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Messaging

Conversations

A conversation links a client business to its accounting firm. This page details how it is created, who can participate, how to close it, and the cross-organization access rules.

Updated on August 14, 2026

Create a conversation

On the business side as on the agency side, any member with the conversation:view permission can open a new conversation. Pick your counterpart, give it a subject (a short title that will appear in the list), then select the initial participants on both sides.

  • Only one conversation at a time per business–agency pair for a given subject — you can open others for different subjects.
  • The initiator becomes the owner (OWNER) of their own participant list. The other side starts with a participant in the member (MEMBER) role.

Participants and roles

Every conversation has a list of participants, with a role per user. Roles are independent of the organization's global permissions.

  • Owner

    Can add or remove participants from their own side, change the subject, and close the conversation. Each side has its own owner.

  • Member

    Takes part in the conversation like everyone — reading, sending messages, opening document requests — but doesn't manage the participant list.

An owner cannot change the participant list of the other organization. Each side stays in charge of who participates on their side.

Add and remove participants

From the right-hand panel, click "Participants" to see the list. The owner (or any user with conversation:manage) can add a colleague from the same organization or remove an existing participant. Removal is soft: the history stays but the participant no longer receives new messages.

Close a conversation

When a subject is wrapped up, the owner can close the conversation. It remains consultable indefinitely but no longer appears in the active list. You can reopen a closed conversation by posting a new message or via the "Reopen" button.

Cross-organization rules

Messaging follows the same isolation rules as the vault.

  • A member of the agency only sees conversations of clients to which they are explicitly assigned (via the same assignment as for the vault).
  • A business only sees conversations with its linked agency. No leakage to other clients of the same agency.
  • If you break the link with your agency, its members immediately lose access to all of your conversations.

Associated permissions

Four permissions govern conversation usage.

  • conversation:view — see your own conversations (the ones where you are a participant).
  • conversation:view:all — see every conversation in the organization. Includes conversation:view. Useful for supervisors.
  • conversation:manage — create, edit, close a conversation, manage its participants. Includes conversation:view:all.
  • message:send — post messages in a conversation you have access to.