Your clients stay your clients.
TidyBooks has two doors. One for accounting firms, where the business model is partnership. One for small businesses without an accountant, where they pay us direct. This page is the rulebook for keeping them separate.
Per-client billing, partnership model.
Your firm pays a per-client rate, your team gets unlimited seats, and clients you bring on are managed inside your firm's account. The pact below describes what we do and don't do for those clients.
For small businesses without an accountant.
A small business can sign up directly. That door exists for businesses without an accountant managing their books. The clients you bring through your firm's door don't see this product, and we don't push them through it.
Your firm owns the bill.
Ongoing TidyBooks usage is billed through your firm's account at your rate. Your client never sees a TidyBooks invoice, and we never charge their card for recurring usage.
- Invoice your clients directly for ongoing usage.
- Show TidyBooks pricing or upgrade prompts to clients in your firm's account.
- Charge your client's card without your firm initiating it.
The one exception: one-off historical extractions.
When a client first onboards, they often want their archive of old receipts back-filled. That's a one-time job priced by volume, and clients can buy it directly from us. Why direct? Because it's a single, bounded cost most small businesses would rather absorb themselves than route through your engagement letter. If you'd prefer to bill it through your firm and absorb it into your fee, we're happy to do that instead. Either way, it's a single job, not a competing subscription.
We stay out of your clients' inbox.
Once a client is in your firm's account, our marketing stops at your firm. The only emails we send your clients are the ones we have to.
- Upsell campaigns or 'try direct' nudges.
- Newsletters, content marketing, or feature announcements aimed at end users.
- Cross-sells to other TidyBooks products or partner offerings.
- Anything that suggests they manage their books without you.
- Transactional emails (sync confirmations, error alerts, magic links).
- Account security notifications.
- Service status and outage notices for the time those clients are affected.
- Anything required by law, your jurisdiction's privacy regime, or the platforms we integrate with.
The relationship is yours, including if it ends.
If you cancel, or a client leaves your firm, the data and the relationship go with you. We don't try to keep departing clients as TidyBooks customers.
- Email departing clients to migrate them onto a direct TidyBooks plan.
- Retain a client's account behind your back when your firm offboards them.
- Use staff or stakeholder contact info from your account to recruit, market, or sell to your team.
- Export your client data in a clean, portable format on cancellation.
- Hand over data ownership the way your firm specifies during offboarding.
- Honour deletion requests within the timelines our privacy policy commits to.
We stay in business by being the plumbing that makes your firm indispensable, not a brand your clients build a relationship with.
See also our Terms, Privacy Policy, and Security commitments.
Want to walk through this on a call?
Book a 20-minute demo. We'll talk through the pact, the firm dashboard, pricing, and onboarding for your clients.