help | clarity accounting

Set Up Instructions

Adding / Removing Business Files

Q: Can I run more than one business (multiple files) with Clarity Accounting?

One unique feature of our online accounting software is that each user has the ability to manage multiple business files.

Step by Step Instructions

  1. Sign in to Clarity Accounting with your user name and password
  2. On the top left hand corner of the Dashboard, find the drop down menu with your business name under the “Navigation” title
  3. Click on the drop down — this will show you all the business files you currently have access to
  4. Click on the link that says “New Business…”
  5. Follow the same procedures as you did when you set up your first business file
  6. In the future, you will be able to use the same drop down menu to access all the business files you are managing as well as adding new business files.

Removing a Business File

  1. Sign in to Clarity Accounting
  2. Using the drop down under “Navigation”, select the business you wish to remove
  3. Go to the “Business Profile” section under Setup
  4. Scroll down to the bottom of the page
  5. Click on the “Remove” button

Multi-User Access

Oftentimes, the desire to set up multiple business files is associated with the need to give access to multiple users to collaborate on business files.  If this applies to you, please refer to our help file on Adding Multiple Users to Your Business.

Q: How do I enter opening balances for my accounts?

When you first create a business file with Clarity Accounting, you may have bank account balances, outstanding receivables, assets, and prior income you’d like to show on your Balance Sheet and Statement of Profit & Loss.

To do so, you must enter a summary of your past business activities.  This can take many steps, and may require some knowledge of bookkeeping terminology, like debits and credits, equity, and retained earnings; if you’re not sure if your ability to do this yourself then we suggest hiring a bookkeeper to assist you.

Step By Step Instructions

Sample opening adjustment

Sample opening adjustment

  1. If you have income to report for the current fiscal year, divide it into two pieces: paid and receivable
  2. For each outstanding invoice, enter an invoice so you can track that receivable
  3. If you have expenses to report for the current fiscal year, divide it into two pieces: paid and payables
  4. For each outstanding bill you owe, enter a bill so you can track that payable
  5. Enter an adjustment with the memo “opening balances”
  6. For each bank account and cash, enter it’s current balance into the debit column
  7. Calculate and categorize the value of the assets of your business and enter each category’s total value into the debit column
  8. For each credit card, business loan, or line of credit carrying a balance you have, enter the amount owing into the credit column
  9. For the income you recorded as paid, break it down into rows by Income Account enter the amount of income in the credit column
  10. For the expenses you recorded as paid, break it down by Expense Account and enter the amount of expense in the debit column
  11. If the owners have given cash to the business in return for shares, create an Equity account for each owner and enter the amount of their contribution into the credit column
  12. Add up the two columns to get your total credits and total debits
  13. Subtract total debits from total credits to get your retained earnings. Enter this amount in the credit column as “Retained Earnings”; it may be a negative number.
  14. Click Add to enter the adjustment and update your account balances.

Notes and Tips

  • You can set up accounts directly from the Adjustment form - in the Account dropdown, choose “New Account…”
  • When entering outstanding invoices and bills, be sure to enter the correct dates so that the income or expense is reported in the correct fiscal period

Secret Shortcuts for Power Users

Caution: Magician Ahead!

Clarity Accounting has some tips and tricks that are not completely obvious, but might save a bit of time or give you access to functionality you couldn’t access any other way.

1. Date Entry

The date fields (the ones with the little calendar) support a variety of date formats to type in beyond the usualy YYYY-MM-DD or DD/MM/YYYY.

  • you can type strings such as “yesterday”, “last week”, “last april”, “next tuesday”, … it does its best to understand whatever you throw at it, so try some shorthand that suits you and see if it takes.  It may be faster than the way you enter dates currently
  • if you type just the month and day, it will fill in the year for you
  • if you just press enter in a blank date field, it will fill in a default date (usually today’s date)
  • use +10 or +5 for ten or five days from today
  • use -5 or -10 for five or ten days ago

2. Multi-currency Prices

  • When entering a price into an invoice or bill, or entering an amount into an adjustment or transfer, you can put a currency code before the amount to switch to that currency without changing tabs or using the currency drop-down.
  • The currency code must be one that is supported by Clarity Accounting

3. Customizable Reports

You can edit the “columns” field when viewing a report to enter custom column dates and rate ranges.

