If your whole team needs to read the same compliance checklist, the same client call notes or the same month-end routine, a personal notebook is the wrong place for it. Company Notes in Aicountly Notes is the shared place: notes that belong to a company, not to whoever typed them. This guide explains how it works, who can do what, and how to set it up without surprises.
What Company Notes is, and how it differs from My Notes
Notes now has two separate places for writing. My Notes holds personal notes: they belong to you and stay with you whichever company you are looking at. Company Notes holds notes that belong to one company, and everybody Manage lists in that company can open them.
You will find it in the Notes menu as Company Notes, next to the usual lists. It is a separate screen, so a company note never quietly appears among your private notes, and your private notes never appear under a company heading.
Choose a company first
Company Notes shows nothing until you choose a company. The screen says "Choose a company" and explains that company notes belong to a company and everybody in it can open them. This is deliberate: the company you pick decides both what you see and where a new note is filed, so Notes does not guess.
The switcher works like the one in Smart Books. You get a button with the company name that opens a searchable list, and a second button showing the financial year and branch, for example "FY 2026-27 | All branches". If you do not belong to any company yet, you will see "You are not in a company yet" and a prompt to ask an owner to add you in Manage.
Notes also checks your choice with Manage on every request. Typing a company you do not belong to does not work; you are refused rather than moved to your personal notes.
Where a new note lands
A note created from Company Notes is filed in the company you are working in, along with the branch and financial year you have selected in the strip. A note created from My Notes stays personal, even if a company happens to be open in the same tab. That rule exists so that a private draft is not accidentally shared with the whole team.
If you make a copy of a company note, the copy is also the company's, as long as the original is in your own verified company.
Who can read, edit and share
Company membership is a blanket permission over notes the member did not write, so Notes keeps it narrow:
- Company members can read the company's notes.
- The company's owner (as Manage records it) can edit and comment on them, and can change who a company note is shared with, even if someone else wrote it.
- The author keeps full control of their own note, including deleting it and handing it on.
Notice what the company's owner cannot do: delete notes they did not write. Sharing is allowed so that a colleague can be brought onto a note without hunting for whoever typed it; deleting stays with the author. Personal notes are never open to a company owner.
Ideas for what to keep in Company Notes
- Filing calendar: a shared checklist of GST, TDS and PF/ESI dates for the company. Pair it with a monthly compliance checklist in Notes.
- Standing instructions: how your CA wants documents named, which bank accounts to reconcile first, who approves what.
- Client or vendor call notes: so a colleague can pick up the thread when you are away.
- Year-end handover: open items, pending confirmations and audit queries for the next person.
Keep personal reminders and half-formed drafts in My Notes. Move something to Company Notes only when the team genuinely needs it.
Combine it with the rest of Notes
Company notes sit alongside the tools you may already use. You can set due dates with reminders that repeat and snooze, and you can export a note as a file or PDF to send to your CA. If someone edits a shared note by mistake, version history and Trash help you recover it.
Branch and financial year matter too. If you keep your books by branch, set up branches and years once in Manage; the guide to financial years and branches in Manage shows how, and the strip in Company Notes then narrows the list to the one you pick.
A short setup routine
- Ask the company's owner to confirm in Manage that everyone who needs access is listed.
- Open Company Notes and choose the company.
- Pick the financial year and branch you are working in.
- Create a first note, such as the filing calendar, and check that teammates can open it.
- Decide, as a team, what belongs in Company Notes and what stays personal.
Key takeaways
- Company Notes is a separate place from My Notes; company notes belong to the company.
- You must choose a company first, and Notes verifies it with Manage every time.
- Members read; the company's owner can edit, comment and share; the author alone can delete.
- Notes created in My Notes stay personal, even when a company is open.
Aicountly Notes keeps your private writing and your company's shared knowledge apart, so the right people see the right notes. As always, check any statutory dates you record with the official portals or your CA.
