By: Money Navigator Research Team
Last Reviewed: 11/02/2026
FACT CHECKED
Quick Summary
In Tide, “giving your accountant access” is mainly a permissions decision: whether the accountant’s login is limited to visibility/bookkeeping features or extends into actions that can change the account (for example, creating recipients, initiating transfers, or stopping Direct Debits).
The practical implications are about internal control (who can do what), evidencing (what you can later show happened), and data access (what personal and business information becomes visible through that login).
This article is educational and not financial advice.
What “accountant access” means in Tide
In Tide, access is typically granted through Team Access rather than by sharing a single set of credentials. Tide describes multiple Team Access levels, including “View-only” and a dedicated “Accountant” access level intended for bookkeeping-related features (What is Tide’s Team Access feature?).
That distinction matters because “accountant access” is not a single universal permission set. Two businesses can both say “our accountant has Tide access” while meaning very different things operationally: one meaning “they can see and export what they need”, another meaning “they can move money”.
Who can grant (and revoke) accountant access?
Tide’s support guidance states that an Admin must add a person as a Team Member and then assign (or change) their Team Access level in-app (How do I add a new team member or give an existing team member a new access level?).
Equally, Tide describes removal as an Admin-controlled action carried out in the same “Manage team” area (How do I remove a Team Member’s access?). From a governance perspective, that means the “boundary” is not the accountant’s job title; it’s whether an Admin chose (and maintained) a particular access level.
Permission boundaries that change real-world outcomes
A useful way to map risk and control is to separate visibility from authority:
Visibility: the ability to view account information, transactions, and documents relevant to bookkeeping.
Authority: the ability to take actions that change the account state (payments, recipients/payees, Direct Debits, scheduled payments).
Tide’s own description of “View, Draft, Send & Pay” includes the ability to make transfers and add or remove payees (What can team members with ‘View, Draft, Send & Pay’ access do?). That single line is the hinge: if an accountant is given an action-capable permission set, their login can become a payment-capable login.
Where accountants need access to recipients/payees specifically (for example, setting up suppliers), it can be helpful to treat “payee management” as a separate control surface rather than a minor admin task, because it can change where money is able to go.
For a deeper explanation of what recipient changes mean operationally, see our separate explainer: Adding and Removing Payees in Tide Explained: Who Can Do It and What Gets Logged.
What gets logged (and what that means in practice)
There are two different “logging” questions that get conflated:
Whether the platform records that an action happened (for example, a payment was sent, a payee was added, a Direct Debit was stopped).
Whether you can later evidence who did it to the standard required for internal review, tax queries, or a dispute.
Tide’s product terms describe the use of personalised security credentials to access the member account (Tide Membership and Product Terms – 2 February 2026).
In plain operational terms, once access is granted, actions executed inside the account are generally attributable to the credentialed user who performed them (subject to whatever audit views the platform makes available).
That is why permission design is the first-order control. If the accountant login can initiate or change payments, then “who had access, at what level, on what date” becomes a core piece of evidence alongside the underlying transaction records.
Summary Table
| Scenario | Outcome | Practical impact |
|---|---|---|
| Accountant added with view-only style access | Account visibility without account changes | Bookkeeping can be separated from payment authority |
| Accountant added with action-capable access | Ability to initiate transfers and manage payees (depending on level) | Recipient changes and payment initiation become part of third-party access risk |
| Multiple Admins exist | Any Admin can usually manage team access | Internal processes matter more than a single “owner” assumption |
| Accountant’s access is time-limited (removed after year-end) | Login loses access once removed | Offboarding becomes part of the control environment |
| Payee created/edited during accountant access | New/changed payment destination becomes available | Verification and approval trails matter more than the payee label |
| Payment prepared by one user and approved by another | Separation of duties is possible where approvals are configured | Control can be shaped around who drafts vs who releases |
Scenario Table
| Scenario-level | Process-level | Outcome-level |
|---|---|---|
| Granting access | Admin invites user > user completes onboarding checks | Access exists only after onboarding is completed and the assigned level is active |
| Changing permissions | Admin edits Team Access level | Capability set changes without changing the person’s identity |
| Revoking access | Admin removes team member | Login and in-app access ends; offboarding is an auditable event internally |
| Handling sensitive data | Access is restricted to authorised roles and reviewed periodically | Reduced exposure if credentials are compromised or misused |
| Record retention | Records are stored and retrievable for relevant periods | Faster responses to tax queries, reviews, or operational disputes |
Data access and compliance implications (without legal advice)
Granting accountant access can expand who can view personal data (for example, names on payments, payee details, staff expense receipts) as well as business-sensitive data (customer receipts, supplier spend, margins).
The ICO’s security guidance frames secure processing as requiring appropriate technical and organisational measures (A guide to data security).
Separately, the ICO’s access-control checklist approach emphasises role-based access, reviewing access rights, and removing leavers promptly as part of a basic control environment (Access control). In other words: the “accountant access” decision is not just operational; it is also a data-access decision.
Record-keeping implications: what access is for (in practical terms)
Accountant access is often about enabling accurate records and faster reconciliation. GOV.UK guidance sets out that limited companies must keep company and accounting records for a defined period and lists circumstances where longer retention may apply (Company and accounting records).