  • Separate each column name with “vs” or a comma
  • Use phrases like “last 7 days”, “last 5 weeks”, “prior 6 months” to describe dates
  • Use the word “current” for today, or “YTD” for this year-to-date
  • You can also enter a fixed date, as long as it doesn’t contain a comma, like “dec 1″, “2007-08-02″, or “-5″.  See “Date Entry” above for tips on acceptable date formats
  • If it doesn’t understand a column it uses today or YTD for that column
  • Press enter when done editing and it should show a new report using your custom columns

Entering Sales Taxes

When entering sales taxes, there are some shortcuts:

  • Sales taxes often have a “short version” shown in the dropdown - for example, type “g” for gst
  • When you don’t know the percentage of a sales tax amount, you can type in the actual amount instead; for example 3.24g would become $3.24 GST
  • If you enter a percentage or an amount with no tax following, the first tax in the list is selected.  So if you have GST and PST in the list, typing “5.5%” would become “5.5% GST” and typing “5″ would become $5.00 GST
  • If your receipt shows the value after taxes more clearly, use the minus sign on any of the above to mark the tax as being “included” in the price.  The software will calculate the before-tax amount that would have resulted in the given after-tax amount.  For example, typing “-g” for a $100 purchase, where “g” means “5% GST”, would result in $95.24 in expenses and $4.76 in GST, because $95.24 + 5% is equal to $100.00
  • When entering a meal receipt that includes a tip, the easy way to record the taxes correctly is to enter the total after taxes and tips as the price, and then enter the tax as an included dollar value.  For example, if a meal cost $20 and you paid $1 in tax and $2 in tip, you could enter the price as $23 and the tax as -1g

Searching in Combo Boxes

Type part of an account name to search for it

Type part of an account name to search for it

Type an account number to choose that account

Type an account number to choose that account



A “combo box” is a text entry field that has a pop-up list you can choose options from.  It is a combination of a text field and a list.

Our combo boxes have a search function built in.  By typing part of the name/number of an account, item, country, province, customer, vendor, or payment term, it will reduce the number of items in the pop-up list to only those matching what you typed.  Once you have reduced the number of choices down to just one or two, use the up and down arrow keys to select the one you are looking for and press the Enter key to select it.

One benefit of the search feature is that once you start searching it may reveal accounts that were not shown in the list because they were the wrong type.  Otherwise you would have to click “Show All Accounts…” and then click the account you want.  For example if you are buying office furniture you have to choose a Fixed Asset type of account, which isn’t shown by default in the Expense Account combo box.  By typing “furn” you will see the office furniture account in the list and you can select it.

If you type the exact name or number of one of the options for that combo box, it is automatically selected and highlighted; if you see the account number of an account you want to use (or you happen to have memorized it, as many bookkeepers do) you can just type that in and press Enter or Tab to move to the next field, which be a great time saver compared to using the mouse.

Keyboard Navigation

Questions & AnswersSwitching between the mouse and keyboard can be time-consuming for the power user in a hurry - here are some keyboard shortcuts available in the application on some browsers.

  • Press the TAB key (to the left of Q on US keyboards) to jump to the next field of a form; hold SHIFT while pressing TAB to go to a previous field
  • Hold SHIFT while pressing ENTER to jump to the Add button on a form
  • Hold ALT while pressing S to save a bill or invoice while you are working on it
  • Press ALT and LEFT to go back to the previous screen you were looking at
  • Due to browser and keyboard differences, these shortcuts may vary - ALT, SHIFT, CTRL, and COMMAND might be different on other browsers, and some browsers have their own functionality for shortcut keys.  These examples work for Firefox 3 in Windows and some other browsers
  • As mentioned above, you can use searching and the arrow keys to select items in a combo box

Clarity Accounting: Entering Income Records

Clarity Accounting Enter Income View

Online Accounting Software | Enter Income

Online Accounting Software | Enter Income

This is the enter income view users will see as soon as they sign in and enter the “Dashboard” area.

It is split into 4 sections using horizontal tabs:

  • Enter Income
  • Enter Invoice
  • Enter Payment
  • Detailed

Users of our online accounting software can also use the Income link on the left navigation to go to an income specific data entry page showing all entries as data is being entered.

Clarity Accounting | Enter Income

Using the “Enter Income” Tab

This section is mainly used for the purpose of entering income that has already been paid.  Examples of this type of income are:

  • commission income from sales
  • products and services paid by cash, credit card, or direct bank transfers

Components of an Income Record

  • Date
  • Customer
  • Invoice / record #
  • Payment Account
  • Income Account
  • Description
  • Quantity
  • Price
  • Applicable Sales Tax

Terms & Payment Accounts

There are 2 ways income records can be recorded.  They can be recorded as “Paid” or “Unpaid”.

