Connect each company once, then name the one you mean in the prompt. The assistant sees the list of connected companies, keeps them apart, and can pull the same report from all of them in a single question. Access is set per company, so nine files can stay read-only while the tenth is live.
Naming the company
Use the company name as it appears in QuickBooks, in the sentence itself:
"In the operating company, pull the profit and loss for July."
"Aged receivables for the holding company, as of today."
If you do not name one and more than one is connected, the assistant should ask which. Do not rely on that. Name it every time it matters, because a wrong-company answer looks exactly like a right-company answer, and you will not catch it from the shape of the table. Two habits that cost nothing:
- Ask it to state the company name in the answer.
- Watch for files that are ambiguous to a human. A numbered company and its operating name, or two entities that differ by one word, are ambiguous to an assistant for the same reason they are ambiguous to you. Rename in QuickBooks if it keeps happening.
Fiscal year ends differ per file too. "Last quarter" is not the same quarter everywhere, so use dates when you are asking several companies at once.
Comparing across files
This is the part that is genuinely awkward in QuickBooks, where each company is its own login and its own session.
"Pull July profit and loss for every connected company and put revenue, gross margin and net income side by side in one table."
"Which of my companies has the most cash on hand right now?"
"Everything past 60 days across all companies, one list, sorted by amount."
"Which company has the largest sales tax balance owing, and when is it due?"
For anyone holding several entities, or a bookkeeper opening seven files on a Monday morning, this is the reason to bother. The answer arrives as one list instead of seven logins.
This is not consolidation. Adding two profit and loss statements together does not produce a consolidated statement. No intercompany eliminations, no ownership percentages, no currency translation, no minority interest. If you owe someone consolidated financial statements, that is your accountant's work and this does not touch it. What you get here is a comparison, which is a different and much more casual thing.
Write access is per company
Every connection starts read-only, and full access is granted one company at a time, by you, from the portal. So the bookkeeper case works properly: nine client files stay read-only for reading and reporting while the tenth, the one you are working in this week, is live. Turn it off again afterwards if you want. Sending a document by email, voiding and deleting each still require an explicit confirmation in the conversation, whatever the access level. The security page has the detail.
What it costs
39 $ CA per company per month, and 29 $ CA per company from ten companies. Fourteen-day free trial with no credit card, billed monthly through Stripe, cancel anytime with access running to the end of the paid period.
Do the arithmetic honestly. A file you open twice a year does not earn 39 $ every month. Connect the companies you actually work in, and add the others later if the habit sticks. The pricing page has the current terms.
Where this is the wrong tool
You have one company. None of this applies, and your only question is whether the single subscription pays for itself.
You need consolidated statements. See above. Wrong tool, and no amount of prompting changes that.
You need the same report from forty files on a schedule, with no interpretation. A reporting tool that exports on a timer is cheaper and does not need anyone to ask. Conversation is for the questions you have not written down yet.
Some of your files are on QuickBooks Desktop. Those cannot be connected at all, and a mixed shop is the dangerous version of this: a Desktop file is simply invisible, which quietly makes every "across all my companies" answer incomplete without saying so. Keep a list of what is actually connected and check the answer against it.
If you have not connected the first one yet, start here, then add the rest from the portal.