Give your team access without sharing your login: roles and an activity log
By SortedNexus Team · ShellRick Tech · 12 November 2026
Sooner or later someone else needs into the books: a bookkeeper who captures expenses, a salesperson who sends quotes, a partner who wants to check what is outstanding. The easy answer is to share your password. The cost is that you can no longer tell who changed what, and everyone can reach everything, including your banking details. On the Pro plan you can now invite people with their own logins, give each a role, and read an activity log that shows who did what.
Inviting someone
Open Team in the dashboard, enter an email address and choose a role. They get an email with a link that works for 7 days and only for that address. They need an existing SortedNexus account with the same email (a free one will do) before they can sign in and accept. A Pro account includes the owner plus two team members. The invitation stores a hashed token, never the link itself, so a copy of the database cannot be used to join your account.
The person keeps their own login and can have their own SortedNexus account as well. A switcher at the top of the dashboard moves between their account and yours, and a banner always says whose account they are in and in which role. Remove someone and their access ends on their next click, not at the end of the day.
Four roles, and what each can open
You stay the owner. Settings (which hold your payment gateway keys), billing, the team and deleting the account are never given to anyone else. The rest is split by role: Admin runs the business day to day, Bookkeeper keeps the books, Sales handles quotes, invoices and contacts, and Viewer can look but not change anything. This table is the same one the software enforces.
Owner
Holds the subscription. Full control, including billing, settings and the team.
Admin
Runs the day-to-day business. Everything except settings, billing, the team and account deletion.
Bookkeeper
Keeps the books: cash flow, expenses, VAT and reports, invoices and purchase orders. Can look at quotes and contacts.
Sales
Quotes, invoices and client contacts. No access to the books or reports.
Viewer
Can look at invoices, quotes, purchase orders, contacts and the books. Cannot change anything.
| Area | Owner | Admin | Bookkeeper | Sales | Viewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| InvoicesInvoices, payment links and emailing invoices | Full access | Full access | Full access | Full access | View only |
| QuotesQuotes, revisions and converting a quote to an invoice | Full access | Full access | View only | Full access | View only |
| Purchase ordersPurchase orders to suppliers | Full access | Full access | Full access | No access | View only |
| Clients and suppliersSaved clients and suppliers and their contact details | Full access | Full access | View only | Full access | View only |
| Cash flow and expensesCash flow, expenses, bank reconciliation and the director account | Full access | Full access | Full access | No access | View only |
| VAT and financial reportsVAT return, annual financial summary and balance sheet | Full access | Full access | Full access | No access | View only |
| SettingsBusiness details, banking, payment gateway keys, terms, extra businesses and integrations | Full access | No access | No access | No access | No access |
| Subscription and billingPlan, payment and cancelling the subscription | Full access | No access | No access | No access | No access |
| TeamInviting people, changing roles and removing access | Full access | No access | No access | No access | No access |
| AccountDeleting the account and downloading its data | Full access | No access | No access | No access | No access |
View only means the person can open and read it but cannot create, change, send or delete anything there. Settings, billing, the team and account deletion always stay with the owner.
How the rules are applied
Hiding a menu item is not security, so the check happens on the server for every page and every action, not in the menu. If a bookkeeper types the address of the Settings page, or a viewer tries to save an invoice, the request is refused and nothing changes. The menu simply stops showing what a role cannot open.
Two details matter in practice. If you leave the Pro plan, your team loses access straight away and gets it back if you upgrade again. And a person who is in two accounts only ever has the rights of the account they are working in.
The activity log
Activity is a page only you can open. It lists who did what across your businesses: invoices and quotes created, edited, emailed or converted, expenses and cash flow entries, bank imports, contacts, settings, team changes and when someone opened your account. Filter by business, person, area and date. Your own actions are recorded too, so the log is the full picture and not only a record of your team.
It is deliberately light on detail. A settings change tells you that the terms and conditions were edited and by whom, but not what they said before or after. That keeps banking details, VAT numbers and gateway keys out of the log, which is what you want from something many people could read over your shoulder.
POPIA: you are responsible for your team's data
Once other people work in your account, a log of what they do is personal information about them, and you are the responsible party for it. We built the log around that. It records the minimum needed to answer "who changed this?". It has no IP addresses, no client or supplier details and no values, so a client asking you to erase their details never has to be chased through it.
- They are told. The invitation email, the page they accept on and their own Team page all say that their actions are recorded and that only you can read the log. They can see their own entries.
- It is kept for 5 years, in line with how long financial records are kept, then deleted automatically. It is deleted with your account, and your data export includes it.
- It cannot be edited. Nobody, including you, can change or remove an entry, which is what makes it worth reading.
- Say so to your team. Tell the people you invite that the log exists before they start. Our privacy page describes what we hold; your own team policy is yours to write.
What it does not do
The roles are fixed, not custom, and a Pro account has two team places. We have not built paid extra places yet. The log records changes, not who merely looked at a page, because that produces noise rather than answers. Entries from before today show the system or no person for old document history, since the owner was not recorded then. And none of this is legal advice: if you are unsure what you owe your staff or your clients about their information, ask a qualified adviser.
Running more than one company? Each one has its own entries in the same log, as we describe in running multiple businesses from one account. And if the question is what a revised quote does to the original, that is in what is new in quotes and documents.
Know who did what
Team access and the activity log are on the Pro plan, alongside multiple businesses.
Disclaimer: This article describes how SortedNexus works and is not legal, tax or accounting advice. How POPIA applies to your own staff and records depends on your circumstances, so check with a qualified professional.