Your clients' SmartBill

Your clients’ SmartBill

SmartBill is the app your clients use. A new office is ready for it without any setup: there is nothing to connect.

Settings → SmartBill holds everything about your clients’ SmartBill accounts: whether each new client gets one, who pays for it, inviting clients who already use SmartBill, and account templates. When SmartBill is not ready for your clients yet, the page says so in one line:

We are getting SmartBill ready for your clients: a new office is being prepared. It takes a moment; keep working.
Opening SmartBill accounts for clients is temporarily unavailable: we already know and are on it. There is nothing for you to do.
Clients’ SmartBill accounts are paused for your office: they come back when your office is restored.

If your office already worked with SmartBill before it joined SmartBill Office, contact support: we connect that work to your office for you.

Clients’ SmartBill accounts

Settings → SmartBill → Open a SmartBill account for every new client decides whether each new client gets a SmartBill account by itself. It is on for a new office. Owners and admins can change it. On or off, you can always open an account for the clients you choose.

When it is on, there is nothing to do per new client:

A client you add yourself (the Add client dialog, or making a lead a client) gets its SmartBill account in the background, and SmartBill emails the invitation to the client’s email at once. In the Add client dialog you can turn off Send the client an invitation to SmartBill to send it later, and owners and admins can choose Who pays for the account there for that one client.
Clients you import, or that come from intake forms and reports, get their accounts too, but their invitations wait for you. The clients list shows N clients have not been invited to SmartBill yet. Choose Review and send, clear the clients you do not want to invite now, and send. SmartBill emails them a few at a time; each invitation is open for 60 days from when it is sent.

The setting does not open accounts for the clients you already have. You choose who gets one:

In settings, Choose existing clients lists the clients that have no SmartBill account yet. Tick the ones that should get one (you can search by name or tax ID). By default their invitations wait for your review in the clients list; turn on Email the invitations now for SmartBill to send them at once. Before anything opens, you see each client with the address its invitation goes to, and a warning when your office’s free seats do not cover everyone it pays for. A client whose email is not valid can be ticked once you fix it on its page. A client with no email that your office pays for is marked No email: opens, run by your office: its account opens at once with nobody invited.
On the client’s page, under Connections, a client without an account shows Open a SmartBill account. Choose who to invite, and the account opens and the invitation is sent. Owners and admins can also choose Who pays for the account there while your office’s allowance has a free seat. When your office pays, you can turn off Invite someone from the client now and choose Open the account: the account opens, your office runs it, and nobody from the client is invited until you choose to (see When your office pays).

The setting opens an account only when the client is added. When your office pays and a seat is free, the account opens at once: the client is invited as you chose, and one without an email opens with nobody invited. Otherwise the client starts on a trial (see When your office pays), and the account opens once there is someone to invite. A client that had nobody to invite then (a trial starts when someone from the client joins) waits for you: on the client’s Connections choose Choose who to invite, or, when your office pays and a seat is free, Open a SmartBill account with nobody invited. Nothing that happens later opens it by itself: not an email or a contact added, not seats coming free, not your office starting to pay.

A client waits, and continues by itself, when:

your plan’s limit for new SmartBill accounts was reached: the account opens when the limit allows. Plan and usage shows how many clients wait;
the business already uses SmartBill: your office asks it for access instead, and the client shows Waiting for the business to approve.

Turning it off stops new clients from getting an account, and clients still waiting for one that would have opened by itself do not get it. Clients you chose yourself continue, and accounts already open stay.

On the client’s page

The client’s Connections area shows the SmartBill card:

Who is in the account shows who can sign in to the client’s SmartBill account. Until the client joins it is one person, the one invited, with where the invitation stands:
- Not sent yet: the account is open and the invitation waits. Choose Send invitation, or Send the link yourself to send it from your office’s email or WhatsApp (that counts as sending it).
- Invited: the invitation was sent, and until when it is open. Resend or change recipient sends a new invitation, open for 60 days. You can pick one of the client’s contacts there or type another email; if you change the recipient, the previous one is told.
- Invitation expired: send it again so the client can join.
Whoever accepts the invitation becomes the account’s admin. From then on Who is in the account shows the people in it: name, email, role (Admin, User or Employee) and since when. The account’s admin adds and removes people in SmartBill; your office sees the list and does not change it.
Propose another person (for whoever manages the client): pick one of the client’s contacts or type an email, choose a role (User, or Employee, who reports hours and submits only their own expenses), and add a message if you like. The account’s admin gets the proposal in SmartBill and by email, and only after they approve does SmartBill invite that person. The proposal shows in the list as Waiting for approval, then Approved or Declined; one nobody answers for 14 days is marked Not answered. You can withdraw a proposal that is still waiting.
For a client with no account because there is nobody to invite, the card offers Choose who to invite: pick a contact or type an email, the account opens and the invitation is sent.
An account opened with nobody invited (your office pays) shows Not invited yet, and Who is in the account says your office runs it. When the client wants to use the app, choose Invite the client: pick a contact or type an email, and SmartBill sends an invitation open for 60 days. Whoever accepts becomes the account’s admin, and your office keeps working in it.
After the client joins, the card also shows the plan: the trial’s end date, The client pays SmartBill, or read-only until the client pays.
Open in SmartBill: once the client has joined, or while your office pays for them, opens the client’s SmartBill account in a new tab, without a SmartBill username and password of your own. With view-only access to the client, it opens view only. You work on one client at a time: opening another client replaces the previous one. The session stays open for 12 hours, and closes sooner if you no longer have access to the client. Before the client joins (unless your office pays for them), the button is disabled and says why. The same button is also on the client’s overview, next to the SmartBill status in Handled by the office.
Updated from SmartBill shows when the client’s documents and expenses last came in. Refresh now brings them in again; Update name and contacts takes the business name, emails and contacts the client keeps in SmartBill. Before the client joins there is nothing to bring in yet: the card says the documents and expenses come in once the client accepts the invitation, and they start coming in on their own when the client joins. A client your office pays for is brought in from the start, before they join. If an update from SmartBill does not go through, the card says so and it is tried again automatically.

