Access to Mercury Books is granted through your Mercury team roles rather than a separate user list inside Books. Anyone on your team whose role includes the required permissions can access Books. This article explains how to manage that access.
What Books requires
What you can do in Books is controlled by four permissions:
- All accounts — required. Books covers every account in your organization, so partial account access causes errors
- Accounting — required
- Invoice creation — required for payment matching
- Recipient management — needed for modifying vendor records
You need both All accounts and Accounting permissions to open Books. Without Invoice creation or Recipient management, you can still access Books, but the related features won't be available.
Adding your accountant to your team
- Click your company name in the top left corner of your dashboard
- Go to Settings > Team
- Invite a new team member with their email address
- Assign them a role with Mercury Books enabled
- Send the invite
Once they accept, Books appears in their sidebar.
Adding Books access to a new or existing role
Roles have a Mercury Books toggle that selects all four permissions at once.
- Click your company name in the top left corner of your dashboard
- Go to Settings > Team
- Click the Roles tab
- Create a new role, or open an existing one to edit
- Turn on Mercury Books
- Click Save role
The toggle turns itself off if you deselect any of the four permissions, so it always reflects the role's actual state.
Giving access to a bookkeeping firm
A firm you work with accesses your books through their Advisor Portal, which brings them into your account. They still need a role in your Mercury organization with the Books permissions.
See our Working with a bookkeeper in Mercury Books article.
What someone with access can see
Everything in your books — all transactions, all accounts, all reports. Books doesn't have permissions within it, so access is all or nothing.
If you only want to share your financial statements, export the reports instead. Go to Reports, set the period, and export to XLSX. That's often the right approach for someone who only needs statements at year end.
Removing access
Remove the team member from Settings > Users, or move them to a role without the Books permissions. Either removes their access to your books.
FAQs
Can I give someone read-only access to Books?
Not currently. Export the reports they need instead.
Can I limit someone to just the reports page?
No. Access to Books covers every screen in it.
Can I give someone access to Books but not my banking?
You can build a role that includes the Books permissions without send-money permissions, so they can work in your books without moving money. Note that Books requires visibility into all of your accounts.
My accountant can't match payments.
Their role is likely missing the invoice creation permission. Turn on the Mercury Books toggle on their role to set all four at once.
How many people can have access?
There's no limit. Anyone on your team with a role that includes the Books permissions can open your books.
Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column N.A., Members FDIC.