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Granular Access Control – Secure, Zero Trust Permissions
Control-C’s new security model introduces a level of granularity never seen before in managing access to your Xero financial data. Traditionally, giving an employee access to run an Aged Payables or Aged Receivables report meant exposing your entire financial landscape – including sensitive areas like your Profit & Loss, balance sheet, bank transactions, and even other employees’ bonus information. Xero’s native user roles are fairly broad (e.g. standard user or advisor roles grant wide access). Not anymore.

With Control-C’s Zero Trust-based security framework, you can now restrict access to just the specific data or reports your team members need – and nothing more. Want a staff member to run only the Aged Receivables report? You can grant that exact permission, without also giving away the rest of your accounting info. No more over-exposure or “all-or-nothing” access. For example, an accounts clerk can be set up to view and export customer invoices and aging reports, but cannot see the general ledger or payroll details. A junior bookkeeper could be limited to inputting bills and viewing the payables report, without any visibility of bank balances or management reports. You define roles at a fine-grained level – a stark contrast to Xero, where even a read-only user can see almost everything.

This precision access control is built from the ground up, aligning with modern Zero Trust security principles that assume no implicit trust – every access is explicitly granted and minimal. For accountants and compliance officers, this means better internal controls and cleaner audit trails. You can demonstrate that even within your organisation, sensitive financial data is only accessible on a strict need-to-know basis. For instance, an auditor or external accountant could be given a special “Auditor” role on Control-C: read-only access to relevant reports and the audit log, but nothing else. Meanwhile, your sales manager might have access to customer contact list backups (for business continuity) but not to any financials. These tailored permissions greatly reduce the risk of internal data leaks or unnecessary snooping.

For business owners, the benefit is peace of mind and professionalism. You no longer have to say, “I’ll give my assistant access to Xero, but I hope they don’t poke around the salaries or bank accounts.” Instead, you define their role on Control-C to exactly what they require (perhaps invoice creation and nothing else). It shows a commitment to confidentiality: employees see only what’s relevant to their job, which also reduces temptation and errors. And because the platform logs every access and download, you have a full audit trail of who viewed or exported data.

This Zero Trust security model is a unique selling point of Control-C’s platform. It effectively adds a new permission layer on top of Xero’s data, one that many businesses have long wished Xero itself had. By deploying it, you protect sensitive information by default while still empowering your team with the tools they need. The result is a more secure, compliant operation, where data access is precisely aligned with role and purpose – no more, no less.

If you would like to learn more visit Control-C.com or find us in the Xero App Store.

Please add this feature!

I second Tim Jack's comment below!! Seems like Xero would have the infrastructure to include this easily in their package, not sure why it has not already been actioned!

Require this at the earliest

Yes, more granularity is required. The main problem we have with the current IO role is that it allows the user to see a lot of info that we would rather keep hidden. Ideally, we would have a permission that was restricted to "raise draft purchases" and then have that user only able to see the draft purchases that they themselves have raised.

This is an essential feature. User roles must be broken down further. Employees see sales and purchase figures which is not good practice.

Agree with purchase order access only, this is absolutely critical, we only want staff to raise a purchase order without having access to other financial information, Xero please prioritize this feature.

Yes, we are the same as very much do not want to see any element of the billing cycle. The P/O is to be raised on site level by a supervisor and approve at PM level. We do not want either of the operative because of Accounting Policy and Segregation of Duties.

This "Purchase order only access" is essential to ensure the smooth running of a business, without compromising the confidentiality of financial records.

We need this as an option as soon as possible.Our existing provider is ending the PO function by end Jan 2025 and we will have to go back to manual or find additional software which we really don't want to do. Especially when we have XERO has the function.

This is essential to our growing business

Why on earth have Xero not addressed this as issue yet......we will now have to use a manual system for our buyer which is not being proactive or streamlining our accounts process in any way.

I vote for this BIG TIME

It's an awesome idea - we don't want members of our operations team to have access to any financial data on XERO - just log a purchase order and update it when the goods/services have been received. Then accounts team picks up from there and process the bill from the supplier.

I would like to vote for this also.

After reviewing the comments below, it's evident that this issue requires urgent attention. Numerous users have highlighted how critical this upgrade is to the daily operations of their businesses, and I strongly agree. Implementing these changes could significantly streamline processes and eliminate the need for outdated paper copies. It's frustrating that such a vital improvement has been overlooked for so long. This should be treated as a priority without further delay.

This function NEEDS to happen - we have workshop labourers who are required to check off PO's but we do not wish for them to have access to anything else. It would be really beneficial if you could customise the user permissions more than it currently allows.

Enable employees/users to enter PO's against an approved supplier and have limited access to the financials.

I would definitely like to see this as an option. I only want to enable some users to raise a PO against an approved supplier. They have no need to see any other information.

Hi this is critical for our business to operate.