Business Central for accounting firms that run client books as well as their own

Business Central for accounting firms: client ledgers kept apart

A firm that keeps client books needs each ledger sealed off from the next. A client can have its own Business Central environment. Your staff join it as external accountants. Smaller clients can sit as separate companies inside an environment your firm controls. We help you choose for each client.

Moving between companies takes a couple of clicks. The company badge shows which client you are in. That cuts the risk of posting to the wrong ledger. Permission sets decide who can post, who can only look, and which clients each person sees.

How Business Central for accounting firms tracks engagements

In the firm's own company, each engagement is a project. For example, think of the annual audit, the monthly bookkeeping or a tax return. Staff are resources with cost and billing rates by grade. Time sheets record who worked on what. Budget lines hold the agreed fee, so overruns show while there is time to act.

Recurring work is the backbone of most practices. Recurring sales lines raise the monthly bookkeeping fees. You create invoices for fixed-fee clients in one batch, so you never rebuild them each period. You bill out-of-scope work from the project at the hourly rate agreed with that client.

Capacity planning for busy season

Tax and audit deadlines bunch together. So partners need to know who is overbooked before the crunch. Resource capacity and planned project lines show allocated time against free time for each person. Resource groups let you view seniors, managers and juniors as pools.

We pair that with a Power BI view of realization. It compares the value of time recorded with the fee billed. So it shows which engagements are priced too low. You also see which clients take more effort than the fee covers. Most partners prefer that talk with figures in hand.

One standard setup for every client

A practice gains most when every client ledger looks the same. We build a template company with your chart of accounts, posting groups, dimensions and report layouts. Then we use configuration packages to stamp it onto each new client. Onboarding becomes a routine task, not a fresh design.

Also, bank feeds, payment reconciliation rules and recurring journals live in that template. Because of that, staff who learn one client can work on any other. Month-end checklists apply across the portfolio. Copilot help for bank reconciliation matches the transactions that the rules leave behind.

What stays outside Business Central for accounting firms

Business Central is an accounting and operations system, but it is not tax preparation software. Returns, audit working papers and practice workflow tools stay separate products. We make the hand-off clean. We export trial balances and ledger detail to Excel in the layout your tax and audit software expects.

Client document exchange works the same way. You can attach incoming documents to entries. SharePoint or a client portal carries the file traffic. For 1099 reporting on behalf of clients, Business Central has standard vendor forms. We set them up for each client company where they apply.

Business Central for accounting firms: common questions

Can an accounting firm manage many client companies in Business Central?

Yes. Each client is a separate company or a separate environment. Your staff switch between them from the same sign-in. Permissions control which clients each person can open. A shared template keeps the setup the same from one ledger to the next. So a new hire can learn one client and then work on any other without extra training. We help you set up the first few clients and the template for Business Central for accounting firms.

What is the external accountant license?

Microsoft offers an External Accountant license type. It lets a client give their outside accountant access to Business Central. The client does not use one of their own full user seats. We help clients assign it the right way. Then we set the permissions that go with it. That keeps the accountant's access limited to the work you actually do for that client.

Does Business Central prepare tax returns?

No. It holds the ledgers and produces financial statements. It also supports sales tax and 1099 reporting. But you prepare income tax returns in dedicated tax software. We set up exports so figures move across without retyping. Those figures tie back to the ledger, so your preparers can trust them. That also saves time when a client asks where a number came from.

How do we bill fixed monthly bookkeeping fees?

Recurring sales lines hold each client's agreed fee. A batch job creates the invoices for the period. You record extra work on the engagement project and bill it apart. So the client sees clearly what the fee covered and what it did not. That also makes fee talks easier, since you can show the time behind any extra charge.

Can clients move from QuickBooks onto our standard setup?

Yes. Business Central includes a migration path for QuickBooks data. It covers customers, vendors, items and balances. During the move, we map the old chart to your template chart. The client then lands on the same structure as the others in your portfolio. Your staff can work on that ledger the same way they work on every other client.

Related pages for accounting practices

Accounting practices usually combine multi-company setup with project and resource tracking. The pages below explain those pieces. They also cover the wider professional services setup that firms billing for time have in common. Read them in any order. Then we can tailor Business Central for accounting firms to the way your practice works. For the product detail, see Microsoft's overview of finance in Business Central.