This article explains how to set up and manage an external employee profile for your tax consultancy in Personio .
Setting up an external profile for a tax consultancy in Personio
To simplify communication with your payroll accountant or payroll office, you can create a separate employee profile for them in Personio , so that they can independently retrieve relevant, up-to-date information for Payroll from Personio .
- They set up the tax consultancy as an external person with its own employee profile .
- Through a dedicated employee role, they precisely control which areas and Documents the tax advisor can view.
- The tax advisor retrieves payroll statements, personnel data and other payroll-related Documents directly from your Personio account .
Note
External employees, such as your tax advisor, are included in your payroll schedule and therefore in the total number of employees in your plan. Additionally, they appear in the organizational chart, so you always have an About of all people associated with your Organisation .
Differentiation from the Personio platform for tax advisors
In addition to the external profile, Personio offers a second way of working together with the Personio platform for tax advisors, which is exclusively available to customers with the Expert plan . The two approaches are not mutually exclusive, but differ significantly in structure and functionality:
| External profile | Personio- platform for tax advisors | |
| Availability | all payroll plans | Expert plan only |
| Setup | Manually creating an employee profile and employee roles | Central link via an access code |
| Access scope | Freely configurable via employee roles permissions | Access to all subcompany stored in the account |
| Support tickets | Not possible via this route | Possible directly via the platform |
For the Personio platform for tax advisors, existing must be no identical email addresses in the tax advisor's account and in your company's account. This restriction applies in particular to cases where your tax advisor has previously been set up as an external profile with the same email address . In this case , the duplicate email address prevents the link from being established via the platform. In this case , first remove or change the email address in the existing external profile before establishing the link via the platform.
Set up an external profile
Create employee profile
First, create the required employee profile . Make sure to create the fictitious employee for the payroll accountant with the employment type "External" so that the system clearly distinguishes them from internal employees.
Detailed information on creating employee profiles can be found here .
Select access type
Once you have created the external profile, you decide how the tax advisor should be integrated compared to your internal staff:
- Option A: Integrate tax consulting into the existing workforce. The tax consultant receives the same employee role as all other employees, as well as an additional role with extended rights for Payroll.
- Option B: Strict separation between internal and external tax consulting. They completely separate the rights of the tax advisor from those of their internal staff.
Option A: Integrating tax consulting into the existing workforce
Create a new employee role for tax consulting and assign permissions such as the following:
| Authorization area | Description |
| Payroll | Right of access so that the tax advisor can view payroll-relevant information and download generated exports. Administration and approval remain internal. |
| Sub-company |
If you have multiple subcompany , you grant permission for each individual legal entity. |
| Document categories | Right to view employment contracts, medical certificates (relevant for contribution statement to health insurance companies) and study documents. |
| Payroll documents |
Viewing rights for the document category "Payroll" so that Documents can be downloaded. |
| Personal data sections | Viewing rights for sections with attributes relevant to preliminary payroll . |
| import Documents |
Activate this permission so that the tax advisor can import payroll statements and other Documents via multi-upload . Access to imported files is still governed by document permissions. |
| Time off |
Right to view all types of absence relevant to wages, for example paid leave and sick leave. |
This involves the following steps:
- Create the new employee role for tax consulting and assign the permissions as described above. Instructions can be found in the article on employee roles and permissions .
- Optionally, create role-specific reminders , for example for upcoming termination dates or absence timeline.
- Optionally, enable two-factor authentication for the new role if the tax advisor does not log in via a Google account. With two-factor authentication enabled, all employees in this role must additionally confirm a Google Authenticator token upon login .
- Assign the tax consulting role to the new employee.
- Then invite the tax advisor to Personio .
You can find a detailed overview of access rights here.
Option B: Strict separation between internal and external tax advice
To completely separate tax consulting from your internal employees and the "All Employees" system role, adjust the system role and create two new employee roles :
- customise system role for all employees: Remove all rights of the system role, as this is automatically assigned as a basic role to every active person , both internal and external.
- Create a new role for internal employees: Create a new role, for example "All internal employees", and assign it the rights that internal employees should have in your account. This role replaces the system role in its feature. In the future, you will need to manually assign this role to newly created employees, as this will no longer happen automatically.
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Create a role for external tax advice: Create a separate role for tax consulting and assign the permissions as described in Option A.
manage consulting services
Once the external profile and employee role are set up, you can manage the collaboration on an ongoing basis:
- Adjust the permissions of the employee role in detail at any time via access rights .
- Manage reminders for tax advice as needed.
- Remove the profile or role once the collaboration ends to terminate access.
In the payroll run
Customers in Germany who work with a DATEV integration can generate a DATEV export in Personio , which can then be imported directly into DATEV. You can find further information on this topic here.