Migrating and managing restricted clients
In Taxfiler, it was possible to restrict access to certain clients to provide an added level of privacy. In IRIS Elements, this is known as Client privacy.
When migrating clients, the restricted status of the client record is maintained. Any restricted clients are migrated into IRIS Elements in the same way as any other client record, but they are only visible to users with administrator permissions. This ensures that all client confidentiality is maintained. Once in the IRIS Elements platform, three levels of client privacy are available:
- Private — This client record can only be accessed by assigned users
- Private-assigned — This status is displayed in the client list for those client records the logged in user can access
- Private - unassigned - The client is only visible to Administrators.
- Public — This client record can be accessed by all users in the practice
Sole Trade and Partner records do not inherit the privacy status from their parent Individual or Partnership records.
If you have client records which are already present in IRIS Elements and then you migrate from Taxfiler into the platform, this will not change the privacy status of any clients. For example, if you have a client record in IRIS Elements which is public, but the same client exists in a new batch of migrated data from Taxfiler in which there are restrictions on the client, this will not convert the client record in Elements to a private client, you should make this change manually.
Important information about how Elements handles your restricted client records
You may notice your client list is larger in IRIS Elements than it was in Taxfiler. This is because additional Sole Trader records are created during the data migration where an individual has an SA100 tax return that contains self-employment supplementary pages. Partner records are created from the partners that have been added to a Partnership SA800 tax return to allocate the split of partnership profits (this may result in two partner records appearing in your client list, the additional partner record may be deleted, however, it does mean that the partner’s profit share in the SA800 will also be removed).
If an individual with self employment pages in their tax return was restricted in Taxfiler, the individual will be private on migration to IRIS Elements, while the sole trade record created during migration will not. If you prefer that the sole trade record also be private, you must locate these client records in the client list and amend their privacy status. Do this before assigning permissions and licences to your users to avoid unauthorised access to these records.
How to check and change the privacy level of a client record:
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Go to the Client list. You will see that each client has a privacy status:
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Private – unassigned
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Private – assigned
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Select a client record from the list that you wish to assign to a user.
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On the Client Dashboard, the Client Privacy widget displays the current privacy setting of the client.
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Select Switch on Client Privacy and then Add assignee.
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Either use the search bar to find and select assigned users, or choose them from the Users list.
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Select Add.
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Repeat until all required users are assigned.
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The client privacy is now displayed as Private -assigned and accessible only to the assigned users.