QuickBooks Enterprise (v21) - Data Level Permissions

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Intuit recently released QuickBooks 2021 Desktop including QuickBooks Enterprise (v21).  Insightful Accountant has been evaluating various pre-release versions of these products for months and has spent hours communicating with Intuit personnel, including product managers and developers, so we can help you learn about the new products. This article is one in a series of individual product features intended to provide additional content to within our Summary of QuickBooks Enterprise v21 (2021) .

About Data Level Permissions

Despite the sophistication of user roles and permissions within QuickBooks Enterprise, Administrators have expressed the need for additional levels of security when it comes to customer and/or vendor records (and related transactions) for certain Enterprise users.  There has been no way to effectively limit access to the records and transactions associated with every customer or vendor from all users/roles. Manually attempting to delegate and enforce restrictions outside of QuickBooks Enterprise is not only difficult but ineffective.

New for 2021, QuickBooks Enterprise Platinum and Diamond Subscribers have the new Data Level Permissions feature designed to provide more granular access to control viewing, editing, or deleting specific customer or vendor records and related data that users have been authorized for.

Now it’s possible, for example, to limit the members of your Sales personnel to only their specific Customers, or limit your Buyers to only the specific Vendors from whom they are authorized to make purchases. Data Level Permissions allow Administrators to give access to restricted customer and vendor records and data based upon specific roles/users created around Customer or Vendor Groups.

The Administrator can create multiple roles with restricted access to avoid the need to manually delegate or enforce responsibilities, and only users/roles with the appropriate authorized permissions will have access to view confidential records along with the related transactional data and financial records. Let’s look at using Data Level Permissions.

Using Data Level Permissions (for QuickBooks Enterprise Platinum and Diamond Subscribers)

Login to QuickBooks Enterprise as the Administrator and go to Company >> Users >> Set up Users and Roles, then enter the Admin password.

Go to the Role List tab where you will see all the existing roles. Now click on the New button.

Enter a new Role Name and Description, we are calling ours “Data Level Role-Customer” (as shown below).

Under Role Access > Areas and Activities, click “Centers” and then select “Customer Center”. Notice the “Custom” button at the right bottom and the deactivated “Define” button.  

Click on the “Custom” radio button at the right bottom, then click on the Define button. You will see the list of all groups previously created.

  • Notice the checkbox at the top stating “Allow this role to create customers”. Select this, if you want the new role to create new customers.
  • Against one of the groups listed, define the View, modify, delete, print, and view balance access.
  • You can also create a new customer group from here by clicking the “Create Customer group” button.

Click “OK” after defining the permissions at the customer group level.

QuickBooks returns you to the Role Access - Areas and Activities screen, click “Data Level Role-Customer”,  click OK.

On the “User and Roles” screen, go to the User List tab

  • Click on the New button on the right 
  • Create a new user by providing user Name (providing a password is optional)
  • From the “Available Roles” list, select the new role you created above, in our case, it was “Data Level Role-Customer”.
  • Click on the “Add” button. You will be able to see the Role in the Assigned roles list.
  • Click OK.
  • Click the Close button.

You have now completed the process of creating a user with restricted access to just one customer group.

The Impact of Data Level Permissions

We can quickly assess the impact of Data Level Permissions simply by logging-in as the new User we just created. If we then open the Customer Center we will see the restrictions imposed by the new Data Level Permissions-Customer Role (as shown below).

In this case, the user has been restricted to a very limited number of customers as contrasted with the full number of customers within the QuickBooks file (as shown below).

Reporting and other QuickBooks features that are 'Customer Name' driven will be restricted based upon the Data Level Permissions-Customer Role profile for this User. Only users/roles with the appropriate authorized permissions will have access to view confidential records along with the related transactional data and financial records.

This is a feature that I honestly believe will continue to be expanded within QuickBooks Enterprise. If I were a betting man I would expect to see this feature combined with new 'Employee Groups' (in the future) to provide additional granularity to security features impacting other areas of Enterprise including Employee Records and Payroll. Of course, I'm not a betting man and I'm not sharing any 'insider details' either, I'm just guessing.

What went wrong: At initial release there is a bug that allows Users with Data Level Permission restrictions to essentially 'override those restrictions' simply by typing in a Customer Name for any Customer who isn't in their profile.  It seems the restrictions work like a 'filter' that impacts available records, but if a User knows an actual Customer record they still can gain access if they type the name directly in the Customer Name field. (Similar to the way the 'one time use thing' for an Inactive Customer record works.)

This is an issue that Intuit's QuickBooks Enterprise Feature Development Team is aware of and I suspect 'the fix' will probably be pushed out no later than the R-3 update. (Murph)

Feature Availability: At the time of initial release, Data Level Permissions is scheduled for release only within the United States and will be available only to QuickBooks Enterprise Platinum and Diamond subscription level customers.

You will find our summary of QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Enterprise for 2021 along with other related features in the 'Related Links' at the bottom of this feature.

Editor's Acknowledgements

Special thanks go out to my good friend Laura Madeira who allowed me to cross-check my articles with advance copies of her features to make certain that we were consistent in providing accurate information regarding the 2021 release. Laura, and her co-author Karen Siewert, have written three separate articles this year covering different aspects of the QuickBooks 2021 release, please be certain to check them out at Intuit's Firm of the Future blog:

I also want to thank the following Intuit personnel for their dedication in providing information, numerous briefings, and responding to my questions, as well as in guiding the actual product developments within QuickBooks Desktop and this release: Rachna Arya, Nipun Bhatia, Aditya Dixit, Sowmya Murthy, Madhumita Tayade, Muthuraj Thangavel, Tulasi Vijay Kumar Thulluru, and Raman Verma. I also want to say thanks to Michelle Berg, Mindy King, and Shawn Sturgeon from Intuit for additional product briefings and information along with the various members of Intuit's Alpha & Beta Product Testing Teams for QuickBooks 2021.

Of course, there are entire teams, composed of hundreds of Intuit personnel behind all of these people that make the magic happen and we so often forget to say, thank you, to them, so to all involved, “Thank You for Another Great Product"!

Note: Some images used in this feature are displayed directly as provided by Intuit, others may have been modified from the source material Intuit provided.