Paid income records generally refer to products and services that are paid immediately with cash, credit card, or direct deposit.

Unpaid income records are generally used for invoicing.  In an accrual / double ledger accounting system, when you invoice a client for your products or services, you are considered to have “earned” that income regardless of whether or not you are paid.  Invoices usually have a “payment term” associated with it, allowing customers to pay days after the initial invoice was sent.  Outstanding invoices are referred to as “Aged Receivables” in accounting terms.  Unpaid income records will also require small businesses to track down payments and entering payments into the accounting software when payments are received.  If for some unfortunate reason, an invoice was not paid, then it can be written off as “bad debt”.

To record income that is “Paid”, select the account into which the money was (or will be) deposited. For example, if you receive a cheque and deposit it into your checking account, you would select “Checking Account”.

Income Accounts

Income accounts are used to differentiate revenue from different sources of income that will show up in your profit and loss statement.  This is also a great indicator of which products or services are most profitable to your business.  When you first create a business with Clarity Accounting, you will be asked to fill in your income sources.  However, if you did not list all the income sources at the time you set up your business profile, you can always click on the “New Income Account” to add more income accounts.

For each component of the income, select an income account in order to categorize the income; this allows you to view the income you have earned broken down by account in the Profit & Loss report.

Entering Income Case Study:

Jane is a real estate agent who received $10,000 in commission income from Remax (the real estate agency she represents) on October 3, 2008 for the sale of a piece of property.  She is paid via direct deposit into her checking account.  There are no applicable taxes in this transaction.

Click “Add” after the data has been entered.

Multi-Currency Entries

If your company pays and accepts income in currencies other than your own default currency, please use the “Enter Invoice” tab for multi-currency options.

Available options after clicking “Add”

Edit

The edit option will bring you to a summary of this particular record, allowing you to change anything you need to change.

Repeat

This option allows you to “repeat” this transaction.  Many people use this feature if they are entering an income record with very similar elements such as same customer with the same payment and income accounts.  This allows users to make minor changes with date, description, or price without re-entering all the information.

Download PDF

A PDF of the transaction can be downloaded as an invoice or a receipt (with the balance due marked $0.00) depending on the nature of the transaction.  We allow users to add their own logo on the PDF download.  Please refer to the help file “Uploading logo to Invoices” for detailed instructions.

Clarity Accounting: Invoicing and Creating PDF Invoices

The purpose of this help file is to show Clarity Accounting users how to enter invoices as well as creating and downloading PDF Invoices.

Invoices can be entered right on the Dashboard or under the “Income” section on the vertical navigation bar.

Clarity Accounting Invoice View

This section is used for small businesses whose primary method of getting paid is through “Invoicing”.  Invoices are generally issued by businesses providing products or services to their clients.  An invoice usually consists of the following elements:

  • Invoice Number
  • Invoice Date
  • Vendor Contact Information
  • Client Contact Information
  • Payment Terms / Due Date
  • Income Account
  • Quantity (number of items sold / number of hours worked)
  • Price / Rate (cost per item / hourly rate)
  • Subtotal
  • Applicable Taxes
  • Balance Due
  • Pre-payments (if applicable)

Terms & Payment Accounts

There are 2 ways income records can be recorded.  They can be recorded as “Paid” or “Unpaid”.

Paid income records generally refer to products and services that are paid immediately with cash, credit card, or direct deposit.

Unpaid income records are generally used for invoicing.  In an accrual / double ledger accounting system, when you invoice a client for your products or services, you are considered to have “earned” that income regardless of whether or not you are paid.  Invoices usually have a “payment term” associated with it, allowing customers to pay days after the initial invoice was sent.  Outstanding invoices are referred to as “Aged Receivables” in accounting terms.  Unpaid income records will also require businesses to track down payments and entering payments into the accounting software when payments are received.  If for some unfortunate reason, an invoice was not paid, then it can be an expense written off as “bad debt” .

To enter a “Paid” invoice, select one of the rows with “Paid” in the second column, and the bank, cash, or credit card account into which the payment is deposited.  For example, if you received a cheque and deposited it into the bank, you would select your Checking Account.

To enter an “Unpaid” invoice, select one of the rows with “Unpaid” in the second column, and the number of days the receiver has after the invoice date to pay.  For example, if you receive a bill that has “net 30″ terms (due 30 days after receipt), you would select “30 days”.

