How to switch bookkeepers without losing data

To change accountant in QuickBooks Online takes two minutes, but switching bookkeepers without losing data is mostly a question of order. The trouble comes from doing it before you know who controls the company file, who pays for the subscription, and what state the books are in on the day the old bookkeeper stops. Ledgerbrook is often the new bookkeeper in this story, so the steps below are the ones we would want an owner to take before we arrive.

Every QuickBooks Online menu path here is from Intuit’s US help articles, linked where it is used.

Before you tell them: three checks

Do these quietly, before the notice goes out. Each one is harder to fix once the relationship has ended.

1. Who is the Primary Admin? Go to Settings ⚙, then Manage users, and look at the role next to each name. If yours does not say Primary admin, step 1 comes first.
2. Who pays for QuickBooks? If the subscription appears on your bookkeeper’s invoice rather than charged to your own card by Intuit, it is billed through their firm, and step 2 applies.
3. What else can they reach? List every system your bookkeeper logs into for you: the payroll provider, bill pay, the bank’s read-only access, sales tax portals, and any IRS authorization such as a Form 2848 power of attorney. Each needs its own change at the end.

Step 1: Make sure you are the Primary Admin

The Primary Admin controls who can use the company file, including who can remove whom. Accountants invited into your file sit on a separate Accountants tab and cannot remove themselves or other accountants, but a bookkeeper who created the company for you may hold the Primary Admin role itself.

If they do, and they are cooperative, they transfer it. Per Intuit’s steps, the current Primary Admin signs in, goes to Settings ⚙ > Manage users, confirms your role is Admin (editing it if not), then selects Actions > Make primary admin and confirms with Change primary admin. The option only appears once you are already a company admin. On Simple Start the transfer has to go through Intuit support instead.

If the old bookkeeper holds Primary Admin and will not respond

You can still get the role back without them. Intuit’s account protection team takes a request to become the Primary Admin through its Business Change Request form. You submit the form, Intuit emails the business’s owners or authorized parties, and they verify their identity and upload documents within 14 business days, or the request is declined and has to be started again.

Business type	Document Intuit asks for
Sole proprietorship	Business license
LLC	Articles of organization or an operating agreement
Corporation or S corporation	Articles of organization, corporation bylaws or shareholders’ agreements
Limited partnership	Certificate of limited (or limited liability) partnership
Nonprofit	Board minutes naming the new Primary Admin, or articles or bylaws

Every request also needs a government-issued ID. Start this before sending any notice if you expect a dispute, so the bookkeeper’s cooperation is not what the switch depends on.

Step 2: Move the subscription off their firm’s billing

Many bookkeeping firms buy their clients’ QuickBooks subscriptions at a ProAdvisor discount and bill them on. That is convenient until you leave. To end it, the firm, not you, selects the client in its own account under Billing and subscriptions and chooses Transfer billing to client. Intuit’s steps for it start with making the client the Primary Admin, which is one more reason step 1 comes first.

What Intuit says happens next:

• Your data is untouched. The transfer “doesn’t impact their accounting data in any way.”
• The file goes read-only until you enter your own payment details. You can see everything and change nothing.
• The price changes. You pay Intuit directly, without the firm’s discount.

If your new bookkeeper also bills subscriptions through their firm, the timing matters: Intuit lets a client keep the same discounted rate if the new firm transfers them within 60 days of being removed from the old firm’s plan.

Step 3: Export a snapshot of the books

Take a copy of the file as it stands on the day you give notice. It costs nothing and settles any later argument about what the books said when the old bookkeeper left.

What to save	Where in QuickBooks Online	Why
Reports and lists	Settings ⚙ > Export data (in the Tools column); set the date range, then Export to Excel	General ledger, P&L, balance sheet and lists, as of today
Reconciliation reports	Reports > Standard reports, search Reconciliation Reports, pick each account	The last month each account was proven against its statement
Attachments	Exported separately from the Export data tool	Receipts and statements stored in the file
Estimates and purchase orders	Their own screens; the Export data tool skips non-posting transactions	Open quotes and orders that are not in the ledger

Two details from Intuit’s articles. The reconciliation report cannot be exported to Excel, so print each account’s latest one to PDF. And the Export data tool leaves out estimates, purchase orders and attachments, which each export from their own screen.

The audit log does not need exporting. QuickBooks keeps two years of it, under Settings ⚙ > Audit log, it records every user’s changes, and it cannot be turned off.

Step 4: Set a closing date

A closing date locks every transaction on or before it. Set it to the last month the old bookkeeper finished, so nothing in those months changes during the handover without you knowing. The path, from Intuit’s article on closing the books: Settings ⚙ > Account and settings > Advanced > Accounting > Edit, turn on Close the books, enter the date, and choose Allow changes after viewing a warning and entering password. Keep the password yourself and give it to the new bookkeeper when they need it.

Later, Reports > Exceptions to Closing Date shows any change made after the books were closed. It is the first report the new bookkeeper should run.

Step 5: Send the handover request

Keep the notice short and in writing, and ask for the handover in the same message. A bookkeeper is far more helpful while the last invoice is still unpaid than after. A template:

Hi [name],

We have decided to move our bookkeeping to another provider. Your last month of work will be [month and year], and we would like your access to end on [date].

