Multi-Staff Practice Management in Accounted

A sole practitioner can manage the Accounted practice portal intuitively. One person, one dashboard, one review queue. But as soon as your practice has two or more people involved in client work, you need structure. Who reviews which client? What permissions does each team member have? How does work flow from initial review to senior sign-off? How do you maintain quality and consistency when multiple people are making review decisions?

These are not new questions. Every practice management system addresses them in some form. What makes Accounted's approach distinct is that the multi-staff features are built around the AI-assisted review workflow rather than bolted onto a generic task management system. The delegation, permissions, and oversight tools are designed for the specific way work flows through the review queue, not for generic project management.

This guide covers how to set up and use Accounted's multi-staff features effectively, from initial team configuration to ongoing quality management.

Setting Up Your Team

Adding Team Members

Team members are added from the practice settings section of the portal. Each person needs a name, email address, and assigned role. The invitation process is straightforward: the team member receives an email, creates their account, and appears in your team list.

There is no limit to the number of team members you can add, and there is no per-user charge (saving practices £40-60 per user per month compared to platforms that charge per seat). This is consistent with Accounted's approach of not charging accountants for practice portal access — the portal is free regardless of team size.

Role Types

Accounted offers three role types, each with different permissions:

Admin — full access to all practice settings, all clients, and all features. Admins can add and remove team members, change role assignments, adjust confidence thresholds, and configure practice-wide settings. Typically assigned to partners, practice owners, and senior managers.

Reviewer — can view assigned clients' records, review flagged items, approve or amend categorisations, generate workpapers, and submit filings. Cannot change practice settings or manage team members. This is the standard role for qualified accountants and senior bookkeepers who conduct reviews independently.

Read-Only — can view assigned clients' records and workpapers but cannot make any changes. Useful for trainees who are learning the review process, for staff who need to reference client information without conducting reviews, or for external quality assurance reviewers.

The role assignments can be changed at any time. A common pattern is to start new team members with Read-Only access, move them to Reviewer once they have been trained, and grant Admin access to senior staff who manage the practice.

Client Assignment and Delegation

Assigning Clients to Staff

Each client in your practice can be assigned to one or more team members. The primary assignment determines who is responsible for reviewing that client's records and who sees the client's flagged items in their personal review queue.

Assignment can be done individually (selecting clients one by one and assigning them to a team member) or in bulk (selecting multiple clients and assigning them to a team member in a single action). For practices with clear client portfolios — where each staff member has a defined set of clients — the bulk assignment is the fastest approach.

Shared Clients

Some clients may benefit from having multiple team members assigned. For example, a junior reviewer might be assigned as the primary reviewer, with a senior accountant assigned as the secondary reviewer for sign-off purposes. Both team members can see the client's records and review queue items, but the workpaper records which person took each action.

This supports the tiered review model that many practices use:

1. Junior reviewer processes the routine flagged items — new supplier confirmations, low-confidence categorisations that are straightforward to resolve, and receipt matching queries
2. Senior reviewer handles complex items — VAT uncertainties, unusual transactions, potential tax planning implications, and items the junior reviewer has escalated
3. Partner sign-off reviews the completed workpaper and authorises any filings

Each level of this process is documented in the automatically generated workpaper, creating a clear audit trail of who reviewed what and when.

Escalation Workflow

When a reviewer encounters an item they cannot resolve — perhaps because it requires more experience, involves a judgement call beyond their authority, or needs information from the client — they can escalate it within the review queue. Escalated items are flagged with a reason and appear in the senior reviewer's queue with full context about why the escalation happened.

This is more structured than the informal "can you look at this?" approach that many practices rely on. The escalation is logged, the context is preserved, and the senior reviewer can see exactly what the junior reviewer considered before escalating. No information is lost in the handover, and the workpaper records the complete chain of review.

Workload Balancing

Dashboard View

The practice dashboard includes a workload view showing each team member's current client load:

• Number of assigned clients
• Number of items currently in their review queue
• Number of items completed in the current period
• Average review time per client (based on historical data)
• Upcoming deadlines for their assigned clients

This gives practice managers visibility into how work is distributed across the team. If one reviewer has thirty items in their queue while another has five, the imbalance is immediately apparent.

Rebalancing

Clients can be reassigned between team members at any time. If a staff member is overwhelmed (or absent), their clients can be temporarily reassigned to another team member. The reassignment is instant — the client's flagged items appear in the new reviewer's queue immediately.

For practices that experience seasonal workload variations (the Q1 MTD rush, the January Self Assessment deadline, year-end accounts season), the ability to rebalance quickly is valuable. Rather than some staff members working evenings while others have capacity, work can be distributed more evenly across the team.

Capacity Planning

The historical data from the workload dashboard supports capacity planning. If you can see that your three reviewers are each handling forty clients with an average of twenty flagged items per client per quarter, you can calculate whether your current team can absorb growth or whether you need to hire.

With Penny's AI pre-processing reducing the per-client review time, most practices find they have significantly more capacity than they realised. A reviewer who would handle thirty clients in a traditional workflow can typically handle fifty to sixty with AI-assisted review. This is a meaningful input into your hiring and growth decisions. For more on scaling client capacity, see our guide on how accountants manage twice the clients.

Quality Oversight

Review Quality Metrics

For practice managers and partners, the portal provides quality metrics at both the individual and practice level:

• Amendment rate: how often the reviewer changes Penny's suggested categorisation (a consistently high amendment rate may indicate the confidence threshold is set too low for that client, or that the reviewer has specific categorisation preferences that should be configured)
• Consistency score: how consistently the reviewer categorises similar transactions across clients (inconsistency may indicate a training need or a genuine difference in client circumstances that should be documented)
• Escalation rate: how often the reviewer escalates items to a senior (a very low rate might indicate overconfidence; a very high rate might indicate underconfidence or a training gap)
• Review speed: average time to process flagged items (useful for identifying reviewers who may be rushing or who are spending excessive time on routine items)

These metrics are not surveillance. They are management tools that help you identify where training, guidance, or process improvement would benefit the team. The goal is consistency and quality across the practice, not monitoring individual performance.

