What is the best User Type to use for an employee who needs to look at (not edit) inventory?

Hi there, 

QuickBooks offers a powerful payroll feature which allows you to manage your employees with ease. I'd be glad to steer you in the right direction with this. 

Based on what you've described, I recommend setting up a limited user.To manage users, follow the steps below: 

1. Select Settings.
2. Select Manager Users
3.  From here you can edit the user roles and place limits on certain users. 

There's a great article which goes over how you can do that. I encourage you to check it out using this link here: User types in QuickBooks Online. 

Give this a try and if you're still having issues, I recommend contacting our support team using this link.

I've just set up a new user with only inventory access.  She will be able to post purchase orders and receive items from those purchase orders.  I've selected no access to everything else, including deleting things, but when I'm testing the user account, it is allowing me to enter and delete bills, and there is also access to all previous bills, which can also be deleted.  Is there a way to block the bill area?  I really only want this user to have access to the inventory.

Hello adminAD,

Thanks for joining this thread about modifying a user type in QuickBooks Online so that the person only has access to specific areas. I've gone over what's been said previously and would like to offer some clarification about the options available. That way, you can decide how to proceed with your user who only needs to access the inventory feature and enter some purchase orders.

It's good to hear you were testing this out before giving your employee the access to QuickBooks because that way you can be sure that she only has access to what she needs to in the books. The reason you're seeing that that access has the ability to do more than what you've described is because QuickBooks Online's user access features don't currently have the ability to really tailor the user access. Even with taking advantage of the limitation areas on a Standard user type, choosing that they're limited to Customer or Supplier means they have access to all the relevant areas for Customers and Suppliers respectively. The program should outline on the right what the user would and wouldn't have access to when you make a selection and before clicking next.

I see my colleague shared the global edition of the following article, but here's Canada's user types article to make sure you have information relevant to this product: User types and user permissions in QuickBooks Online

I know having specific user accesses is important for keeping a handle on your books, so I recommend sharing your thoughts about the options available via feedback. This article explains how: How do I submit feedback? It's a simple process that results in your thoughts and ideas being forwarded to the product development team for consideration in future updates to the software.

I'll be around if you've more questions. Don't hesitate to ask!

Thank you for the quick reply.

We're actually using QB desktop, and when I run through the options, I only allow inventory posting and receiving.  There is a specific section for bill and that's under no access.  I'm not sure if it's a bug in the system, or what's happening.  I've tried full access and reduced access on inventory, so now she won't be able to accidentally delete my posted bills, but she can still post bills.  I'm just worried she'll post it in error, instead of a PO, and if we're not careful, we could be posting duplicates, and have an issue at year end.

Thanks for that clarification, adminAD. It's great that you're using QuickBooks Desktop and I know that version of the program certainly has different options for creating and managing users than QuickBooks Online. The screenshots are helpful as they let me see that you're using either QuickBooks Desktop Pro or Premier. Both of these has options for being more precise with the accesses your users have, but there are still some limitations to how precise you can get.

In this case, because creating and entering inventory is linked to accounts payable transactions, the user will also have access to creating bills. In the screen that goes over the inventory access, you'll see it mentions "receiving goods (or items)," a process which can involve bills. This article has more details: Receive inventory

I hear your concerns about the user accidentally creating a bill when she's not supposed to and how this can cause problems in your books, so I encourage you to submit feedback about this to our product development team so they can learn the impact the current options have on businesses. It's a simple process of clicking the Help menu and then Send Feedback Online in QuickBooks Desktop.

Another option you can consider if it suits your business needs is QuickBooks Enterprise, which offers even more customization options for user accesses. I know it's a big decision to make and it may not be a good fit for your business, but here's some information to help you with this decision.

• Create and manage roles in QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise

• About QuickBooks Enterprise

I'm still here if you've more questions.

Thank you so much.  That does help me understand it better.  I'll just have to keep an eye on bill postings.  Everything else is locked out.

Thanks again!

It's my pleasure! I'm glad I could help you work this out. :) Feel free to stop by Community again, and I hope you have a great evening.