everything I need from the transactions tab. But if I ever need any additional information, I'll dive deeper into the invoices tab to fill in the gaps.
Without this access, I would have to send you an email, wait for you to pull the information yourself, wait for your response, and then complete the bookkeeping. Having my own access makes the whole process seamless—after all, you hired a bookkeeper so you'd have to do less, remember?
What the “Accountant” Role in Dubsado Actually Means
One thing I always make clear to my clients: as a bookkeeper with Dubsado access, I cannot change anything in your account. The Accountant role is view-only for financial reporting. Here's exactly what's included:
•Review Transactions:
Access and filter individual income and expense transactions to organize them correctly.
•Analyze the Chart of Accounts:
View exactly how your business's income and expenses break down by category.
•Generate Financial Reports:
Download Profit & Loss statements and export reports to a CSV file for tax preparation.
•Monitor Invoices:
View the status of sent invoices (overdue, paid, unpaid) to help track cash flow.
That's it. I can't touch your client records, edit your contracts, change your workflows, or access anything outside of those financial sections. When I explain this to clients, they immediately feel at ease—they understand that they're just taking one more task off their own To Do list.
Step-by-Step How to Add Your Bookkeeper to Dubsado
The process is simple and only takes a few minutes. Here's how to do it:
1. Navigate to Settings (the gear icon in your Dubsado account).
2. Click Multi-users and then select Invite New User.
3. Enter your bookkeeper's email address and assign them the Accountant role. This restricts their access to financial reporting, invoices, and transactions only.
4. Your bookkeeper will receive an email invitation to create or log into their Dubsado account.
That's it! No complicated setup, no back-and-forth. Andthere’s no additional cost to add an accountant to your Dubsado account, as long as you don't exceed the platform's user limit of 3 users.
Do You Need to Do Anything to Prepare?
Nope! There is nothing you need to do before adding me. You can continue using your Dubsado as usual—I'll work with whatever is there.
For some clients, I will have them set up the QuickBooks integration with Dubsado. This integration pulls the invoices you send directly into QuickBooks, which makes things a little easier on my end. I send you the steps for this, and it's a quick process—but it is not a required step to complete your bookkeeping.
The Biggest Bookkeeping Mistakes I See with Dubsado Users
One of the most common mistakes I fix when a new client comes to me is how they're recording their income, and it's costing them an accurate picture of their business finances.
Mistake #1: Recording the Net Deposit Instead of the Gross Payment
A common scenario: a client pays you $1,000. After Stripe's processing fee, $975 hits your bank account. Many business owners record that $975 to their income—but that doesn't tell the whole story.
What you actually want to do is split the transaction: record $1,000 to your income, and $25 to your payment processing fees as an expense account. And yes, those processing fees are a deduction!
Now you have an accurate picture of what's actually happening with your money, and you're not leaving a deduction on the table.
Mistake #2: Duplicating Income with the QuickBooks Sync
Another common issue I fix—especially for Dubsado users who have the QuickBooks sync set up—is duplicated income. The sync records your invoices and payments received in QuickBooks. But it does not record the deposits and payment processing fees.
What many business owners do is add the deposit from their bank feed to their income as well, which means that payment gets recorded twice. Duplicated income in your books creates a seriously distorted picture of your revenue, can cause problems at tax time, and is exactly the kind of thing that's hard to catch if you're doing your own bookkeeping. We do not want this!
Having access to your Dubsado transactions is part of what allows me to catch and correct these issues accurately every month.
Is This the Right Setup for You?
This setup is ideal for service-based business owners who have grown their businesses to the point where they no longer have the time or energy to handle their bookkeeping each month.
If bookkeeping is the task you keep saying you'll get to next month, or if there are a million other things you'd rather be doing with your time (like actually enjoying time with your friends and family) it may be time to hand it off.
Granting your bookkeeper access to Dubsado is one small step that makes the whole handoff so much smoother. You give me what I need to do my job well, I stop having to chase you for information, and you get to actually focus on running your business!
Ready to Hand Off Your Bookkeeping?
If you're a service provider using Dubsado and you're ready to get your books off your plate, I'd love to help. To get started, fill out this form and I'll send you everything you need to get me set up as an Accountant user in your account when we go through the onboarding process.
