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Export your books
Hand your accountant a CSV of the journal for a period, without giving them access to anything.
- Steps
- 3 · About 2 min
- Who can do this
- Owner · Manager · Accountant
Sometimes the accountant wants the file, not a login. Accounting, then export — it downloads a CSV of the journal straight away.
The period is the one you are looking at
The export uses the same date range as the journal on screen. Set the range first, check the register looks right, then export. There is no second date picker, and no chance of exporting a period other than the one you just read.
That is why it is worth opening the journal before exporting rather than exporting blind: whatever you saw is what you are sending.
What is in the file
Every entry in the period, one row per line: the date, the journal code, the description, the reference, the account, and the debit or credit. It opens in any spreadsheet, and it is the shape an accountant expects.
It is a read of your books, not a backup of your system. It has no products, no contacts, no documents and no attachments — a CSV of the journal is what somebody needs to check your accounting, and nothing more.
Export, or give them access?
Both are reasonable, and they suit different people.
Export when the relationship is occasional — a quarterly review, a file for a filing, an accountant who works from spreadsheets. Nothing to set up, nothing to revoke.
Give access as read-only when they work with you continuously. They see the journal live rather than a snapshot, they can follow an entry back to the document that made it, and you stop emailing files.
The one thing not to do is give someone a role that can write because exporting felt inconvenient.
An export is a copy, and a copy leaves your control the moment you send it. It carries every figure in the period, so treat it like the accounting record it is — particularly on a shared machine or an email account somebody else can reach.
Next, you might want to
- Review the journalRead every entry your daily work produced, over a date range you choose, and check it balances.
- Read-only accessWhat somebody who can see everything and change nothing is for, and why it is safer than the alternative.
- Close and reopen a periodStop new entries landing in a month you have already declared — and know how to let one back in when you must.