Overview

Accounting Seed supports accounting for multiple companies in a single Salesforce org, as long as the companies share the same fiscal year end and Chart of Accounts. Use this article to activate Multi-Ledger, set up a ledger for each company, and restrict which users can see or edit each ledger's data.

Important: Once you have posted transactions to an additional ledger, removing that ledger from your subscription is not possible.

In this article:

• Before You Begin
• Step 1: Set Up a Multi-Company
• Step 2: Limit Access to Specific Users
• Best Practices

Before You Begin

• You need System Administrator access, or a profile/permission set with Customize Application and Manage Sharing permissions, to complete ledger setup and to configure sharing in Step 2.
• Multi-Ledger must be activated on your org by Accounting Seed Support before Step 1 can begin (see Step 1.2).
• Confirm that any users who need ledger access already have Read (and Edit, if they enter transactions) on the Ledger object through their profile or permission set. Sharing settings can only widen access on top of what a profile already allows.

Step 1: Set Up a Multi-Company

1. Determine how many ledgers you need. Each company should have its own ledger.
2. Email Accounting Seed Licensing to activate Multi-Ledger for your org. You will receive a quote for the additional fee. Accounting Seed Licensing will notify you by email once the feature is activated.
3. Navigate to Accounting Home > Setup > Ledger > Ledgers, then create and configure a ledger for each company. See Configure a Ledger for the full field-by-field walkthrough, including Ledger Type, Currency, Accounting Method, Tax Settings, and PDF Formats.
4. Add the Ledger field to the page layout of every transaction object your users work with, grouped below. For each object, go to Setup > Object Manager > [Object Name] > Page Layouts, drag the Ledger field onto the layout, and click Save.
   • Billing-related: Billings, Recurring Billings, Cash Receipts
   • Payable-related: Payables, Recurring Payables, Cash Disbursements
   • Banking-related: Bank Deposits, Bank Reconciliations
   • General Ledger-related: Journal Entries, Amortization Entry, Financial Statement Column, Financial Cube
   • Order and Inventory-related: Sales Order, Purchase Order, Sales Order Inventory Movement, Purchase Order Inventory Movement, Inbound Inventory Movement, Outbound Inventory Movement, Manufacturing Inventory Movement
   • Other: Expense Reports, Time Cards, Fixed Assets
5. Multi-Ledger works best in Lightning. If your org still uses Classic, switch to Lightning and add the Ledger Manager utility item:
   1. Go to Setup > Apps > App Manager.
   2. Select Edit on the app you want to add it to (it must not be a managed app) or New to create one. My Domain must be enabled to use this feature.
   3. Under App Settings, select Utility Items, then click Add Utility Item.
   4. Select Ledger Manager.
   5. Select Start Automatically.
   6. Update the label if needed, and click Save.

   Note: Ledger Manager defaults new transactions to the ledger you're currently working in.

Step 2: Limit Access to Specific Users

If certain users should only see or work in one ledger rather than any ledger, use Salesforce's Organization-Wide Defaults (OWD), Role Hierarchy, and Sharing Rules together.

Important: Changing the Ledger OWD to Private is an org-wide change that takes effect immediately. Any user who doesn't own a ledger record, isn't above the owner in the role hierarchy, and isn't covered by a sharing rule loses visibility into that ledger the moment you save, including on related Billings, Payables, and other transaction records. Confirm this is the intended outcome before proceeding, and expect a short delay while Salesforce recalculates sharing.

1. Set the Ledger org-wide default to Private. Go to Setup > Security > Sharing Settings. Find Ledger and click Edit. Set Default Internal Access to Private, leave Grant Access Using Hierarchies checked, and click Save.
2. Set up your role hierarchy. Go to Setup > Users > Roles. Create a role for each level that needs different access, for example "Accountant - Company A" and "Accountant - Company B" reporting up to "CFO - Parent Co." Assign each user to the correct role on their user record.
3. Set the owner on each Ledger record. Open each ledger (Accounting Home > Setup > Ledger > Ledgers) and set the Owner field to the accountant responsible for that company. Because Private OWD combined with the role hierarchy grants access automatically, each accountant now sees only the ledger they own, and the CFO role automatically sees and can edit both, with no separate per-role setting required.
4. Create a Sharing Rule for access that doesn't follow the role hierarchy (for example, an ad hoc group of reviewers who aren't in one reporting line):
   1. Go to Setup > Public Groups > New, name the group (for example, "Company B Ledger Reviewers"), save, then add members under Add Members.
   2. Go to Setup > Security > Sharing Settings, select Ledger from the object list, and click New under Ledger Sharing Rules.
   3. Set the rule to share ledgers owned by the applicable role with the public group you created, and set the access level to Read Only or Read/Write.
   4. Click Save.

Note: If a user can still see every ledger after completing these steps, check their profile and permission sets for "View All Data," "Modify All Data," or a Ledger-specific permission override. These settings bypass sharing rules entirely.

For background on how Salesforce sharing works, see the Sharing and Record Access Features overview, Create and Edit Public Groups, the Salesforce Roles Hierarchy article, and the Data Security: Sharing Rules Trailhead module.

Best Practices

• Have your accounting team use the Lightning UI so they can easily select a ledger through the Ledger utility.
• Set up custom list views by ledger. For example, create a payable view filtered by ledger so a user can batch-create disbursements for all payables tied to that ledger.
• Use General Ledger Variables to further drill down into financials by department, division, or business unit.

Note: The same Chart of Accounts is used across all ledgers, and a transaction can't relate to a different ledger than its parent record. If certain GL Accounts apply to only one ledger, use the Suppress Zero Rows checkbox on reports so only active accounts for that ledger appear.

Return to top