Sign in and switch offices

Accept your invitation

1. Open the invitation your office sent to your email.
2. Follow the sign-in steps using that email address.
3. Complete any email verification requested on screen.
4. Check that the correct office opens.

If you reach a setup screen instead of your office, ask the manager to check your membership before creating a new office.

Open a new office

If you signed up without an invitation you reach the Open your office screen, in four steps. Only the office name is required.

1. Type the office name and choose Continue. You can change it later.
2. Tick the software you have worked with until now, in four areas: Bookkeeping for the self-employed, Bookkeeping for companies, Annual reports for the self-employed and Annual reports for companies. You can tick several in each area, or Other and type its name. You can leave an area empty, or choose Skip.
3. Tick the kinds of business your office handles: Licensed dealer, Exempt dealer, Limited company. Each one gets a complete book template, and What is inside? shows its classifications, cards and transaction types before it is created.
4. Choose who pays for a new client’s SmartBill account: The client pays, after a free trial (the default, at no cost to your office) or Your office pays. A new office has no allowance to pay from yet, so even if you choose that your office pays, new clients start on a free trial until one is arranged with SmartBill. See plan and usage.
5. Choose Open the office.

The templates are only a starting point. Edit, add and delete them in Settings, Book templates. See expense classifications and book templates.

Switch offices

Select the office icon at the top of the narrow bar at the side of the screen, then choose the office. Each office has its own clients and work. Check the active office when a familiar client is missing.

After you pick an office, the page reloads inside it and stays in the same area, such as the client list. If you were inside a specific client, you land on that area’s list, because the client belongs to the previous office. If a message says the switch failed, try again.

Open another office

Anyone who already works in an office can open another one, for example when you run two separate offices.

1. Select the office icon at the top of the narrow bar at the side of the screen.
2. Choose Add another organization.
3. Type the organization name and choose Create organization.

The page reloads inside the new office, and you are its owner. The new office is completely separate, with its own clients, team and settings, and nothing is copied from the previous office. To go back to the previous office, choose it from the same menu.

An additional office opens without book templates. To add them, open Book templates in Settings and choose Add starter templates.

If a message says too many offices were opened today with your email address or its domain, try again tomorrow, or contact us and we will open the office for you. If creation fails for another reason, choose Create organization again in the same window with the same name: Office continues from where it stopped and does not open a duplicate office.

Sign out

Open your user menu and choose Sign out, especially on a shared computer.

Is the office paused?

If you see an “Office paused” screen instead of your office, SmartBill has paused this office. The screen shows the reason when there is one. Contact support to restore access, or open another office you belong to from the same screen.

Was your session interrupted?

When your internet drops for a moment, a bar at the top of the screen says “Connection lost. Reconnecting…” and your work stays open. The bar disappears on its own when the connection returns.

If the connection to your account is also interrupted, the office is replaced by “Restoring your session…”. Office keeps trying in the background, and the office opens again on its own once the connection returns, without selecting anything.

If that does not work within a few seconds, a “Your session was interrupted” screen offers Try again and Sign in again. Office still keeps trying in the background. Choose Try again once your internet is back, or Sign in again if you signed out in another window or the connection does not return. Changes not yet saved on the screen you had open may be lost.

Can’t sign in?

Check the email address, use the recovery options offered by the sign-in screen, or ask your manager to check the invitation. Never send someone your password or a sign-in code.