Managing multiple email accounts is part of the job for a partner at a CPA firm with staff. There’s your own address. There’s a role address or two that the firm put in your name, like notices@ or bills@. There’s the mailbox of a manager who left in June, still getting client mail. There may be a second entity, or the domain of a practice the firm bought. And there’s your personal account. None of that is a mistake. Each address came with a reason.
So how should a CPA firm manage multiple email accounts? Give every address one owner and one job. Fold the addresses that only you read into your own mailbox as aliases. Keep the ones that must stay separate as their own accounts, each with its own sign-in. Then read all of them from one place, on a schedule you’d defend to a client. The rest of this page works through each step from the partner’s chair.
The mailboxes one partner ends up reading
Here’s the usual set for a partner at a firm of five to fifteen people.
| Mailbox | Why it exists | What turns up in it |
|---|---|---|
| Your own address | Clients, staff and referrers write to you by name | Advisory questions, review notes, the client who only trusts you |
| A role address in your name | The firm needed one place for a kind of mail, and you own that kind | IRS and state notices, vendor bills, engagement letters coming back |
| A departed colleague’s mailbox | Clients still write to the person they knew | A K-1, a question about last year’s return, a fee dispute |
| An acquired practice’s domain | The firm bought a book of clients and the old address came with it | Long-standing clients who never updated their contacts |
| A second entity | A wealth, payroll or advisory company under the same partners | Its own clients, its own vendors, its own banking |
| Your personal account | Your life outside the firm | The occasional client who’s also a friend |
Six addresses is common. Each one is reasonable on its own. The trouble is reading them one at a time, so the message that matters sits in whichever box you open last.
If you work alone, the shape is simpler, and reading every mailbox in a solo practice covers it. What’s different at firm scale is that several of these boxes belong to the firm, not to you.
Managing multiple email accounts at a CPA firm: four ways an address reaches you
Every address on that list can reach you in one of four ways. Picking the right one for each address is most of the work.
| Arrangement | What you see | Who the reply is from | Fits best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alias on your own mailbox | Mail to the extra address lands in your inbox | You, from either address if you allow it | Only you read it, and it needs no record apart from yours |
| Forwarding from another account | A copy lands in your inbox | Usually your own address, unless set up otherwise | A low-traffic old address you’re winding down |
| Delegate access to another mailbox | A second mailbox opens beside yours | You, as or on behalf of that mailbox | The mail must stay in its own mailbox, with its own history |
| Separate account with its own sign-in | A second account in your mail app | That account | A different entity, a different provider or your personal life |
Each arrangement leaves a different trail. An alias puts the mail in your mailbox and your record. Delegate access keeps it in the other mailbox, with your name on what you did there. Decide where the mail should live five years from now, and the arrangement usually picks itself.
Fold the addresses only you read into your own mailbox
An address that only one person reads is cheapest as an alias. There’s no second mailbox to check, no second password and no second license. Microsoft says an admin “can create up to 400 aliases for a user. No additional fees or licenses are required” (Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026). Google allows “up to 30 aliases for each user, at no extra cost” (Google Workspace Admin Help, checked October 4, 2026).
The role addresses that most often belong on a partner’s own mailbox:
notices@for IRS and state correspondence, when one partner owns the response.bills@orap@for the firm’s own vendor invoices, when the managing partner approves them.engagements@for signed letters coming back, when one partner countersigns.partners@for mail meant for the partners as a group, if there are only two of you.
The test is simple. If a second person needs to pick a message up from that address, it isn’t yours alone. That’s a shared inbox, and it has its own questions about who answers and how two replies are avoided. One mailbox, two accountants works through those.
An alias also survives you handing the job over. When bills@ moves to your office manager, an admin moves the alias to her mailbox. Vendors keep writing to the same address and never notice.
The mailboxes that stay separate
Some addresses should keep their own mailbox. These four come up at nearly every firm.
Your personal account. The IRS guide on protecting client data, Publication 4557, puts it plainly:
Use separate personal and business email accounts; protect email accounts with strong passwords and two-factor authentication if available.
That keeps client data out of an account the firm can’t manage. Reading both in one view is fine. Merging them into one account isn’t what the IRS has in mind.
A second entity. A wealth or payroll company under the same partners has its own clients and its own engagement terms. Keep its mail in its own account. A reply that leaves from the wrong company is the mistake that’s hard to walk back.
