Working safely across many clients' books
What firm staff need to know about switching between clients' books in Achekam, each client's own security rules, access levels and restricted clients.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
A bookkeeper in a busy practice may touch a dozen clients' books before lunch: a bank reconciliation here, a supplier bill there, a quick answer to an owner's question somewhere else. The work is routine. The risk is not: one supplier invoice posted into the wrong client's ledger means a VAT claim in the wrong books, a confidential document visible to the wrong business, and a correction that has to be explained to two clients instead of none.
Achekam is built for people who work in several sets of books, and it gives them some protection. It also applies each client's own security rules to the firm's staff, which can surprise people the first time. This article explains both, for anyone in the firm who opens client books.
The header switch and the coloured bar
Someone who works in several workspaces switches between books from the header, and a coloured bar shows whose books are open. That bar is the single most important thing on the screen for a person who moves between clients. Read it every time you switch, and again before you post.
Habits that make the bar work:
- Finish what you are doing in one client's books before switching to the next.
- After switching, look at the bar before entering anything, not after.
- If you keep more than one browser tab open, check the bar in each tab before using it.
- When an owner phones with a question, confirm which business they are calling about before you switch, especially for owners of several companies.
Posting in the wrong books
Mistakes still happen. When something is posted in the wrong client's books, correct it in the way Achekam's journals require: a posted journal is corrected only by a reversal, and a journal dated in a closed month is refused. So reverse the entry in the wrong books, post it in the right ones, and describe both entries clearly so that neither client's ledger contains a mystery.
Then deal with the second problem. If the wrong client could see something confidential, such as another business's supplier, prices or an attached invoice, tell the responsible partner. Client information belongs to that client. In South Africa, the Protection of Personal Information Act sets the conditions for lawfully processing personal information, and a client's employee and customer details are exactly that kind of information. Nigeria and Kenya have their own data protection regimes; the firm's policy should say who decides what happens next when a client's information has been exposed.
Each client's IP allowlist and two-factor rules
A business on Achekam can set its own security rules, and they apply to the firm's people too. A firm member opening a business's books must meet that business's own IP allowlist and two-factor rules.
In practice, this means:
- A client that only allows access from approved network addresses may block a staff member working from home, from a client site or on a mobile connection. Ask such clients to include the firm's office address in their allowlist, and plan remote work around it.
- A client that requires two-factor sign-in will ask the firm's staff for it as well, even if the firm itself does not.
The firm has its own settings, under Settings, Security & SSO. Users can turn on two-factor sign-in with an authenticator app, a firm can require it for all members, and members can sign in with Google or Microsoft Entra ID once the firm sets up single sign-on. Requiring two-factor sign-in firm-wide removes the surprise of meeting it only at a strict client; it is covered further in two-factor sign-in and single sign-on.
Access levels
When a business appoints the firm, the access level it grants decides what the firm's people can do in its books:
| Access level | What the firm's people can do |
|---|---|
| Bookkeeping | Work in the accounting, but not change the business's users, settings or payment gateways |
| Review | Read only |
Match the level to the work. A firm that keeps the books needs bookkeeping access. A firm that only prepares the annual statements from books the client keeps, or that audits the client, is often better served by review access: it can see everything it needs and cannot change a figure by accident. If the work changes, ask the client to change the access level rather than stretching the old one. How the appointment is accepted in the first place is described in accepting a client's appointment.
Restricted clients inside the firm
Some clients should not be open to everyone in the firm: a staff member's own company, a high-profile client, a business in a dispute with another client, or a client whose owner asked for discretion. Partners and administrators can restrict a client, or a single engagement, to named people, with a reason, under Settings, Users & roles, 'Access to clients'. The account manager and the engagement's partner and manager can always open it.
A restriction is lifted rather than deleted, and who did what and when is recorded. Review restrictions once a year, and lift those whose reason has passed, so the list stays meaningful.
A worked example
A bookkeeper finishes a reconciliation for a guesthouse, switches to a building contractor to capture bills, and is interrupted by the guesthouse owner on the phone. She switches back, answers the question, then returns to the contractor and checks the coloured bar before capturing the next bill. Later in the week, working from home, she cannot open the contractor's books because its IP allowlist only admits the firm's office; she captures the remaining bills the next morning at the office and asks the manager to raise the allowlist with the client.
One rule for everyone
Make "read the bar before you post" part of every new staff member's first week. It costs nothing, and it prevents the most common and most awkward mistake in multi-client bookkeeping.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