Income Accounts

Income accounts are used to differentiate revenue from different sources of income that will show up in your profit and loss statement.  This is also a great indicator of which products or services are most profitable to your business.  When you first create a business with Clarity Accounting, you will be asked to fill in your income sources.  However, if you did not list all the income sources at the time you set up your business profile, you can always click on the “New Income Account” link to add more income accounts.

For each line item on the invoice/income record, select the income account that best matches that item, or add a new one if it doesn’t fit an existing category.

Sample Case Study:

Clarity Accounting recently demonstrated their online accounting software at a very successful Launch Party event put together by Bootup Labs.  They received overwhelming requests from bloggers and freelancers to integrate Clarity Accounting with Freshbooks.  This is because Freshbooks is an awesome online invoicing software and Clarity Accounting is an awesome online accounting software.  Freelancers thought such an integration would allow those who use Freshbooks to generate Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss reports within Clarity Accounting.

Creators of Clarity Accounting took user suggestions seriously and contracted Habitsoft, Inc. to implement the Clarity Accounting - Freshbooks integration.  It took Habitsoft, Inc. 40 hours of work to complete the project and Habitsoft charges an hourly rate of $100 / hour.  Habitsoft sends an invoice to Clarity Accounting with a 30 day term (payment of the invoice is due within 30 days of the date the invoice was created).  There was also a 5% sales tax applicable to this invoice.

This is how the data entry fields look like:

After Habitsoft clicks “Add”, it will be given several options:

Download PDF

Click this link to download a PDF of the invoice.  Users can add their own logo on the PDF invoice.  Please refer to the help file “Uploading logo to Invoices” for instructions on uploading your own logo.

Here is what the PDF invoice for this example looks like:

Please note: Addresses and contact information shown on the invoice will depend on how much information is included when filling out the Business Profile information as well as the Customer information when adding a new customer.  You can edit the customer information by going to the “Customer” link on the Dashboard under “Setup”.

Edit

The edit option will bring you to a summary of this particular record, allowing you to change anything you need to change.

Repeat

This option allows you to “repeat” this transaction.  Many people use this feature if they are entering an income record with very similar elements such as same customer with the same payment and income accounts.  This allows users to make minor changes with date, description, or price without re-entering all the information.

Entering Payments

When Habitsoft receives a payment from Clarity Accounting, it will have to enter the payment into the accounting system with an associated Bank and Income Account.  For detailed information on how to add invoice payments, please refer to the help file “Adding Invoice Payments”.

Tax Setup for Canadian Businesses

If you are a small business based in Canada.  We have all the Canadian taxes included in our online accounting software.  Since Clarity Accounting is based in Canada, we understand the complexity of the Canadian tax system.  All you have to do to make sure the tax codes will be automatically included is to make select your country as “Canada” when filling up the information for your Business Profile.

There are two ways to get to the Tax Configuration page:

  1. From the “Taxes” link under the “Setup” section on the Dashboard
  2. From the data entry box under “Sales Tax”

Tax Configuration

Many small businesses have to charge GST, HST, PST, and/or QST for goods and services sold.  When the tax settings are properly set up, Clarity Accounting will track the sales taxes payable / receivable for you when you sell goods and services.  For example, GST payable usually refers to the GST you charge your clients and later have to remit back to the government.  GST receivable usually refers to the GST you pay on expenses that you can file for the government to pay you back.

Tax Setup Instructions

  1. Click on the check box on the top left hand corner under the “Sales Tax” heading that says:
    “This business pays or collects sales taxes in Canada”

  2. If your business is registered for GST or HST, please click the check box and fill in the necessary information.  Your GST, HST, PST & QST number will show up on the PDF invoices created.
  3. Click “Save”
  4. When you enter your income or expenses, you should see all the taxes you have selected to be applicable to your business are included in the “Sales Tax” section:
  5. Shortcut Keys: If you would like to speed up the data entry process, you are welcome to type in:
    g for “GST”
    p for “PST”
    B for both “GST” and “PST”

What does the “-5% GST” function do?

This function is mostly used when entering expenses.  For example, if you go out for a meal with a prospect that cost you $100 including GST, you would put the price as $100 and the tax as “-5% GST” or simply “-g“.  This just means that the subtotal of your meal actually came out to $95.24, but after adding 5% GST ($4.76), your meal had a total of $100.  This process simply allows our online accounting software to track the amount of “sales taxes” you are paying on expenses without you having to go through the process of doing that calculation yourself.

If you were to have a meal that had a subtotal of $100 and you chose the “5% GST / G” option, the meal would have a total of $105.00 with 5% tax included.

