Security at fiscal50: how we protect your books
fiscal50 protects your books with six controls: bank feeds through Plaid, encrypted and masked SSNs, permissions set feature by feature, approvals before posting, a trail behind every entry, and periods that lock when you close them.
- Bank feeds through Plaid
- Protected SSNs
- Permissions by feature
- Approvals before posting
- A trail for every entry
- Locked periods
Updated
Bank, credit card and loan accounts link to fiscal50 through Plaid, and new transactions sync at regular intervals from the moment you link an account. Payments you take online run through Stripe: you sign in to Stripe yourself to authorize the connection, so fiscal50 never receives your Stripe password.
- Accounts you would rather not link can be added by hand and fed with a Web Connect file, your bank’s Excel export, a QuickBooks IIF export or the fiscal50 CSV.
- Earlier periods come in from the same uploads; Plaid syncs forward from the day you link.
- Synced transactions wait as Pending in Banks to Books. Nothing reaches your books until you review the recommendation and click Post.
- Connections per plan: Starter 1, Business up to 5, Business Pro up to 10.
A vendor’s or payee’s Social Security number is encrypted before it is stored and kept in a secure vault, apart from the vendor record. Everywhere in fiscal50 it is shown masked to the last four digits, and the full number is unlocked only when you generate that vendor’s Form 1099.
- While you type an SSN, an eye icon lets you show or hide it.
- An SSN or EIN isn’t needed to add a vendor or payee, or to record their bills and payments; you need it before you file their 1099. Collect a Form W-9 first.
- Only the SSN field is encrypted. Keep SSNs out of memos, notes and other free-text fields.
Employees, bookkeepers and accountants work in your books as sub users, each with their own email and password, so nobody shares yours. You choose what each one can see and do, feature by feature: modules, reports and tools stay hidden unless you turn them on.
- For each feature, a sub user can have Add, View, edit & delete, both or neither.
- A sub user who can add users can give only the access they have themselves; anything else is greyed out.
- Nothing is saved until you click Create user and send invite, and each user needs at least one permission.
- Users per plan: Starter 1 user, Business up to 3 users, Business Pro up to 10 users. Every plan includes a bookkeeper login.
You can make customer invoices, customer payments, vendor bills and vendor payments wait for approval before they are recorded. Each workflow has Approver 1, Approver 2 and so on, chosen from the users on your account. Each approver sees an item only when it reaches their turn, and the transaction is completed only after the final approver approves it.
- Recurring invoices and automated deferred income or expense entries can be set to wait for review, and depreciation entries wait before they are posted.
- Everything waiting shows under Needs your attention in the header, on any screen.
- Approved transactions are processed; disapproved ones are not. Some types, such as recurring invoices, can be edited before you approve them.
- Transaction types without an approval setup are recorded straight away. The approval workflow is on every plan.
Every recommendation in Banks to Books shows its reason, a confidence percentage and the evidence behind it, and nothing posts until a person clicks Post. Each posted transaction is a balanced double-entry journal entry, so every amount in a report can be traced back to the transaction that made it.
- From the All Transactions list, View shows the journal entry, the accounts debited and credited, and View Transaction Details opens the original invoice, bill or payment.
- Click an account name in a report to open its ledger, with every transaction and the running balance.
- A transaction found in a ledger can be opened and corrected there, and the reports change with it.
When you close a month or a fiscal year, fiscal50 locks it: transactions dated in it can no longer be created, edited or deleted. Reports for the period still run, and their figures don’t change, so the numbers you gave your lender, your tax preparer or your partners stay the numbers you gave them.
- Before a period can close, a Pre-Closing Verification checklist confirms every bank and credit card transaction is recorded and every account is reconciled.
- Only completed periods can be closed, and they close in order: February only after January.
- Confirming the close may ask you to re-enter your fiscal50 password, and sub users need the matching access to close months.
Questions?
Ask us about security
If you need more detail for a review, a client or your own records, e-mail us and we’ll answer directly.
Related
Where these controls live
Approvals and user access
Approval workflows, alerts and permissions by feature for every user.
Read moreMonth-end close
A checklist of what is pending, then locked periods.
Read more1099 tracking
Track vendor payments for 1099-NEC and catch missing details early.
Read moreBanks to Books
AI recommends how to book every bank and card transaction and shows why.
Read moreBooks you can trust, with controls you set.
Starter’s first month is free, with no credit card. Connect a bank and see every recommendation explained before it posts.