The Firm portal in SamBooks: running your clients from one dashboard

This guide is for the accountant (or a colleague at their firm) who manages several client companies on SamBooks from a single dashboard. If you're the administrative employee of a client company, this section doesn't apply to you and won't show up in your menu — it belongs to the accounting firm's own workspace, not to a client company.

What this is for

The Firm portal is the reserved area for whoever registered their accounting firm on SamBooks (or their own individual practice) by signing up as an accountant. You land here if your SamBooks company is of this specific type and you're a member of it — accountant or staff member alike: in that case the sidebar doesn't show the entries of a regular company (invoices, daybook, VAT…) but eight dedicated ones instead — Dashboard, Firm's clients, Refer a client, Team, Deadlines & filings, Regulatory news, Marketplace, Settings — and none of a client company's domain features: to work on a client's books you switch into their company (from the client's row), you don't operate on it from inside the firm workspace.

This guide covers every minor page of the portal in one pass. Two other paths have their own guides: how to register as an accountant the first time, and how to get invited directly by the Manager of a client company already on SamBooks.

Before you start

• Access to the Firm portal doesn't require a subscription — it's free. Your own company, if you register one, follows its own plan instead.
• Only the firm's Manager manages colleagues (invites, removes, changes roles); other members consult and work according to their assigned role.
• Two actions are reserved for people who signed up as accountants: activating your own books (step 1) and joining the Marketplace waiting list (step 8). A staff member of the firm gets into the portal and works on clients, but is turned away from those two.
• The "Firm's clients" list and the client profile are read-only on the client's data: to change anything (invoices, ledger entries, F24…) you have to switch into their company.

How to do it, step by step

1. The dashboard: how many clients you follow, and the free Starter

Opening the portal takes you to /studio: the heading is your firm's real name, subtitle "Your accounting firm on SamBooks." Two side-by-side cards:

• "Firm's clients" — the count of companies that invited you as their accountant, with a "View clients" button.
• "Free Starter" — one Starter plan comes free on your own company once you follow at least 10 clients: the card shows a progress bar with how many clients you have out of the 10 required until you hit the threshold, then switches to "you qualify," and finally, once granted, confirms it's active.

Below that, the "Manage your own VAT-number accounting too" card: if you don't have your own company on SamBooks yet, clicking "Activate my accounting" creates it by reusing the data you already entered at sign-up (VAT number, company name) — no form to fill in again. If you're already following 10+ clients, the new company gets the free Starter right away. If you've already created it, the card shows its plan and status plus a "Go to your accounting" button that switches you into it. You only ever get one own company: the button won't create a second.

At the bottom, four shortcuts: Team, Tax calendar (note: the dashboard shortcut still uses this older wording, but the page it opens is now titled "Deadlines & filings" — same destination, see step 4), Regulatory news, Marketplace.

2. Firm's clients: the list and switching context

"Firm's clients" (sidebar, or from the dashboard card) lists the CLIENT companies that invited you as their accountant — real, live data, not a static catalog. The total sits above the table; the columns are Company, VAT no., Regime, Access, Client since. The Access column shows the role you hold on that client as an Italian badge — Amministrativo (write access) or Visualizzatore (read-only) — the same wording the client used when inviting you. No clients yet? "No clients yet. Get invited by a company as their accountant to see it here." — that invitation has to come from the client's side (guide: Inviting the team and the accountant).

Clicking a row opens the client's 360° profile (step 3). The "Open" button instead switches context: you land directly inside that client's company, with their accounting menu — from there you work according to the role they gave you.

3. The client profile: a read-only 360° view

From a client's row you reach a profile with five read-only sections:

• Tax registry — VAT number, tax code, tax regime, VAT regime, accounting regime, legal form, ATECO code, PEC, email, phone, registered office, SDI recipient code.
• Deadlines & obligations — that client's upcoming or overdue deadlines, tagged Overdue when past due and Confirmable when you can close them straight away, plus a "Go to cockpit" link to confirm them (step 4); empty if there are none.
• Documents — a count of sales invoices, purchase invoices, and the total.
• VAT — period, VAT to pay, credit carried forward, balance of the latest settlement; for a flat-rate client, "Flat-rate regime: no VAT settlement."
• Corporate structure — officers, shareholders and who the legal representative is (from chamber-of-commerce data, when available). It's the only collapsed section: click its heading to expand it. With nothing on file you get "No corporate data available."

At the top, an "Open in accounting" button does the same thing as "Open" in the list: it takes you inside the client's company.

4. Deadlines & filings: the cockpit for every client at once

"Deadlines & filings" (sidebar) — still labeled "Tax calendar" only on the dashboard shortcut — is the operational cockpit: every already-overdue tax deadline plus everything falling due in the next 60 days, across all your clients, with estimated amounts and an F24 draft ready to go, not a plain date catalog. Three numbers up top: clients, overdue, estimated total. Two views (tabs): "By client" and "By deadline", both filterable by Status (All, To handle, Handled, Overdue), Client and Category; the "By deadline" view is paginated.

