Safe to hire bookkeeper and grant access to financial accounts?

[Benjamin Lenz]

Hey BP! 

I've read articles on the forums here about the importance of hiring a bookkeeper if you're like me and dread spending valuable time doing  accounting. What I'm curious to know is, how safe is it to grant bookkeepers your personal account access? I link applicable bank accounts to programs like Stessa, so I'm guessing I would need to grant them access to my credit card and bank accounts so that they can reconcile and check entries that are automated, or add/modify entries when needed. Any advice on how to set this up safely? 

Thanks in advance!!

Ben

[Allan Smith]

They will need access to your accounting software but that is all. The liability is much too great to give just anyone access to your bank accounts. It would take years for them to earn that trust. The best thing to do is to download the statements yourself and save them on a Google drive folder or wherever you have shareable files, and they will use the statements that you uploaded to reconcile