The adviser console is where an adviser signs up new subscribers of The Business Assistant™ (TBA), checks on each client, works in clients’ accounts when they allow it, and reads its commission statements. It is a separate site from TBA itself, with its own sign-in. Deep South Data sets up your company and its first administrator; after that your administrators add and manage the rest of your team from the Users page. What each person can see and do depends on the permissions they have been given.

Signing In #

Sign in with your adviser code, your user name and your password. The adviser code is your company’s code (the same one that is on your sign-up link). Your user name only has to be unique within your company, so two advisers can both have an “admin”. The page remembers your adviser code for next time.

The first time, you are asked to set up two-factor sign-in with an authenticator app (or an emailed code); after that you enter the code each time you sign in. Too many wrong tries locks that user name or address out for 15 minutes. A session ends after 30 idle minutes. Change Password (in the menu bar) changes your own password and signs you out everywhere else.

Your Dashboard and Clients #

The home page counts your clients by status — Active, New this month, Payment overdue, Starting up, Suspended and Cancelled — and the clients you only help with support. Below is the list of Your clients: the client, its Plan, Status, when it Signed up, the Account month it is in, Your commission percent for that month, and the Next bill date. Type says whether you signed the client up, only help with support (support clients never earn you commission), or are a wholesale client that you bill yourself (see Wholesale Clients below).

You see your company’s clients, but only the ones you are allowed to see. A user with the See ALL of our clients permission sees every client. Anyone else sees only the clients an administrator has assigned to them (see Users and Permissions below), and the counts on the dashboard cover only those clients.

Signing Up a New Client #

If you have the right to add clients, the home page shows Sign up a new client with your own sign-up link. Give that link to your client, or type their email address (and an optional note) and choose Send invitation to have it emailed to them; you can send up to 25 invitations a day. The client signs up and pays for their first month themselves. When their first payment goes through they become your client, under the commission plan you have at that time, and that plan stays with them.

A new client is not automatically assigned to the person who invited them. If you work with assigned clients, an administrator assigns the new client to the right person.

Wholesale Clients #

If you would rather bill your clients yourself, Deep South Data can turn on wholesale for your company. You then sign your clients up yourself with Add Wholesale Client, Deep South Data bills you once a month at a wholesale rate, and no commission is paid on those clients. We publish our prices on our web site, but you are free to set your own prices, or even include the subscription as part of your services to your client.
The wholesale feature is off until Deep South Data turns it on and sets your terms, so ask your Deep South Data contact if you would like it. Two permissions go with it: Add wholesale clients and See wholesale billing.

Opening a Client’s Account #

A client can choose to let you into its own TBA account (see Adviser Access) — as view only, standard (a bookkeeper’s access) or administrator, for as long as it likes. This is how you can help your client or even keep a client’s books for them; the client decides how much you may do.

When a client has allowed it, and you have the Open a client’s account permission and the client is one of yours, its row shows an Open button in the Their account column. Click it and the client’s account opens in a new tab, signed in under your own name. An orange bar shows who you are and your level, with End this visit. A visit ends after 20 idle minutes. Every visit is recorded in the client’s own audit log and in your Activity page, and the client can turn your access off at any time.

If a client has not allowed access, the column says Not allowed, with a reminder that the client turns access on under Setup > Adviser Access in their own TBA. The client’s own setting always decides. If you click Open and the client has since turned your access off (or its end date has passed), the new tab explains that the company has not given your adviser access, and the next time the page loads that client shows Not allowed.

Tip: opening a client’s account replaces whatever TBA session is already open in the same browser. If you also use TBA for your own company, use a different browser (or a private window) for the console.

What you can do inside the client’s account is exactly what the client chose. Whatever the client chooses, you can never create companies or change your own access. The client’s subscription and payment setup stay with the client unless the client has made you an administrator and also ticked the option that lets you manage them. Every change you make there is recorded in the client’s audit log and emailed to the client.

Activity #

Activity lists every time one of your people opened a client’s account: the date, the user, the client, the time they started, the time of their last action, and the time worked in hours and minutes. Time runs from sign-in to the last thing they did in the account, and a visit is always at least one minute.

Choose the dates (or This month, Last month, Last 30 days), and filter by user or client. The tables at the top total the time by client and by user, which is handy for billing a client for your time. PDF and Excel save the report with the same filters.

You always see your own activity. If you have the See every user’s activity permission you see everyone’s. Your clients can see the same visits in their own audit log.

Users and Permissions #

If you have the See the list of users permission, the Users page lists everyone at your company: their user name, name, email, role, how many clients they are assigned to, status, two-factor setup and last sign-in. What you can do depends on the permissions you hold:

• Add users — adds a person with a first password (8 or more characters). They set up two-factor sign-in the first time they sign in.
• Change users — name, email, idle limit, and active or inactive. Making a user inactive signs them out at once.
• Set other users’ passwords — signs that user out everywhere.
• Reset other users’ two-factor sign-in — they set it up again at their next sign-in.
• Delete users.
• Change users’ permissions — tick the permissions a user should have. Administrator ticks them all.
• Assign clients to users — the Clients button on a user lists the clients you can see; tick the ones that user should see and open, and save.

The permissions a user can have are: sign up new clients; open a client’s account; see ALL of our clients; assign clients to users; see every user’s activity; see commission statements; add wholesale clients and see wholesale billing (only useful if wholesale is turned on for your company); and the user-management rights above.

These rules protect everyone:

• You can only give a user permissions that you have yourself.
• You can only change a user whose permissions are no greater than your own, so a user manager cannot touch an administrator.
• You cannot change your own permissions, make yourself inactive, delete yourself or reset your own two-factor sign-in; another administrator does that. Use Change Password for your own password.
• You can only assign clients that you can see yourself.
• Every change is recorded.

Commission Statements #

If you have the See commission statements permission, Commission Statements lists each month with what you Earned, what was Taken back, the Net, what has been Paid to you and a status. The two boxes at the top show what is owed to you now (through last month) and what you have been paid so far. Click a month to see every payment behind it — the date, client, invoice number, what happened, the amount applied, the part before sales tax, your rate and the commission — and save it as a PDF or Excel file.

You earn commission when a client’s payment is applied to an invoice, on the part of the invoice before sales tax, at the percent your commission plan pays for how old the client’s account is (for example, a higher percent in the first year). If a payment is voided (for instance a bounced payment or a full refund) or partly refunded, that commission is taken back as a negative line in the month it happens; earlier months never change. Commissions are paid by Deep South Data, and each payment is recorded against the month it covers.

Color Themes #

The console looks like The Business Assistant itself, and you can change its colors the same way. Choose Color Themes in the menu bar.

• Your theme — pick the colors you want to see. Follow the default uses whatever your company has set as its default. Your choice applies only to you, and the page previews it as you choose; click Use this theme to keep it.
• Built-in themes — Teal, Light and Dark are always available. They can’t be changed, but Copy makes an editable copy.
• Your company’s shared themes — themes everyone at your adviser company can use. They belong to your company only. Users who have the Change users’ permissions permission can add, change and delete them and choose the company default with Make default; everyone else can use them but not change them.
• My themes — your own themes, which only you can see. You can keep up to 20.

Click New personal theme (or New shared theme, if you may), or Edit or Copy beside an existing one. Every color has a color picker and a box for the exact value (for example #0abab5), and the whole page changes as you go so you can see the result. Give the theme a name and click Save, or Cancel to go back to your current theme. Deleting a theme that someone had chosen simply returns them to the company default.