The action on each row depends on the case: "Confirm" generates the F24 draft inside the client's company and marks the deadline handled ("F24 draft generated and deadline marked as handled.") — only available if your access on that client allows writing (Administrative), not if you're a Viewer there; "Missing data — open the company" when a figure is missing to compute the amount; "Open →" when the deadline needs handling directly inside the client's company. Deadlines are recalculated every night for every client — you'll see "No upcoming deadlines for your clients" with this explanation if the list is empty, which also means a deadline that just came due inside a client's books shows up here the following day.

5. Regulatory news: what changed recently

"Regulatory news" collects the cards from the Resources section (SamBooks' public regulatory library) created or updated in the last 30 days, with a New or Updated badge, area, date, and — when available — the legal source. "Read the card" opens the public card in a new browser tab. Nothing in the current window → "No news in the last 30 days."

6. Refer a client: your firm's referral link

"Refer a client" gives you a shareable link (a "Copy" button). It belongs to the firm, not to the individual colleague: it's the same link for every member, and companies that sign up through it show up automatically on this page no matter which of you sent it. Each row carries a status — Registered → Invite sent → Accepted (the last step happens once the company invites you as their accountant) — and the table can be filtered by status, with three counters up top (companies referred, accepted, invite sent). If a promotion happens to be active, you'll also see a card describing the free months offered to companies that sign up through your link.

Note: this is not the same mechanism as the direct invite described in Inviting the team and the accountant — here you bring new companies onto SamBooks, there you get invited into a company that's already a client.

7. Team: your firm's people, not your clients'

"Team" in the sidebar (the page itself is titled "Firm team") manages who works inside your firm — a completely different thing from a client company's team. Only the firm's Manager sees the invite form and the management actions; other roles see "Only the firm's Manager can manage the team."

To invite someone: email, role within the firm, and the "Is an accountant" checkbox, on by default — turn it off for a staff member without a professional-body registration (shows a Staff badge instead of Accountant in the table). The invite form offers two roles, Administrative and Viewer: Manager isn't handed out by invitation. From the members table, though, the role dropdown next to a colleague does include Manager, so that's where you promote someone after they've joined (you can't change your own role). The same table is where you remove a colleague, with a confirmation step; invitations not yet accepted sit under "Pending invitations," with "Revoke" to cancel them.

8. Marketplace: a waiting list today, nothing more

"Marketplace" is not a working marketplace yet — no public profile, no search, no company applications. The page explains what's coming (matching SMEs with accountants) and shows a counter of clients acquired so far; below that, a form to join the waiting list with an optional province of practice and a "Join the waiting list" button. Once subscribed you see a confirmation with the sign-up date. What joining buys you today: no visibility and no incoming clients — the page promises early sign-ups "reserved terms" for when the feature goes live, and nothing more. It's a reservation, not an acquisition channel.

Frequently asked questions

How do I see all my SamBooks clients on one page? From "Firm's clients" in the Firm portal's sidebar: the list of every company that invited you as their accountant.

What's the free Starter for accountants? Once you follow at least 10 clients on SamBooks, your own company (if you register one) gets the Starter plan for free — you'll see it in the "Free Starter" card on the dashboard.

How do I switch to a different client company? From "Firm's clients," click "Open" on the client's row: you land in their environment with your assigned access role.

How does the deadlines cockpit work across several companies? That's "Deadlines & filings": every overdue deadline plus the next 60 days, for every client, in one view, with "Confirm" generating an F24 draft wherever you have write access.

Is the accountants' marketplace already live? No — today you can only join the waiting list. There's no public profile or matching with companies yet.

How do I invite a colleague from my firm? From "Team" (only if you're the firm's Manager): email, role (Administrative or Viewer), and whether they're an accountant or a staff member.

Can I make someone else a Manager of the firm? Yes, but not through the invitation: invite them as Administrative or Viewer first, then change their role to Manager from the members table.

Where do I see regulatory news as an accountant? Under "Regulatory news": cards created or updated in the last 30 days, each linking to the full public card.

Can I register my own company from the Firm portal? Yes, from the "Manage your own VAT-number accounting too" card on the dashboard — one click that reuses the data you already gave at sign-up. It's for people who signed up as accountants, not for the firm's staff members.

What does the client see when I accept their invite? The client keeps seeing their own company as usual; you show up in their team with the role they assigned you, and their company appears in your "Firm's clients" list.

Related features

• Registering as an accountant on SamBooks — the firm sign-up path.
• Inviting the team and the accountant — how a client company adds you directly.