Working with your accountant

The question behind this page: "My accountant reviews our books in QuickBooks. How do I send them the QBX and apply the QBY when it comes back?"

Short answer: you can't, and with SlowBooks you don't need to. QBX and QBY are Intuit's own Accountant's Copy formats. Only QuickBooks Desktop can make or apply them, so SlowBooks doesn't read or write them. The Accountant's Copy exists so you and your accountant can work on separate copies at the same time and merge their changes back. SlowBooks gives you the same outcome its own way. There are four routes, from the most direct down.

1. Your accountant signs in (Server Edition)

Server Edition is the same download, running as a server so everyone uses a browser (Server Edition setup). Invite your accountant under Settings → Users: the sign-in gets the Accountant role, a one-time password you send once with the address, and an end date if the engagement has one; they choose their own password at the first sign-in. What the role can do:

• they read everything, the reports, every list except Employees, and the Audit Log included, so they can see exactly what moved and who moved it;
• they post journal entries and void the ones they posted, and move lines between accounts with Reports → Reclassify Transactions (the lines parked on an account for a period, ticked and moved to the account they belong on, and a class, as one audited change naming every line), and nothing else: an invoice, a bill, a payment, a bank entry, a setting or a user is refused to them with a sentence that says so;
• payroll and HR stay the administrator's, reads included, as they are for every role but admin.

Their entries post as adjusting entries: marked on the entry and on the Journal Entries list (where Show: Adjusting entries only lists them alone), with the name of whoever posted each one. Reports → Adjusting Journal Entries lists them for a period, as PDF or CSV, and the Profit & Loss and Trial Balance can be run without them, for a before-and-after view.

Set a Closing Date (Settings → Closing Date, with its own password) once they have signed off a period, the way QuickBooks' closing date works: a change dated into the closed period then takes the password, and each use is written to the audit log. Reports → Closing Date Exceptions lists who used the password, when, and every row changed, before and after, as PDF or CSV.

An accountant's own software or agent gets an API token rather than a sign-in: an administrator makes one under Settings → API Tokens with the Accountant or Read-only role. A token is never an administrator (one made as an administrator before 2.29.0 is refused since 2.31.2 and flagged in the list; revoke it and make a new one). It wears the same limits as the role, every change it makes is attributed to token:<label> in the audit log, and on a server with several companies its requests name the company with X-SlowBooks-Company. Details in Server Edition setup, "API tokens".

If your accountant is not on your network, give them a way onto it rather than opening the server: a VPN (Tailscale is the simplest) that puts their computer on the office network while they need it, or a tunnel with an access policy in front, both described in Server Edition setup, "Reaching it from outside the office". Server Edition is plain HTTP, so it must never be port-forwarded. Books that should live off-site belong on a cloud server behind HTTPS (Hosting on a cloud server).

2. Send them the reports

If they would rather not sign in, send:

• Reports → Financial Statements Pack: the Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and Trial Balance in one PDF;
• Reports → General Ledger → Save CSV: every line, by account;
• Reports → A/R Aging and A/P Aging → Save CSV: who owes, and who is owed, by age;
• the bank reconciliation reports, as needed;
• or all of it at once: Reports → Accountant's Package, one zip for the period with the Financial Statements Pack, the General Ledger and Trial Balance CSVs, both agings, each reconciliation completed in the period, the Adjusting Journal Entries and Closing Date Exceptions reports, and the audit log since the closing date.

Then enter their adjustments yourself under Journal Entries, with the Adjusting entry box ticked, so they show on the Adjusting Journal Entries report like anyone else's.

3. They insist on QuickBooks Desktop

Interoperability → Export to IIF carries the whole ledger into QuickBooks Desktop: the lists, invoices, sales receipts, payments, bills, deposits, checks, card charges, transfers, bill payments and journal entries (Moving from QuickBooks describes the file). Their adjustments come back two ways: an IIF with GENERAL JOURNAL blocks imports them as journal entries (tick This is an accountant's file to mark them adjusting), and QuickBooks Desktop's Transaction Detail by Account report, filtered to Transaction Type = Journal, imports under Adjusting entries only, which refuses the file whole if it holds anything else, so a whole-ledger upload can never double the books. A second upload of either posts nothing twice.

4. SlowBooks' own Accountant's Copy (no server at all)

The most direct answer to "send the QBX, apply the QBY". SlowBooks is free, so your accountant simply installs it.

1. Send to accountant (Companies, an administrator): pick a dividing date and type the company's name to confirm. SlowBooks copies the books into a file encrypted under a passphrase it shows once (with a Copy button of its own), with your sign-ins and secrets left out. Send the file one way and the passphrase another.
2. Open accountant's copy (your accountant, their own SlowBooks Pro, Companies): the file and the passphrase. The copy becomes a company file of its own on their picker, opened with a password they choose, and it takes journal entries dated on or before the dividing date and nothing else; a banner on every page says so.
3. Send changes back (the copy, Companies): one small file holding just the entries they posted, signed by the copy.
4. Apply accountant's changes (you, Companies): every entry is shown first, then the new ones post as adjusting entries in the accountant's name, on the Adjusting Journal Entries report like any other. A file applied twice posts nothing twice; a file from another company, or altered on the way, is refused whole; an entry dated after the dividing date, or on an account you don't have, is refused with the reason.

You keep working after the dividing date the whole time. The reports and the Accountant's Package above still work beside it, and an accountant who would rather sign in than open a copy gets the Accountant role.

A server install on PostgreSQL cannot make a copy (the copy is made from a company file); it offers the sign-in and the package instead.