Before then, please send us:

1. The last reconciled month for each bank, card and loan account, and anything you know does not reconcile.
2. A list of open items: transactions you were waiting on us for, entries you planned to make, and anything filed late or not yet filed.
3. The status of payroll, sales tax and 1099 filings you handled, with the logins or portals involved.
4. Copies of any documents we gave you, and any schedules you prepared for us, such as fixed assets or loan amortization.
5. Confirmation that any IRS or state authorizations you hold for us are withdrawn.
6. If our QuickBooks subscription is billed through your firm, please transfer billing to us.

Please send your final invoice with the handover. Thank you for your work on our books.

If your bookkeeper is also a CPA, enrolled agent or attorney, the rules on records are on your side. The IRS rules for tax practitioners, Circular 230 §10.28, require them to promptly return, on request, any client records needed to meet federal tax obligations, and a fee dispute generally does not change that. Work they prepared for you while unpaid can be held back, and state rules vary on the details.

Step 6: Change the access, new one first

Add the new bookkeeper before removing the old one, so there is never a day with nobody able to see the books. Both steps happen in the same place.

To invite the new bookkeeper, per Intuit’s steps: Settings ⚙ > Manage users > the Accountants or Accounting firms tab > Invite firm, enter their email or firm user ID, and send. Only a Primary or company admin can invite, and an accountant invitation does not use one of your plan’s user seats.

To remove the old one, signed in as Primary Admin: the same tab, find their name, and choose Delete from the Action column.

Searches for this often turn up Intuit’s Transfer clients tool instead. That moves client files between two QuickBooks Online Accountant profiles, such as a firm merging two accounts. It is not how a business owner changes bookkeepers.

Then work through the list from the three checks:

• Payroll provider, bill pay and bank access. Each has its own user list. Remove the old bookkeeper there too.
• Shared passwords. Change any password the old bookkeeper knew, starting with email and banking.
• IRS authorizations. If the old bookkeeper holds a Form 2848 power of attorney for you, revoke it. To do that yourself, the IRS instructions say to write “REVOKE” across the top of the first page with a current signature and date, and mail or fax it as the Where To File chart directs. A new Form 2848 for the same matters generally replaces the earlier one, but does not revoke a Form 8821.

The first month: checking the books they leave

The new bookkeeper’s first job is not this month. It is finding out whether the last few months were right, because everything from here builds on them. Re-reconciling the last 3 months against the statements is the fastest honest test: a file that reconciles cleanly for three months is a good sign, and one that does not shows where the problems start.

Check	What a clean file shows	What it means if not
Last reconciled date, every account	Within the last month or two	Months were never proven against the bank
Reconciled balance vs. the statement	They match	Reconciled transactions were changed afterwards (how that happens)
Exceptions to Closing Date report	Empty, or only expected entries	Someone edited closed months
Opening Balance Equity	Zero	Accounts were started with balances nobody offset (how to clear it)
Uncategorized income, expense and Ask My Accountant	Zero or close to it	Work was parked rather than done
Undeposited Funds	Only this week’s deposits	Payments recorded but never matched to the bank (why it piles up)
Loan and payroll liability balances	Agree with the lender’s and the payroll provider’s figures	Payments were posted as expenses, or not split
Last year’s closing balances	Agree with the tax return that was filed	The return was adjusted and the books never were

How to reconcile in QuickBooks Online covers the reconciliation itself, if you want to run the first test before the new bookkeeper starts.

When to hand this off: if the re-reconciliation fails in more than one of the last 3 months, or the closing balances do not agree with last year’s return, the problems predate the switch and the new bookkeeper will be fixing history before keeping it. A free file review shows which months are affected before anything is changed.

When the review finds problems

Most switches happen because something was already wrong, so it is normal for the review to find work. If the problems are in months that were entered but are wrong, that is a cleanup; months that were never done are a catch-up. QuickBooks cleanup vs catch-up explains the difference, and what a QuickBooks cleanup should include lists what you should get back when it is finished.

Common questions

Can you have two accountants in QuickBooks Online?

Yes. Intuit allows up to two accounting firms per company on every plan below Advanced, and neither uses a user seat. That is what makes an overlap possible: the new bookkeeper can be invited and working before the old one is removed. More than two firms needs QuickBooks Online Advanced.

Is it hard to switch accountants?

The QuickBooks part is easy: two minutes to invite one firm and remove the other. What makes a switch hard is control and timing. If you are not the Primary Admin, the subscription is billed through the old firm, or the switch lands in the middle of tax season, each adds weeks. Settle admin and billing first, and switch at a month end.

When is the best time to switch bookkeepers?

At the end of a month, once that month’s statements are in, so there is a clean line between the two bookkeepers’ work. If the same firm also prepares your tax return, avoid February to April unless the return is already filed or extended. The first full month with a new bookkeeper is the cheapest moment to find old problems, so do not wait for a perfect date.

How do I get rid of an accountant’s copy in QuickBooks?

Accountant’s copies are a QuickBooks Desktop feature, and QuickBooks Online does not use them. In QuickBooks Online the accountant works in the live file, so there is nothing to remove except their user access in Manage users.

Switching to Ledgerbrook

Ledgerbrook works inside your own QuickBooks Online company, so the file stays yours whether or not you stay with us. If the checks above find problems, the cleanup is $99 per month of backlog, quoted in writing before any work starts. QuickBooks cleanup explains the service, and bookkeeping for business owners explains the monthly work after it. To find out what the old bookkeeper left before you switch, send the file for a free review.