Manage Team (Basic): Account roles
Task and job assignments can be exhausting, especially if there are more than three people in a team. This is why you should consider using account roles instead. Here, find out how to set up account roles in your portal and, thus, simplify task/job assignments.
Account roles, explained
Assigning tasks/jobs to proper team members automatically is one of the most important steps in your workflow, ensuring the right employees start working on their assignments timely. However, if you have many employees, you can't just add the assignee to the task/job template because when used in pipeline automations the assignee will depend not only on the type of the task but also on the client. This is where account roles come into play.
With account roles, you can assign jobs and tasks not to the specific team member, but to the account role, such as tax preparer, consultant, bookkeeper, account manager, reviewer and so on. The list of those roles is fully customizable and can be set up at the portal level either by firm owner or admins.
Once you create account roles, you can define which team members will be responsible for which clients. For example, you may have Team Member 1 set as a Bookkeeper for some clients, while for other clients, Team Member 2 will be given this role instead.
This way, when the task/job is created, the assignee will be set based on the account role selection for the specific client account.
In general, the process of using account roles is the following:
1. You define the account roles and add them to the portal.
2. You update all client accounts to include the team member(s) who perform each role for the client. This could be done in bulk.
3. You select roles instead of specific team members when creating tasks/jobs manually or setting up the templates.
4. When task or job is created with an assignee as a role (either in pipeline automations, job recurrence or via manual task/job creation), it is automatically assigned to team members allocated to these roles for particular clients.
Account roles are designed to help distribute tasks by providing visibility into who is responsible for what. However, it's important to note that account roles do not influence system roles, such as Admin or Employee. Also, they do not influence access rights of the particular employee.
Step 1. Add account roles
To start using account roles, first, you need to define which account roles you will need and add them to your portal. You can use either of two ways to add them:
- From settings: Go to Settings > Team & plans and switch to the Roles tab. Click New role or Create role. Enter the role name and click Save.
- From client accounts: Open a client account and switch to the Info tab. In the Account roles section, click Create role. Enter the role name and click Save. This role will be available for all client accounts.
- From the bulk action sidebar: Go to Clients > Accounts from the sidebar menu and select several or all accounts in the list. Click More actions and select Manage roles. In the bulk role assignment sidebar, click New role. Enter the role name and click Save. This role will be available for all client accounts.
Step 2. Allocate team members to roles for each client
Once you have your account roles created, you need to allocate team members to roles for each client. A single team member can be assigned different roles depending on the client, one team member can hold multiple roles simultaneously, and several team members can be allocated to one role.
You can do it for each client individually or in bulk:
- Individually: Open the client account and switch to the Info tab. In the Account roles section, select one or more team members to assign to specific roles.
- In bulk: If you need to add account roles to many clients at once (e.g., you want to start using this feature with an existing client base), you can do it in bulk from the Accounts page or use the import tool (see below).
Allocate team members to roles in bulk from the Accounts page
To set up the same team member roles for several existing accounts at once:
1. Go to Clients > Accounts from the sidebar menu. Select checkboxes next to the accounts you want to update. The fastest way to do this is to apply an appropriate filter to the account list and select the Select All checkbox. If you don't have an appropriate filter, just select clients manually.
2. Click More actions above the list and select Manage roles.
3. In the sidebar, select Assign roles in the Actions column for each team member to whom you want to assign roles. Then, select the roles to assign and click Done. Once ready, click Save. You will receive an email when the roles are updated.
Allocate team members to roles in bulk via the import tool
This method is a huge time-saver as you can allocate team members to roles in bulk, both to your new and existing accounts.
For adding roles to new accounts, follow the common import procedure and make sure to include a column for each account role.
If you want to allocate team members to roles for your existing accounts, follow these steps:
1. First, export all your accounts. To do this, go to Clients > Accounts from the sidebar menu, then click the export icon. You will receive an email with the download link.
2. Open the exported CSV file and delete all columns from the spreadsheet except for the account name column.
Note! Ensure you don’t have any columns related to contacts. This way, bulk import steps won’t modify contact toggles or other contact-related settings
3. Add columns for each account role you want to add, fill in the data, and then save the file. Note the following:
- Check if the account roles columns correspond to account roles in the system (this way, the columns will be mapped automatically).
- Check the team members' names twice. If there is a non-existent employee in the spreadsheet, it will not be allocated to the role.
4. Upload the spreadsheet to TaxDome by clicking the Import button on the Clients > Accounts page.
5. For the Account type, select Ignore, so that this field is not updated.
6. Select the Role account field for each account role column. If the column titles in your spreadsheet match the account roles in the system, it will be mapped automatically.
7. Skip the other steps of the import. Make sure to select Ignore for all contact fields.
8. Click Start Import on the last step. No new accounts or contacts will be created. Instead, the team members will be allocated to account roles in your existing client accounts.
9. Check the allocated team members in clients' accounts.
Step 3. Start using account roles in your workflow
Once you have account roles created and team members allocated to them for each client, you can start using them in your workflow:
- You can have roles assignees in task templates and use them for pipeline automations.
- You can have roles assignees in your job templates and use them when creating job recurrences.
- Or you can use roles when creating single items, based on the templates or not.
To learn more, go the detailed article on using account roles in your workflow.
Who can do this?
Only firm owners and admins can create account roles and change them.
However, assigning/reassigning existing roles to accounts could also be done by team members with the View all accounts (or, instead, have access to accounts where they are updating the role assignees), Manage accounts and Assign team members access rights granted.
