Most people still hand receipts over as a folder of PDFs or a shared drive link at quarter end. There's a faster route: invite your accountant into the app as a tax advisor. This guide covers the invite, what they can and cannot touch once they are in, and how to pull access back.
The file version of this costs an evening. You export, you zip, you email, your accountant asks about the invoice that arrived after the export, and now two versions of the same quarter are in circulation. One disclosure before the walkthrough, since we sell software: TaxItEasy is our product, and the last section is about it.
What's the fastest way to share receipts with an accountant?
Invite them as a tax advisor from your settings. One email, one confirmation on their side, and they see your receipts, invoices and bank transactions as those land, instead of a quarterly ZIP that was already out of date when you sent it. No seat, no extra cost, no shared password.
That middle clause is the whole argument. A file is a snapshot of the day you made it, and a connection keeps pace with the receipt you upload tomorrow. Advisor connections are not capped by plan, and an advisor never consumes one of your team seats, so the Free plan connects an accountant exactly the way the Growth plan does.
Files still have their place. If your accountant works entirely in their own system and only wants documents, export your records for year-end covers a tax year in four exports: the quarterly invoice CSV or PDF, the five sheet Excel workbook, the encrypted company ZIP and the original receipt files.
How do I invite my accountant or bookkeeper into TaxItEasy?
Settings, then Tax Advisor, then Invite tax advisor. You type their email address, add an optional note about the period you want looked at, and send. They get a one time link, confirm the connection, and your company shows up in their client list. An external bookkeeper takes exactly the same route.
- Open Settings, then Tax Advisor, in the web app.
- Click Invite tax advisor and enter their email address.
- Add a short message if it helps, for example the period to focus on.
- Send. They receive a one time link from [email protected].
- They sign up or sign in, confirm, and your company joins their client list.
Your accountant does not need a TaxItEasy account first. If they already have one under that email address, the link adds your company to the client list they use for everyone else, with no second password. If they don't, they create the account from the link. Either way the confirmation is two steps: the account, then an explicit yes to your company, and both have to complete before anything of yours is visible. Declining is a button they can press, and you're told when they do.
On your side the entry moves from Invited to Active once they confirm, and you get an in-app notification. That same page is where you revoke later, which is worth knowing before you need it. The step by step version, including what to do when the invite email never arrives, is the help article on how to invite your tax advisor.
One distinction matters here. The advisor invite is built for someone outside your business. If the person doing your books sits inside the company, uploads daily and needs settings, add them as a team member with the Bookkeeper role instead: different page, broader powers, and it does use a seat. The split is laid out in companies, users, and roles.
What can my accountant see and do once they're connected?
They see the documents, invoices, extracted fields, bank transactions and trading partners in your company, and they can correct what's wrong: categories, VAT rates, invoice details, transaction matches. They cannot touch billing, your team, your email or bank connections, and they cannot delete anything. Every write is logged under their name.
The write side is deliberately narrow and useful. Your accountant can approve an invoice or flag it with a reason, fix a supplier invoice number or a date in a split view with the original document beside it, and correct a VAT rate so the gross amount stays put while net and VAT recompute. They can categorise and clear bank transactions in bulk, up to 50 at a time, add the income and expense entries your books are missing (those carry a visible "by tax advisor" badge in your list), ask you for a receipt with one click, and run exports and reports.
The other side of the line is where the trust actually sits. No billing, no plan changes, no payment methods. No inviting or removing team members, and no inviting other advisors. No connecting or disconnecting your email or bank accounts. No deleting: not the company, not a document, not an invoice. And no reaching into another client's books, which returns a hard refusal rather than a quiet empty list. The bounds are enforced at the database query layer rather than by hiding buttons, so a hand crafted API call gets the same answer the interface does.
Every advisor write lands in an append only log with their identity and role, and shows up in your activity feed the same way. Comments they leave can't be edited or deleted afterwards, by anyone. Months later, when someone asks who changed a number, the answer is on record. The full boundary, including the advisor's own view of it, is in what your tax advisor can and cannot do.
Can I revoke my accountant's access?
Yes, from the same Settings page, and it takes effect immediately. Their client list loses your company, a session they have open is cut off mid-use, and the per document keys that let them read your files are deleted rather than a flag being flipped. Nothing of yours is deleted along with it.
Revoking doesn't set a permission bit that some later bug could read the wrong way. It removes the keys that made your documents readable to that person, for that company only, so other clients they serve are untouched. Re-invite them a year later and the connection comes back at its current state. Advisors can also leave a client on their own, and both directions run the same removal.
The legal shape is worth a sentence, because accountants ask. You are the controller of your data. TaxItEasy is the processor, under a data processing agreement with you. Your accountant is a sub processor of yours, and the contract governing what they do with the data is their engagement contract with you, not ours. GDPR considerations for tax advisors sets out the triangle in full, including who reports what after an incident.
Where the invite fits before your tax deadline
Sharing receipts is the start of a loop, not a handover. Once your accountant is connected, the same view carries the bank transactions your receipts were matched against and the VAT review screen for the period, so their questions arrive while you can still answer them.
The loop that saves the most time is the flag. Your accountant opens an invoice, decides the VAT rate looks wrong, and flags it with a reason. You get a notification with a deep link. You correct the field and save, and the invoice returns to their queue by itself, with a notification on their side saying you fixed it. Nobody chases anybody. That behaviour is described in auto-reset on client edit.
Which is the part we built the product around. TaxItEasy reads your receipts, files them, matches the payment when it lands, and keeps the set in one place your accountant can work in . It does not file your return and isn't trying to: your accountant reviews the books and files them. What it removes is the evening you would otherwise spend assembling the quarter. If you'd rather see their half first, the portal for tax advisors shows the screens they get, and the receipt scanning app page covers the capture side that fills it.
If your receipts arrive as email attachments, pulling receipts out of your inbox beats uploading by hand. What your accountant will ask about the paper originals depends on the retention rule you are under, so settle that before you bin anything.
Frequently asked questions
Can I share receipts with my accountant for free?
Yes. Tax advisor connections are not limited by plan, including on Free, and an advisor never occupies one of your team seats . That was a deliberate change: capping advisors made switching from one accountant to another awkward, because the outgoing connection had to be removed before the new one could start.
Does my accountant need a TaxItEasy account already?
No. The invite link works either way. If they already have an account under that email address, your company is added to their existing client list with no second password. If they don't, they create one from the link, then confirm the connection to your company as a separate step before they see anything.
Can my accountant edit or delete my invoices?
Edit yes, within bounds; delete never. They can correct categories, VAT rates and invoice details, categorise and clear bank transactions, and add entries your books are missing. They cannot delete a document, an invoice or the company, cannot touch billing or your team, and every change they make is logged under their name.
How do I revoke my accountant's access?
Open Settings, then Tax Advisor, and revoke next to their name. It applies immediately, including to a session they have open at that moment, and their per document decryption keys for your company are deleted rather than disabled . Your own data is untouched. Re-inviting later restores the connection at its current state.
Is sharing receipts this way GDPR compliant?
Your data is stored in Frankfurt, Germany , and the roles are documented: you are the controller, TaxItEasy the processor under a data processing agreement, your accountant a sub processor under your engagement contract with them. Access is bounded and logged. See where is my data stored for the one processing step that leaves the country.
What's the difference between sharing receipts and inviting a bookkeeper?
For an external bookkeeper, none. Both phrases describe the same tax advisor invite, the same bounded scope and the same audit trail. The one real difference is internal staff: someone on your payroll who does the books gets a team member account with the Bookkeeper role, which uses a seat and carries broader powers.