Running the practice command centre

The Accountant workspace is the firm's cross-client working day. It answers which client needs attention, what is blocking month-end, and who owns the next step without making staff open every business first.

Start on Today

Open Accountant → Today. The compact attention strip covers the whole assigned portfolio, even when the queue below it is shown in pages.

Use the attention items as working filters:

• Tasks for you — open review and evidence tasks assigned to accountants
• Overdue — open tasks whose service target has passed
• Review — transactions or proposed changes waiting for a checker
• Documents — requests still waiting on the client
• Reconciliation — bank or wallet sessions still in progress
• Sign-off — periods ready for the accountant's next approval

Select a client row once to inspect its evidence without leaving Today. Press Enter or double-click to open the full client workspace. The health score is explainable: the inspector lists the real conditions reducing it, such as overdue tasks or an unfinished reconciliation.

Save a working view

Choose Priority or All, enter an optional queue filter, then choose Save view. Give it a short name. The view remembers its scope and text filter on this device and appears in Saved views the next time you work.

Assign several clients safely

Partners and other authorised firm governors see a selection control beside each queue row. Select the clients, choose an active teammate, and use Assign clients. Each assignment remains constrained by the client's delegation and the teammate's role ceiling. If one assignment fails, SBB reports the partial result explicitly and keeps the successful assignments—it never claims the whole batch succeeded.

Understand loaded rows and totals

The command centre keeps the first response small so a large firm does not wait for its entire client book before starting work.

• Showing 100 of 120 means 100 client rows are currently in the browser and the total assigned population is 120.
• Load more clients retrieves the next page without discarding the rows already shown.
• Summary totals remain portfolio-wide. They do not shrink to the loaded page.
• Month-end status counts also describe the full portfolio, not only the visible close rows.

The same rule applies to sent access requests, Activity, and the month-end board. Use Load more when you need older or later rows; do not interpret the first page as the full historical record.

Work when one panel cannot load

Today treats the client roster as essential and secondary panels as independent. If requests, queue signals, or month-end status cannot load, the available roster still opens and the affected panel shows its own retry state.

This is intentional. A temporary failure in an unrelated summary must not stop you opening a client and doing permitted work. Retry the affected panel before using its totals for a review meeting.

Switch clients safely

Select another client at any time. If the earlier client's response arrives after the later one, SBB discards it instead of replacing the client now on screen. The business name at the top of the workspace is the authoritative context for every action.

Before posting or approving anything, confirm:

1. The client name is correct.
2. The module is inside the scope the owner delegated.
3. Your role allows the action rather than only viewing it.

Use Month-end

Open Accountant → Month-end for the portfolio close ledger. Each client is in one practical state such as not started, blocked, accountant review, awaiting client approval, ready to sign, reopened, or closed.

The board leads with the oldest unfinished period. A newer closed month cannot hide an older month that still needs work. Where the firm has set a target close day, overdue means that firm-set target has passed; SBB does not invent a tax or statutory deadline.

Use Load more to retrieve further clients. Status filters keep their full-portfolio counts while rows are paged. Select a close row to reveal blockers, review evidence, target editing, progression, sign-off, or reopening actions. Keeping those controls collapsed makes a large portfolio scannable.

Use the other firm workspaces

• Clients is a searchable, sortable portfolio table. Select once for health, delegation, engagement and attention context; open the workspace for the client's detailed books.
• Reports separates portfolio insights, immutable issued history, templates, generation and consolidated groups. Generation shows whether it is running, issued and retained, or failed.
• Billing keeps totals separated by currency and shows every client's payer, plan, paid-through date and allowed action. Issued invoices remain immutable.
• Team combines active people and pending invitations in one directory. Select a person to inspect assignments, change an authorised role, resend access, or remove them.
• Roles is a permission matrix. Assignment counts show how many people hold each role. Remember that effective access is always client delegation ∩ client assignment ∩ role ceiling.
• Settings contains firm identity, report defaults, chart-of-accounts templates, and your workbench theme and density controls.

Use Activity only when you need the trail

Open Accountant → Activity to review grants, assignments, report issuance, close actions, role changes, and other practice events. Activity loads only when opened so a long history cannot delay Today.

• Search by summary, actor or client, or filter by event type.
• Select an event to inspect its actor, exact time, scope and recorded change.
• Open source client returns to the underlying workspace when the event is client-scoped.
• Refresh retrieves the newest page; Load more appends the next bounded page.
• Actor and client names are resolved together, so long histories do not cause one database lookup per event.

Activity is an audit trail, not a substitute for the underlying transaction, close period, or issued report. Open that record when reviewing financial detail.

Choose the workspace appearance

Use the controls in the top toolbar or Accountant → Settings → Appearance and density:

• System, Light, or Dark changes the workbench theme.
• Comfortable gives rows more breathing room.
• Compact fits more clients and events on screen.

The choice is saved on the current device. Reduced-motion and reduced-transparency operating-system preferences are respected automatically.

A reliable daily routine

1. Open Today and clear overdue items first.
2. Review exceptions and maker-checker proposals.
3. Follow up document requests that block close.
4. Complete open reconciliations.
5. Move ready clients through Month-end.
6. Generate and retain the promised report packs.
7. Use Activity when investigating who changed or issued something.

Related

• For accounting firms — complete practice setup
• Practice report packs — templates, PDF generation and issued history
• Month-end close — the close stages inside one business
• Collaboration and roles — permissions and review