Your expense classifications and Hashavshevet settings go to the client’s SmartBill once the client joined (or your office pays for them) and the client’s books are set up, whichever comes last.

When your office pays

In Settings → SmartBill, Who pays for a new client’s SmartBill? sets how each new account is paid for (owners and admins): The client pays, after a free trial (the client gets SmartBill’s standard trial when they join, then pays SmartBill themselves) or Your office pays (a seat of your office’s allowance pays for the client’s plan from the day the account opens, before the client joins, until you stop it, and never past the allowance’s end). When your office pays and the allowance has seats of more than one plan, Plan your office pays for picks the plan each new client’s account gets (or Any plan with a free seat); with no free seat of that plan, the client starts on a trial. Below the choice is how many seats of the allowance are free, with a link to Allowance and sponsored clients in Plan and usage. When your office pays you can work in the client’s SmartBill account at once: the card shows Active, paid for by your office, and when the client joins the sponsorship simply goes on. When your office pays, nobody needs to be invited: a client without an email gets its account at once, and your office invites the client when they want to use the app. When your office pays and no seat is free, the client starts on a trial and the card says so; the page counts those clients.

Your office pays for SmartBill on the client’s card shows the sponsorship: Sponsored until a date (or until you stop it), Stopping, Ended with the reason, or Client pays when the client started paying SmartBill themselves (the seat returns to your allowance). Who manages the client’s bookkeeping settings can:

Pay for this client: start a sponsorship for a client already in SmartBill (on a trial, or whose plan ended), or for one who has not joined yet; it starts at once. Not for a client who already pays or whom another office sponsors.
Change end date: earlier or later, never past the end of the allowance. SmartBill tells the client.
Change plan: when your allowance has seats of more than one SmartBill plan, move the client to another plan with a free seat. A seat of the new plan pays from now and the old one goes back to the allowance; the end stays, never past the new plan’s allowance. SmartBill switches the client’s plan at once and tells the client. When the allowance has seats of several plans, Pay for this client asks which plan too.
Stop paying: SmartBill stops it now and tells the client; the client’s account is read-only in SmartBill until the client pays. If the client has not joined yet, your office can no longer work in the account, and the client gets the standard trial when they join.

Wherever you pick a plan (Pay for this client, Change plan, the plan for new clients, and each plan in Plan and usage), What the plan includes shows what the client gets on it in SmartBill and, next to anything with a monthly cap, the cap, such as up to how many invoices a month. In Change plan it also marks what is New on the new plan, what is not included in it, and caps that change compared with the client’s cap now. The comparison shows only when the client is on the current version of their plan.

If SmartBill does not answer, the card says so and keeps the seat; it is checked again by itself. When your office is read-only you can still shorten or stop a sponsorship, but not start or extend one.

Client already uses SmartBill? A client new to your office (one moving from another office, say) does not need a new account: in Settings → SmartBill → Clients who already use SmartBill choose Invite a client to connect, or in the Add client dialog choose Invite them to connect. Type the email they sign in to SmartBill with (and a name and message if you like). SmartBill asks them, in its app and by email, to connect one of the businesses they run there to your office. Once they approve, the business becomes a client here by itself, with its details, documents and expenses from SmartBill, and they are its main contact. If you already have a client with the same tax ID and no SmartBill account, the business connects to that client instead of making a second one. SmartBill never says whether an address uses it, so the invitation shows Waiting until they approve (choose Check now to look again) or 14 days pass (Not answered, then Invite again). Once approved it shows Connected with a link to the client. Owners and admins see every invitation; other team members see their own.

For a client you already have, you can also choose Ask the client for access and find the business by its tax ID, or by the SmartBill business ID the client gave you. SmartBill asks the business’s admins to approve and never says whether such a business exists. The client shows Waiting for the business to approve until they do (choose Check now to look again) or the request closes after 14 days; then choose Ask again. Once approved, the client is linked and starts syncing.