Reports

Reports on taxes payable and receivable can be found at the bottom right hand corner of the “Dashboard” or in the “Balance Sheet” section.

Additional Help

If you require additional help in how to create tax settings for other types of taxes, please contact us for further instructions.

Tax Setup Instructions

There is a saying that there are two things that are certain in life — death & taxes.  Well the death part is not something we have to deal with imminently, taxes however, can be very real for anyone running a business.

At Clarity Accounting, we have implemented a system that allows people from anywhere around to world to include sales taxes in their income and expense transactions.

If you are a Canadian business, please refer to the following help file “Tax Setup for Canadian Businesses“.

There are two ways to get to the Tax Configuration page:

  1. From the “Taxes” link under the “Setup” section on the Dashboard
  2. From the data entry box under “Sales Tax”

Tax Configuration

Many small businesses have to charge sales taxes for goods and services sold.  When the tax settings are properly set up, Clarity Accounting will track the sales taxes for you when you sell goods and services as well as tracking sales taxes you have paid on expenses.

Tax Setup Instructions

  1. Click on the check box on the top left hand corner under the “Sales Tax” heading that says:
    “This business pays or collects sales taxes”
  2. Fill in the appropriate information in the fields provided.  For example:
  3. Click “Save” to save your tax settings
  4. The “Sales Tax” options will now be available for you when entering your income or expense data:

What does the “-Sales Tax” function do?

This function is mostly used when entering expenses.  For example, if you go out for a meal with a prospect that cost you $100 including tax, you would put the price as $100 and the tax as “-Sales Tax”.  This just means that the subtotal of your meal actually came out to $95.24, but after adding 5% Sales Tax ($4.76), your meal had a total of $100.  This process simply allows our online accounting software to track the amount of “sales taxes” you are paying on expenses without you having to go through the process of doing that calculation yourself.

If you were to have a meal that had a subtotal of $100 and you chose the “5% Sales Tax” option, the meal would have a total of $105.00 with 5% tax included.

Reports

Reports on taxes payable and receivable can be found at the bottom right hand corner of the “Dashboard” or in the “Balance Sheet” section.

Additional Help

If you require additional help in how to create tax settings for more than one type of tax, please contact us for further instructions.

Uploading Logo to Invoices

Based on popular demand on our feature request tool, we have implemented the feature allowing users of Clarity Accounting to include their own logo on the PDF invoices generated within our online accounting software.

Here are the specific instructions:

  1. Log in to Clarity Accounting
  2. Go to the “Business Profile” link under the “Setup” section on the Dashboard online accounting software | logo on pdf invoices
  3. Scroll down until you see a section that would allow you to upload your logo
  4. Click on the “browse” button, select your company logo from your computer
    Please note: the logo should be less than 50K in size and in the file format of GIF, JPEG, or PNG
  5. Click “Save” and you should see your logo appear in the “Logo” section

What will this look like on your professional looking PDF Invoice?

PDF Invoice with Logo

Ensuring Proper Display of Addresses

Your Company Address
Please ensure you have filled in your complete business address and contact information in order for you company address to automatically show up on your invoices.

Your Client’s Address
When adding new clients, please ensure you fill in your client’s company name and contact information.  This will appear on the PDF invoice generated.

Suggestions?

If you have any suggestions on how we can make this process better, please do not hesitate to contact us at Clarity Accounting or submit a feature request on our user voice system.

Inventory Tracking

First, a brief introduction to accounting concepts around inventory

When dealing with inventory, there are two transactions that occur for each product:

  1. Purchasing the item for resale, or the items needed to manufacture the product
  2. Selling the product to a customer (sales)

Inventory affects the following accounts:

  • Cost of Goods Sold: Money spent on items for resale, or supplies for manufacturing.  Cost of goods sold is recorded on the Profit and Loss statement as an exepense.
  • Inventory: The value of the items currently in stock, equal to the total purchase price of those items
  • Income: Inventory sales should have at least one account which is used when selling the item
  • Cash/Bank/Receivables/Payables: Inventory is bought and sold using money, often with credit offered when between businesses

Tracking inventory is commonly done in one of two ways:

  1. Periodic inventory tracking, in which the inventory account value is only adjusted from time to time (annually or quarterly, depending on when accurate reports are needed or wanted).
  2. Continuous inventory tracking, in which the inventory account value is adjusted on every purchase and sale

The easy way: Periodic Inventory Tracking

The advantage of periodic inventory tracking is that it’s a lot less work than continuous inventory tracking.  The disadvantage is that you don’t have a precise count of all your stock.