For self-employed records, GOV.UK sets out a different retention rule tied to the Self Assessment deadline (How long to keep your records). This matters because the “practical implication” of access is not only what can be done today, but what can be evidenced later.
When an accountant accesses or holds records, questions can arise about what belongs to the client, what belongs to the accountant, and what access can be demanded or shared.
ACCA’s technical factsheet on access to accounting records held by a third party sets out the broad distinction between documents belonging to clients and documents belonging to members (Technical factsheet: rights of access to accounting records when those records are held by a third party).
This becomes relevant in Tide-style workflows because a platform login is not the same as a data export: one is ongoing system access, the other is a snapshot.
Tide Business Bank Account
Tide is widely used by UK small businesses as an app-based business account offering with add-ons and team access features. Our broader product review sits here: Tide Business Banking Review.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, in Tide the key distinction is whether the assigned access level is view-only style access or includes action permissions. “Accountant access” can mean visibility for bookkeeping features, but action-capable levels can also exist depending on how access is set.
The practical implication is that “access granted” is not the same as “authority granted”. Two accounts can both have an “accountant” user, while one setup is purely observational and the other includes payment surfaces (such as initiating transfers or managing payees), which changes internal control expectations.
View-only access is about visibility: transactions, balances, and information that supports reconciliation and reporting. Payment-capable access changes the account state: it can create outcomes that must be monitored, approved, and later evidenced.
A common misunderstanding is to treat payment capability as “just a convenience feature”. In operational terms, any permission that can create a payee/recipient, initiate a payment, or stop a Direct Debit is a control decision because it changes where funds can go and what commitments can be created.
Not automatically, but it can, depending on which permission set is used. Some workflows separate “payee preparation” from “payment release”, while others combine them by giving a single user broader permissions.
The practical implication is that “supplier setup” is not only administrative housekeeping. It can alter the payment destination universe inside the account, which can affect how payment approvals and reviews are interpreted later.
Card-related access is typically distinct from general payment authority and may be tied to specific team roles or access levels. Whether a given user receives a card and what the card can do depends on how the platform structures that role and what the Admin assigns.
From a control perspective, card access shifts the question from “who can send bank transfers” to “who can incur spend”. That changes the evidence trail you would look for later: receipts, categorisation, and the mapping between user identity and card usage.
Account access generally allows visibility over transactions and account information needed to understand the ledger. Depending on the access level and platform features enabled, visibility can extend to operational artefacts such as payee lists, Direct Debits, scheduled payments, or bookkeeping tools.
The practical implication is that a third-party login can expose information beyond “numbers on a statement”. If staff expenses, supplier details, or customer references are visible inside the account, then granting access also becomes a data-access decision, not just a bookkeeping convenience.
The invitation step is not necessarily the end of the process. Platform onboarding checks, acceptance of invitations, and activation steps can all sit between “invite sent” and “access active”.
Operationally, this matters when an accountant is expected to help with a deadline. A business can be in a state where the access decision is made internally, but the access is not yet usable because the user has not completed the required steps.
If access is removed, the practical effect is that the login no longer has account access, but historic accounting work (exports, reports, and files held elsewhere) may still exist outside the platform, depending on what was previously downloaded or shared.
The boundary here is often misunderstood: removing access changes future visibility and future authority, but it does not retroactively change what information was visible at the time access existed. That is why offboarding is best seen as one control among several, not the only control.
Granting access can expand who can view personal data and business-sensitive information, and that in turn increases the importance of role-based access, review, and timely removal of access when it is no longer needed.
Whether the accountant is acting as a controller, processor, or independent professional depends on the service arrangement and scope.
Practically, it is helpful to separate two questions:
- What information is visible inside the platform?
- What information leaves the platform via exports and documents?
The second question typically creates longer-lived data flows that outlast the platform login itself.
The records most affected are those that change based on user actions: payments, payee changes, Direct Debit setup/stops, and scheduled payments. Those are the areas where a platform’s activity trail and a business’s internal approvals tend to matter most.
By contrast, purely observational access mostly affects visibility and confidentiality. The key question is less “is the accountant trusted?” and more “what is the minimum operational scope required for the accountant’s role in this account?”
In disputes, the most important distinction is often between:
- What happened in the account (the underlying transaction and timestamps)
- The authority structure at the time (who had which permissions, and whether approvals were required)
Those two pieces together usually form the factual core.
It is also common for disputes to hinge on what was agreed outside the platform (engagement scope, instructions, and delegation).
A platform login on its own does not describe the underlying instruction chain; it only evidences what was possible and what was executed inside the account.
“Accountant access” is best understood as a delegation surface: it shifts part of the account’s control boundary from a single operator to a role-based system.
The key constraint is that platforms log actions, but internal governance determines whether those actions were appropriate.
That is why the same transaction trail can mean “normal delegated workflow” in one business and “control failure” in another.
Practically, the highest-value distinction is not between “internal user” and “external accountant”. It is between read access, draft/change access, and release authority.
Once those are separated, the rest of the problem becomes evidence design: making sure that what happened can be explained later without relying on memory.
Sources & References
How do I add a new team member or give an existing team member a new access level? (Tide Support)
What can team members with ‘View, Draft, Send & Pay’ access do? (Tide Support)
Access control (ICO Data Protection Audit Framework toolkit)
Business records if you're self-employed: how long to keep your records (GOV.UK)
Related Content