An acquired practice’s domain. Clients from the old practice write to the address they’ve always had. If the old domain moves into your firm’s Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, its addresses can become aliases on the people who now serve those clients. Until then, it’s a separate account to read.
A departed colleague’s mailbox. It holds history the firm may need for years. That history belongs in its own mailbox, read through delegate access. The next section covers it.
Reading a colleague’s mailbox you’ve been given
Delegate access lets you open another person’s mailbox without their password. Microsoft calls the reading permission Full Access, and its documentation says it “allows the delegate to open the mailbox, and view, add and remove the contents of the mailbox. Doesn’t allow the delegate to send messages from the mailbox” (Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026). Sending is a separate permission, covered below.
Gmail works much the same way. Google says “A delegate is someone who can read, send, and delete emails in your account for you” (Gmail Help, checked October 4, 2026). A delegate can’t chat from the account or change its password.
Both providers keep delegation inside one organization. Microsoft says “it’s not possible to set up mailbox permissions for users in another organization” (Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026). A second entity on its own tenant is a separate account to sign in to, for that reason alone.
From your side of it, three habits keep a delegated mailbox from becoming a seventh inbox you forget:
- Put an end date on it. Most of a departed colleague’s client mail moves within a season. After that, the firm can convert the mailbox to a shared mailbox, which Microsoft supports, and stop reading it daily.
- Read it on its own schedule. Twice a week is usually enough once clients know where to write.
- Move each client out as you answer them. Reply from your own address, and the client’s next message comes to you.
Your access needs its own sign-in with its own second factor. The FTC Safeguards Rule, which covers firms that prepare tax returns, asks firms to “authenticate and permit access only to authorized users” (16 CFR 314.4(c)(1)(i)). Delegate access does that. A shared password doesn’t.
Covering a colleague who’s away for two weeks is a lighter version of the same thing, and covering an inbox during leave handles it. Who joins, who leaves and what their seat costs belongs to team and admin.
Replying from the right address
Reading the right mailbox is half of it. The other half is the From line on your reply. Microsoft offers two sending permissions, and they look different to the client.
| Permission | What the client sees | Where replies go |
|---|---|---|
| Send as | The mailbox’s own name and address, with no sign you sent it | The mailbox |
| Send on behalf | “Your name on behalf of the mailbox” | The mailbox, not you |
Microsoft describes Send on behalf this way (Microsoft Learn, checked October 4, 2026):
The From address of these messages clearly shows that the message was sent by the delegate. However, replies to these messages are sent to the mailbox or group, not to the delegate.
So the client sees two names, and their answer goes back to the mailbox. In Gmail, Google says a delegate’s own address appears on what they send.
For a departed colleague’s mailbox, send on behalf usually fits. The client sees your name and learns who looks after them now. For a role address like notices@, send as keeps the firm’s voice and keeps the next reply in that address.
Before you rely on either, send one test from each address to a personal account. Check the name, the address and which inbox the reply lands in.
One view across Microsoft 365 and Google
Most firms run on one provider. The partner’s set often spans two. The firm may be on Microsoft 365 while the acquired practice is on Google Workspace and your personal account is Gmail.
Here’s what each route gives you today.
- Outlook opens a delegated mailbox beside your own, and it can hold several accounts at once, including a Gmail account. Each account still has its own folders and its own list.
- Gmail on the web is narrowing what it pulls in. Google says “Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts through POP” and that “after the first quarter of 2026, this feature no longer supports new users. Existing users can still use the feature until January 2027” (Gmail Help, checked October 4, 2026). Google points people to forwarding, or to the Gmail mobile app, which reads other accounts over IMAP.
- A separate desktop mail client such as Thunderbird holds accounts from several providers side by side.
Each of these puts several mailboxes in one window. What none of them does on its own is sort across all of them. You still read box by box, just with less clicking. The order of what reaches you first is its own decision, and what reaches a partner first sets those rules.
How often each box gets read
A schedule you can state is better than a vague intention to check everything. Here’s a workable one for October, written for the six boxes above.
| Mailbox | How often | What you’re looking for |
|---|---|---|
| Your own address | All day, in your normal reading | Clients and staff who need you |
notices@ | Every morning | A notice with a response date on it |
bills@ | Twice a week | Invoices to approve |
| Departed colleague’s mailbox | Twice a week until it quiets | Clients who haven’t moved yet |
| Acquired practice’s domain | Daily until clients move | Documents for returns still on extension |
| Second entity | Daily, if you serve its clients | Its own clients’ questions |
| Personal | Evenings | A client who’s also a friend |
A notice in notices@ is the reason this table exists. The response window starts when the notice is dated, not when you open the box. A daily look is the floor for any address that gets IRS mail. What a partner’s morning should surface from all of these is set out in the firm’s morning.
