Every organisation wants a secure finance system. But there are times – such as financial year end – when it can be beneficial to share access.

Many organisations will work with external accountants to manage books and financial reporting and support year-end reports and returns. As an advanced finance management solution, Business Central can provide this too to enable secure remote access thanks to the External Accountant licence.

Inviting External Accountants

To access Business Central remotely in this way requires an External Accountant licence. With this in place, an Administrator can then invite an accountant to access and view Business Central, allowing them to access the Accountant Role Centre and work with an organisation on their fiscal data.

Features for external accountants with this licence include:

Real-time access to an organisation’s financial data, including sales and expenses.
Ability to create financial reports, manage bank accounts, and handle accounting tasks.
Collaboration with organisations on budgeting, growth forecasting, and finding cost savings.
Use of the "Team Member" role for limited, specific data access, ensuring close yet secure collaboration.

These features typically support all the activities that an external accountant would require for financial reporting.

Limitations Of The External Accountant Licence

While there are clear benefits to this there are limitations. Sensibly, external accountants are restricted from altering the core configurations, settings or users and roles. This makes practical sense but may present barriers in highly customised setups.

There are also constraints on data handling. External accountants will face limitations in modifying data; they can often update existing records but may not be able to create new entries in certain areas.

Access may also be confined to certain companies within an organisation’s environment and could exclude some modules or functionalities not directly related to accounting or financial reporting.

Overall, these limitations are only likely to impact the minority of use cases, with the benefits of granting access far outweighing them.

Business Central: A Modern Finance Solution

In summary, the Business Central External Accountant license supports external financial management in a way that some traditional accounts platforms don’t allow for.

To this end, it’s another benefit of utilising Business Central as a modern account solution.

Akita is experienced in developing Business Central to meet wide-ranging finance requirements. Get in touch with us to explore its potential for your organisation or to purchase Business Central licensing: