Tax-advisor cockpit — what each panel does

When this article is for you

You're a tax advisor (Steuerberater, comptable, revisor, accountant) who has been invited as a tax-advisor by one or more clients. The first thing you see after sign-in is the cockpit. This article explains what each of the four panels does, when to use which, and what you can and can't do from the cockpit vs from inside an individual client.

If you haven't been invited yet, see invite your tax advisor from the client perspective — they invite you, then you sign up with the link. If you've been invited but the cockpit looks empty, see the troubleshooting section below.

For the daily workflow inside the Review queue, see the review queue explained. For bulk-export across clients, see bulk export as a tax advisor.

The four panels

When you sign in as a tax advisor, you land on the cockpit. Four panels visible at once on the desktop view (stacked on tablet/mobile):

1. Clients

Every company that has invited you. Each card shows:

• Client name (the company name)
• Client country (drives VAT-rate context)
• Plan (Free / Starter / Business / Growth) — affects what features the client has
• Last-activity timestamp ("3 hours ago", "2 days ago", "no activity in 14 days")
• Pending count — invoices waiting for your review
• Quick-action button: Open → drills into the client's full app view (you see what they see, in read-only mode plus the flag action)

You only see clients who actively invited you. If a client revokes the invite, they disappear from this list immediately. No "all TaxItEasy users" directory; the advisor view is strictly opt-in by the client.

The list is searchable (type a client name to filter) and sortable by: most recent activity / most pending items / alphabetical / client country.

2. Review queue

A unified queue across all your clients. Every invoice that needs your attention surfaces here — regardless of which client it came from. Three sources push into this queue:

• A client uploads a new invoice and the per-invoice review policy says "always advisor-review" (default for invoices over €500, configurable per client at the client's Settings → Tax Advisor page).
• The matching pipeline scores an invoice-transaction match in the 70–89 confidence band — auto-confirmed but flagged for your sanity-check (how the matching pipeline works).
• A client edits an invoice you previously flagged — auto-resets to your queue (auto-reset on client edit).

The queue is sortable by client / age / amount / status. Your filter preferences persist across sessions; you don't have to re-set them every morning.

This is the single most-used surface. Most advisors spend 80% of their cockpit time here. Aim for "queue at zero" by end of week if you can.

3. Period overview

A grid: rows are clients, columns are filing periods (months or quarters depending on what each client files). Each cell shows whether that client's period is Ready to file (all invoices reviewed, all transactions matched) or Needs work (with a count of open items).

This is the "January 15th view" — which clients can you submit, which need a phone call. For German clients running quarterly VAT (Vorsteueranmeldung), the columns auto-align to the German fiscal quarters. For French / Spanish / Polish clients, the columns reflect their own VAT cycles.

Click any Needs work cell to jump to that client's Review queue filtered to that period.

4. Recent activity

A live feed of what's happening across all your clients — new uploads, transactions matched, flags resolved, exports run. Filterable by client. Useful for:

• Spotting unusual patterns ("Why is Client X suddenly uploading 50 invoices today?")
• Just keeping awareness without micromanaging each client
• End-of-week recap

The feed shows the last 100 events; older history is in the per-client audit log.

What you can do from the cockpit (and what you can't)

The cockpit is the navigation surface. The actual work happens inside individual clients, but the cockpit gives you a few cross-client shortcuts:

• Bulk export across clients — pick up to 25 clients + a period → one ZIP. See bulk export as a tax advisor.
• Approve from queue — for low-risk items you can approve directly from the queue row without drilling in. For anything you want to inspect, click to open the invoice in the client context.
• Flag from queue — same as approve; click Flag on a row to flag without opening.

What you can NOT do from the cockpit:

• Upload documents on behalf of a client. The client owns their data and the upload action. You're read + flag, not edit-on-their-behalf. See read-only scope — what I can and cannot see for the full bounds.
• Change a client's plan, billing, team, or settings. Those are Owner-only on the client's account.
• See clients who haven't invited you. There's no directory of all TaxItEasy users. Cold-prospecting from inside the app isn't a feature.
• Pull cross-client analytics beyond the period-overview grid. The data lives per-client; aggregating across clients is a manual export step.

Working with multiple advisors on the same client

If you're at a firm with multiple people working on the same client (lead advisor + junior bookkeeper + GDPR/DPO contact), each person needs their own invite from the client. Cockpits are per-user; you can't share a cockpit across firm-mates today.

The audit log on the client's side records each advisor's actions separately, so the client can see who flagged what and who approved what. This matters for liability and for clean handover when an advisor leaves the firm.

Per-firm sharing (one cockpit per firm rather than per-person) is on the 2026 roadmap. For now, the per-person model is what's shipped.

The cockpit vs the client-side dashboard

When you click Open on a client card, you land in the client's app view — same UI the client sees, just with your advisor-role permissions. You can:

• Navigate any of their pages (Documents, Invoices, Transactions, Trading Partners, Exports, Settings — though Settings is mostly read-only for you)
• Use the search and filters as the client would
• Open any invoice and see all extracted fields (read-only) + the flag action

To get back to the cockpit, click the cockpit icon in the top-left (or the client name dropdown → Back to cockpit).

Most advisors work in "mostly cockpit, drill-in for individual items" mode. A few work in "open client, stay there for an hour" mode. Both are fine; the system doesn't care.

Troubleshooting

A client appears greyed out. They've cancelled their TaxItEasy subscription or downgraded to Free. You still see their historical data, but new uploads have stopped. If they re-subscribe (or upgrade back), they un-grey automatically.

Review queue is empty — what now? Every client's invoices are processed and confirmed. Switch to Period overview to spot any almost-ready periods that need one more thing to close. Or use Recent activity to scan for anything that looks off.

I see a client I don't recognise. Cross-check the company name; it may be a small one-person company you onboarded as a side project months ago. The client cards include the client's country + plan so you can identify them. If still unfamiliar, revoke (Settings → Clients → Revoke access) and they'll disappear immediately. The revoke is non-destructive on their side (their data stays), only your access ends.

Cockpit is slow with 50+ clients. Performance is tuned for typical 5–20 clients per advisor. Larger books currently work but with some load time on initial render (cockpit fetches per-client status). Real multi-tenant performance optimisation is on the 2026 roadmap. If you're at 50+ clients and the cockpit is unusable, write to [email protected] with [TECHNICAL] and your approximate client count — we'll prioritise.

I see "Pending re-review" status without a clear flag. This happens when a client edited a previously-approved invoice (changed VAT rate, swapped vendor, etc.) — the system auto-resets to your queue. See auto-reset on client edit for the cycle mechanics.

I want to invite my colleague to share my cockpit view. Not supported today (per-user cockpits, no firm-sharing). Ask the client to invite your colleague separately as a tax advisor — they'll have their own cockpit with the same client visible.

I deleted a client by mistake from my cockpit. "Deleting" a client from your cockpit is the revoke action — it removes YOUR access, not their data. To restore, ask the client to send you a fresh invite from their Settings → Tax Advisor → Invite tax advisor. Same email, same outcome; your access is back within a click.

Related

• The review queue, explained — the daily-driver surface
• Period-filtered bulk export — the period-overview's export action
• Bulk approve up to 50 invoices — cross-client bulk action
• Onboarding a new client as a tax advisor — the receiving-side of the invite flow
• Read-only scope — what I can and cannot see — the bounds of advisor permissions