Owners and admins can choose Disconnect from SmartBill and type the client’s name to confirm. Your office loses access to the client’s account; the client keeps it and its plan. The client’s sync stops here and everything you recorded stays. If the client had not joined yet, the card offers Reopen the client’s SmartBill account: the account opens again and the client gets a new invitation (it is never reopened on its own). Choose existing clients in settings includes such clients too. A client who had joined comes back only if the client lets your office in: ask the client for access.

Create a client’s SmartBill account by hand

Some offices that worked with SmartBill before create their clients’ accounts by hand:

Open the client’s Connections area or its setup flow.
Choose whether to connect an existing SmartBill company or create a new one.
For an existing company, check its name and identifier.
Review where the initial financial definitions come from: SmartBill or Office.
Read the preview, including additions and conflicting definitions.
Confirm and check the resulting connection status.

Creating a new company also creates it in SmartBill. If setup fails after the Office client exists, retry from that client file.

Keep both systems consistent

When SmartBill classifications include an External key, Office also assigns it to the classification’s ledger card under Hashavshevet from SmartBill (shown as חשבשבת מ-SmartBill in Hebrew offices). Hebrew text, spaces, and leading zeros are preserved; the Office card key stays unchanged. This also fills missing mappings for previously imported classifications on their next refresh. External code is a separate field and is not used as the account key.

Open Chart of accounts → Details → Keys in external systems to review or edit the mapping, then select that index in the Hashavshevet export. The initial key is added once; later refreshes preserve manual changes and removals in Office. Blank keys are skipped. Existing assignments and exclusions are not overwritten; if a key is already used by another card, resolve it in the card details before exporting.

SmartBill supports changes flowing between the systems. Review conflicts instead of assuming a refresh always overwrites the other side.

Next: Connection problems and conflicts.

Follow preparation and imports

Open Sync activity from the main navigation, the clients list, or SmartBill settings. Office owners and administrators can see all connected clients here. Updates appear automatically; you can leave the page while imports continue.

Use Client name starts with… to find a client, or filter by provider and import status, such as Needs attention. Click the Client column heading to switch ascending/descending name order. Search, filters, and sorting apply to the whole office. More connections load as you scroll; Load more is also available. The footer reports connections loaded so far, not the total office size. Filters and ordering remain in the page address. Open Details for a client’s progress, errors, history, and retry controls.

Preparation and Incoming import are separate. New SmartBill clients are prepared automatically after their classifications are fetched. Previously imported clients are also picked up automatically by a background check every five minutes, in small batches. Busy clients wait until the import finishes; ready clients are left alone. A preparation failure stops for review and is not retried automatically on every sync. Existing SmartBill definitions take precedence. If the catalog is empty or unavailable on the company’s plan, Office uses the office’s default expense-card template, or built-in defaults when no template is available. Existing Office settings remain unchanged. A file-import structure or a manual setup draft still needs review.

If preparation needs a manual retry after you fix a problem, open Details and choose Prepare client after its classifications have imported. This prepares local books without fetching the documents again. The details panel shows which defaults were applied. If a required definition cannot be resolved, read the message and choose Review client setup.

To act on several clients, select their checkboxes and review the selected rows. The header checkbox selects the loaded rows. Select all matching includes matching connections on pages you have not loaded, using the current search and filters. Changing filters clears the selection. Choose Prepare selected clients to finish incomplete SmartBill setup, or Refresh selected connections to import data again. Ready clients are skipped during preparation; paused or busy connections are skipped for both actions. A manual setup draft or file-import structure still needs individual review. Bulk processing continues after you leave the page. The progress message shows actions scheduled and skipped; Scheduling finished means dispatch is complete, while each client’s preparation/import status shows the actual result. Refreshes are staggered to avoid starting every import at once.

Open Details to inspect customers and suppliers, classifications, expenses, and income separately. Counts show fetched, added, updated, unchanged, conflicting, removed, and failed records. While an import runs, processed counts update in batches; they are not a percentage of the company’s full history. Completed means every enabled category has a successful import; its timestamp is the oldest of those successful updates. Preparation can finish while document imports continue.

Expenses already deleted in SmartBill before their first import are skipped. If you restore one in SmartBill, it can be imported on the next sync.

Only issued SmartBill income documents are imported into the books; unfinished drafts are left in SmartBill. If an issued document has invalid data, Office imports the other valid documents and marks that category Partially imported. Open Error details or Import history to find the affected SmartBill document IDs. Give those IDs to support for correction, then choose Refresh / retry. A partial import does not count as a completed import.

Use Refresh / retry for a failed or interrupted import. It is unavailable while an import is queued or running. A paused connection must be reconnected first. Import history lists previous attempts and their errors. Open Error details to see the original diagnostic message when troubleshooting. Outgoing changes separately shows updates waiting to be sent back and failures requiring review; it is not the incoming-import queue.

The clients list and the office connection’s directory timestamp describe company-profile imports, not completion of financial imports. Client Connections remains accessible before financial setup is complete.

Imported incomes and expenses for connected clients also appear under Outgoing changes. Sending continues in the background. After correcting an error, choose Retry up to 50 failed changes; repeat if more failures remain. Journal-only imports send only reliably reconstructed records. See Import data from previous software for general counterparties in single-entry books and the double-entry counterparty requirement.