How Point reads a partner’s mailboxes
Point puts your connected accounts into one feed and sorts them together. Mail that needs you sits under Now, whichever address it came to. Invoices and routine notes wait under Later. Here’s what that’s like across several boxes.
- Connecting is a sign-in. Point connects Gmail and Microsoft 365 accounts. There are no forwarding rules to set up, and each account keeps its own password and second factor.
- Aliases come along on their own. Mail to
notices@lands in your mailbox, so it lands in the feed too. - A second entity stays apart. Set it up as its own business in Point. Every card names its business, and one switch filters the app to one of them. A reply goes out inside the right business, and you never pick an account. Two businesses, one login covers it.
- Your mailboxes stay in step. Point writes Now, Later and Other back into Gmail as labels and into Outlook as categories. The details are in connecting Gmail and the Outlook path.
- One client at two addresses reads as one client. A client who writes to you and to the old practice domain is merged into one person. Merging duplicate contacts explains what that leaves alone.
- One briefing in the morning. The night’s mail from every connected account arrives counted, with what needs you at the top. You can switch it off.
- Replies wait for you. Point drafts an answer in your voice. By default nothing is sent until you’ve read it and pressed send. It goes from your own address and threads like any reply you wrote. You choose how far Point goes, one kind of action at a time, on the autonomy dial.
One case is worth a question before you count on it. A delegated or shared mailbox you reach through someone else’s permissions has no sign-in of its own. Ask the Point team how that mailbox fits before you plan your reading around it.
Everything else Point does is on the benefits page.
When a different setup fits better
If two or three people answer the same address through the day, it’s a shared inbox. The questions there are about ownership and collisions, and a shared inbox tool may serve that address better than any one partner’s view. Start with one mailbox, two accountants.
If every address you read is already on Microsoft 365, and there are only two or three, Outlook alone may be enough. The structure on this page still holds: aliases for what only you read, separate accounts for what must stay apart, and a schedule for each.
How the firm’s addresses get designed in the first place, from the domain to the role mailboxes, is in the best email setup for accountants.
Common questions
How should a CPA firm manage multiple email accounts?
Give each address one owner and one job. Make the addresses only one person reads into aliases on that person’s mailbox. Keep a second entity, a departed colleague’s mailbox and personal mail as separate accounts, each with its own sign-in and second factor. Then read them from one place on a stated schedule, with a daily look at any address that gets IRS or state notices.
Can you use the same email for two different accounts?
Yes, in two senses. One address can be your sign-in for several services, such as your tax software and your portal. One mailbox can also receive mail at several addresses through aliases. What shouldn’t happen is two people signing in as one address. The FTC Safeguards Rule asks firms to permit access only to authorized users and to use multi-factor authentication for anyone accessing an information system (16 CFR 314.4). Each person needs their own sign-in for that to hold.
Can I get a business email for free?
A free consumer account costs nothing, and it works for a personal address. For client mail at a firm that prepares returns, it’s the wrong fit. The firm needs to require a second factor for everyone, control the mailbox when somebody leaves, and keep the mail for as long as its policy says. Those controls come with a paid business plan on your own domain. Aliases on that plan cost nothing extra on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, so the role addresses are free once the mailboxes exist.
Can you provide some examples of accounts payable email addresses?
Common ones are ap@, bills@, invoices@ and payables@, all on the firm’s own domain. Pick one and put it on every vendor record, so invoices stop arriving at five different people. If one partner approves the firm’s bills, make it an alias on that partner’s mailbox. If an office manager processes them and a partner approves, it’s an address two people work, and a shared inbox fits better.
What is the 3 email rule?
It’s an informal rule of thumb. If a thread hasn’t settled after three back-and-forth emails, stop writing and call or meet. At a firm, it matters most for a client thread spread across addresses, where the third email often went to the wrong one. Picking up a long thread a colleague started is its own skill, covered in reading a thread you didn’t start.
Should a departed employee’s mailbox stay active?
Keep the mail and keep reading it for a season, through delegate access rather than the old password. Reply to each client from your own address so their next message comes to you. Once it’s quiet, an admin can convert it to a shared mailbox, which Microsoft supports, so the history stays available without a daily check.