  • When setting up your business, create an account Inventory with a type Other Assets
  • When purchasing goods and supplies for resale, or which are used to create a product for sale, create a Bill and enter Cost of Goods Sold as the Expense Account.  Since normally the ‘Expense Account’ field only shows expense accounts, either type ‘Cost’ or click ‘Show All Accounts…’ to reveal the account.
  • When completing a sale, enter an Income record and use Sales Revenue as the Income Account.
  • Annually do a tally of the cost of all inventory and record an Adjustment and calculate the difference between the counted value of inventory and the inventory value on the balance sheet. Create an Adjustment and enter a credit of this calculated difference on Cost of Goods Sold and a Debit of this amount on Inventory.  The number may be negative if inventory values have decreased since the last count.

The meticulous way: Continuous Inventory Tracking

The advantage of continuous inventory tracking is that you always have a precise value for your inventory; however, this comes at the cost of extra effort.

  • When setting up your business, create an account Inventory with a type Other Assets
  • When purchasing goods for resale, or supplies which are used to create a product for sale, create a Bill and enter Inventory as the Expense Account.  Since normally the ‘Expense Account’ field only shows expense accounts, either type ‘Inv’ or click ‘Show All Accounts…’ to reveal the account.
  • When completing a sale, enter an Income record and use Sales Revenue as the Income Account.
  • After completing a sale, also calculate the price of the good sold, or the materials used to produce the good.  Create an Adjustment with a credit to Inventory and a debit to Cost of Goods Sold of this calculated price.

Time-saver: Setting Up and Using “Items”

The ‘Items’ link on the navigation takes you to a page where you can set up what we call ‘Items.’  An item is a product or service which has a preset price, tax rate, and income/expense accounts.  They act as a kind of “short cut” when entering bills and invoices since by selecting the item the account, price, and tax rate are automatically filled in.

If your business buys or sells the same things over and over, adding Items may save some time.  Also, in the future it will be possible to generate a report showing the total quantity of each item bought or sold in a given time period, which would help with verifying inventory counts.

Using a Third-Party Inventory Management System

If inventory management is important to your business, purchasing a third-party inventory system or point-of-sale system with inventory management features might be a great time-saver for you.

If you are using a third-party inventory system, you can periodically update your balance sheet by following the instructions for “How to do Periodic Inventory Tracking” above, except that instead of manually counting inventory, you print out the current inventory total from your inventory management software.  Since this is relatively easy, you could do this on a monthly or even weekly basis to keep your balance sheet current.

Closing Remarks

Even though Clarity Accounting does not contain specific support for inventory tracking, because it is a general accounting system you can still perform inventory tracking the ‘old fashioned way’ as described above.  In the future we may add specialized support for inventory and cost of sales; if this interests you please vote for it.

Multi-User Access Controls

The purpose of this post is to explain the function of the multi-user access within Clarity Accounting as well as outlining the four major levels of user access within our online accounting software.

There are 4 different levels of multi-user access built into Clarity Accounting:

  1. Administrator (Admin)/ Creator
  2. View / Edit only
  3. View Only
  4. No Access
Multi-user | Access Levels

Multi-user | Access Levels

Administrator / Creator

After users sign up for a user account with Clarity Accounting, they are usually taken to a page that allows them to create a business.  The person who first creates a business is labelled the “Creator”.  The creator will always have full access of the business file.  Unless the users have entered another name and email address as the person responsible for billing inquiries.

Admin users have the same level of access as the creator of the business account.  They have the ability to change payment plans, add or delete business records, and cancel the business account with Clarity Accounting.

View / Edit Only

Users who are given a “View / Edit Only” status will be able to enter records, edit records, view financial statements, and create invoices.  However, users with a View / Edit classification cannot delete entire business files, change billing information, or change users’ access levels.  View/Edit is ideal for giving access to users who will be performing data entry, but don’t need full control over the account.

View Only

Users who are given the “View Only” status will not be able to add, change, or remove any records from the business file.  They are given access to view all the transactions as well as being able to view reports and export them to a PDF / Excel format to print or view.  This access level is recommended for an auditor or advisor who wants to see your financials.

No Access

Users who are labelled as “No Access” will not be able to access the business file.  This option is used to remove users who have been previously given access to the business account but is no longer allowed to view the records on the business file.

How to Add Multi-Users on Clarity Accounting

For detailed instructions on how to add multiple users to your business account, please refer to the help file article: “Adding Multiple Users to Your Business“.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions or comments.