Spot-Check Capability

Senior staff can review any client's records and workpapers at any time, regardless of who is assigned as the primary reviewer. This supports quality assurance spot-checks, where a partner randomly reviews a selection of clients across the practice to verify that review standards are being maintained.

The workpapers make spot-checks efficient. Rather than re-reviewing the entire client from scratch, the partner can review the workpaper to see what decisions were made, focus on any amendments or escalations, and assess whether the review was thorough and appropriate.

Training and Development

The review queue and workpaper system doubles as a training tool. Junior staff with Read-Only access can observe how senior reviewers handle flagged items, learning the reasoning behind categorisation decisions and the professional judgement applied to ambiguous transactions.

When a junior reviewer is ready to conduct reviews independently, their work is automatically documented in the workpaper, making it straightforward for a senior to review their decisions and provide feedback. Over time, the junior reviewer's amendment rate and escalation rate should converge towards the practice's norms, indicating growing competence and confidence.

Practical Setup for Common Practice Structures

Different practice structures call for different configurations. Here are the setups we see working well in practice.

Two-Person Practice (Principal + Assistant)

• Principal: Admin role, assigned as secondary reviewer to all clients
• Assistant: Reviewer role, assigned as primary reviewer to all clients
• Workflow: Assistant processes the review queue daily. Complex items are escalated to the principal. Principal conducts a weekly spot-check of completed workpapers and handles all filings.

Small Practice (3-5 Staff)

• Partners/Directors: Admin role, assigned as secondary reviewers
• Qualified Staff: Reviewer role, each assigned a portfolio of 40-60 clients
• Trainees: Read-Only role initially, progressing to Reviewer as competence develops
• Workflow: Reviewers process their client portfolios independently. Escalations go to the assigned partner. Monthly quality review by partners covering a sample of workpapers across all reviewers.

Medium Practice (6-15 Staff)

• Partners: Admin role, oversight and sign-off
• Managers: Admin role, client portfolio management and reviewer supervision
• Senior Accountants: Reviewer role, primary review responsibility
• Junior Accountants/Bookkeepers: Reviewer role with lower-complexity client assignments
• Trainees: Read-Only progressing to Reviewer
• Workflow: Tiered review with systematic escalation. Weekly workload balancing meetings informed by dashboard data. Quarterly quality assurance reviews using spot-check capability.

For practices at the larger end of this range, the Senta practice management platform and similar tools can complement Accounted's practice portal by providing additional features like detailed time recording and project-level workflow management for non-bookkeeping engagements.

Handling Staff Changes

Staff turnover is a reality in every practice. The multi-staff features are designed to handle transitions smoothly.

When a Reviewer Leaves

When a team member leaves the practice, their clients need to be reassigned. The bulk reassignment feature handles this in one action. All flagged items in the departing reviewer's queue transfer to the new assignee automatically.

Critically, the workpapers retain the complete history. The new reviewer can see exactly what the previous reviewer did, including their categorisation decisions, amendments, and escalations. There is no loss of institutional knowledge about how the client's records have been handled.

When a New Reviewer Joins

New team members are added with the appropriate role and assigned clients. If they are taking over from a departing reviewer, the workpaper history provides immediate context. If they are taking on new clients, the AI-assisted workflow means they can be productive quickly — Penny's pre-processing reduces the learning curve for each client because the routine categorisation is already handled.

For new staff who are not yet familiar with Accounted's review workflow, starting with Read-Only access and progressing to Reviewer after a week or two of observation is a low-risk onboarding approach.

Integration with Broader Practice Operations

The multi-staff features in Accounted cover the bookkeeping review and compliance workflow. Deciding which tasks each staff member handles is closely related to understanding what to automate and what to keep manual within your practice. For practices that also handle audit, corporate tax, advisory, and other engagements, the practice portal works alongside traditional practice management tools rather than replacing them. How your staff communicate with clients also matters — our guide on effective client communication covers strategies that complement the multi-staff workflow.

The most effective approach is to use Accounted's practice portal for all bookkeeping and compliance work (where the AI-assisted review delivers the greatest efficiency gains) and a dedicated practice management tool for other engagement types (where the workflow management and time recording features are more relevant).

This hybrid approach means team members may use two systems, but the workloads are clearly delineated. Bookkeeping review and MTD submissions happen in Accounted. Audit planning and corporate tax computations happen in the practice management tool. There is no duplication or confusion about which system to use for which task.

Getting Started

If you already have a practice portal account, adding team members takes a few minutes per person. Navigate to practice settings, add team members, assign roles, and distribute clients. The MTD for Income Tax requirements make this a timely exercise — having your team set up and familiar with the AI-assisted review workflow before the April 2026 deadline means you are ready for the increased quarterly submission workload.

If you have not yet set up your practice portal, the setup guide covers the initial configuration, and adding team members is one of the steps in that process.

For practices evaluating Accounted, the multi-staff features are available from day one at no cost. You can add your full team, configure roles and assignments, and run through a few review cycles to assess how the workflow fits your practice before committing to a broader rollout.

Visit our page for accountants or sign up directly to explore the multi-staff features yourself.

You may also find our The Accountant's Guide to Recommending AI Bookkeeping helpful.

Accounted gives accountants a free practice portal — manage all your clients, file to HMRC, and let Penny handle the routine work. See the accountant portal →