How Your Accountant Connects to Your Books

BizBooks Pro gives you two ways to let an accountant into your books, and they differ in one way that actually matters: whether the data travels through our servers on the way. Here is the honest comparison.

The two options side by side

Same access, different route

Your accountant sees exactly the same thing either way. What changes is the path the data takes to reach them.

Standard

One toggle in your settings. Nothing to install. Your accountant’s requests travel through our secure relay to reach your computer.

Traffic passes through our servers on its way to you.

Direct (VPN)

A private, encrypted link straight between your accountant’s computer and yours. Your books never pass through our servers.

Requires installing Tailscale on both machines.

Standard — one toggle, works anywhere

Open ⚙️ Company Settings → 👨‍💼 Accountant Access and switch on Standard. That is the whole setup. Your computer opens a secure outbound connection to our relay and holds it open, which is what lets your accountant reach you without anyone configuring a router, a firewall, or a VPN.

It works from home broadband, an office network, or a phone hotspot, because the connection goes out from your machine rather than in.

Inviting your accountant produces a short code — something like 4KP2-9WTD. They install BizBooks Pro, open Accountant Access, type it in, and they are connected. The letters and digits that get misread (O and 0, I, L and 1) are left out of the alphabet entirely, so it survives being read down the phone.

The invitation says which mode applies. If Standard is switched on, the email tells your accountant there is nothing for them to set up. If it is not available, the email says so and gives them the Tailscale steps instead. Nobody is promised a one-click connection and then asked to install a VPN.

Be clear about the trade-off. On Standard, your accounting data passes through our relay servers while it is in transit. We do not store it and we never write it to a log — but it does cross our infrastructure. If that is not acceptable for the records you keep, use Direct instead. We would rather tell you plainly than have you assume otherwise.

Direct (VPN) — nothing touches our servers

Direct builds an encrypted tunnel between your accountant’s computer and yours using Tailscale. The connection is peer to peer. Your ledgers, invoices, payroll records, and client files travel straight from one machine to the other, and never pass through our servers at any point.

The cost is setup effort: both you and your accountant install Tailscale, sign in with your own separate accounts, and you share your machine with them. Our Tailscale setup guide walks through it with the exact URLs to click.

Which one should you pick

Choose Direct if you are professionally obliged to. Law firms holding privileged client files, medical and dental practices, and government bodies frequently operate under rules where “the software vendor never touches the data” is a procurement requirement rather than a preference. If a compliance officer will ever ask how your books travel, Direct is the answer you want to be able to give.

Choose Standard if you run a small business and want this done in ten seconds. A landscaping company, a restaurant, or a two-person consultancy generally has no such obligation, and the toggle removes an entire afternoon of VPN setup for both of you.

You are not locked in. Turn Standard off at any time, or set up Direct later and keep both available. Switching does not affect your data or make your accountant re-apply for access.

Seeing and removing access

The same settings page lists everyone who can currently open your books, when they were granted access, and when they last opened it. Each one has a Remove access button.

Removing takes effect on their very next request — there is no waiting period and no reconnection window. It applies to both options: an accountant on Direct is cut off exactly as quickly as one on Standard.

When your computer is switched off

Neither option is cloud hosting. BizBooks Pro runs on your machine, and your books live on your machine. If your office PC is shut down on Friday evening, your accountant cannot reach it on Sunday morning — on Standard or on Direct.

If your accountant needs to work in your books outside your business hours, leave the computer switched on and BizBooks Pro running. Their client list will show “their computer is off” rather than an error, so nobody has to guess what happened.