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How many users have access to your business’s Quickbooks account? If you operate a sole proprietorship business, you may be the sole user. LLC and S-Corp businesses, on the other hand, often allow multiple users to access their respective Quickbooks account. You can create users for your business’s Quickbooks while assigning them specific roles. Two of the most common roles supported by the popular accounting software include primary admin and company admin. What’s the difference between a primary admin and a company admin exactly?

What Is a Primary Admin?

A primary admin is the main, admin-level user for a Quickbooks account. Every Quickbooks account must have a primary admin. When initially setting up your business’s Quickbooks account, you’ll have to create a primary admin. Primary users have unrestricted access to all data and tools. As the primary admin, you can run reports, view balances, pay bills and even create or remove other users.

What Is a Company Admin?

A company admin is a secondary user for a Quickbooks account. Secondary admins can perform many of the same processes as primary admins. Among other things, they can run reports, view balances, pay bills and create or remove some — but not all — other users. Secondary admins are simply optional users that are under the primary admin.

Differences Between Primary Admins and Company Admins

You might be wondering how primary admins differ from company admins. While they can perform many of the same processes, they aren’t the same. A primary admin is required for each Quickbooks account. You can’t set up Quickbooks for your business without creating a primary admin. More importantly, you can only create a single primary admin for your business’s Quickbooks account. Quickbooks accounts don’t support multiple primary admins.

Company admins, on the other hand, are optional. You aren’t required to create a company admin when setting up your business’s Quickbooks account. You’ll have to create a primary admin, but secondary admins are optional. You can either create secondary admins, or you can omit them from your business’s Quickbooks account.

Company admins also have a slightly lower level of permissions than their primary admin counterparts. Company admins, for instance, can’t remove the primary admin associated with their Quickbooks account. They can add or remove other users, such as standard users, but company admins can’t modify or remove the primary admin.

Have anything else that you’d like to add? Let us know in the comments section below!