Your working business unit is the business unit you are using in the Console. It controls which records several Setup lists show and which business unit new records use by default. It is not a permission boundary, and finance administrator pages stay restricted no matter which business unit you are working in.
What It Controls
- Which records Setup lists show you. G/L accounts, bank accounts, departments, and accounting projects show records for your working business unit.
- What business unit a new record defaults to. When you create a new account, department, or project in Setup, it starts in your working business unit.
- Permission checks on transaction pages. Batches, reports, customer pages, and statements check your Console permissions against your working business unit.
- What Portal members can see about a business unit. A signed-in member can see five fields for one business unit: its name and multi-currency settings. Portal users cannot see anything else about your accounting structure.
Where to Find It
On most Finance & Billing Setup and transaction pages, the control on the right side of the breadcrumb bar shows your working business unit and currency. Use that control to change them. The Setup pages covered here are Finance & Billing › Setup › Business Units, G/L Accounts, Bank Accounts, Departments, and Accounting Projects.
Prerequisites
You need the accounting Setup permission from your administrator to open any of these accounting Setup pages. The same permission controls all of them, so there is no separate access for renaming a business unit, changing its accounting method, reading the structure, or changing it.
What Changes When You Switch Business Units
| Area | Effect of your working business unit |
|---|---|
| G/L Accounts, Bank Accounts, Departments, Accounting Projects lists | Shows only records that belong to your working business unit |
| Creating a new account, department, or project | Starts the record in your working business unit |
| Business Units list, Exchange Rates | Not narrowed; every business unit and every exchange rate record is shown, no matter which business unit you are working in |
| Moving a record to another business unit | Not available; a record's business unit field is disabled after the record exists |
| Batches, Reports, customer pages, Statements | Uses your working business unit as the resource for Console permission checks |
Warning
Setup list narrowing is a convenience, not a security boundary. Every record for your whole Rhythm account is present on the page; your working business unit only controls which records are shown to you. Switching your working business unit changes what you see, not what exists.
A person's financial page and queries are not limited to your working business unit the way Setup lists are. They can show invoices and records from every business unit at once, without requiring you to switch between them. Use the working business unit control for the Setup pages and permission checks it narrows, and do not expect it to hide records on broader views.
Tip
If you cannot find a G/L account, bank account, department, or accounting project you expected to see, check your working business unit first. The record may belong to a different business unit.
Accounting Setup Stays Restricted to Finance Administrators
You need the same permission to read or change your accounting structure, including business units, G/L accounts, bank accounts, departments, and accounting projects. That permission requirement does not change based on the page you are on or the business unit you are working in. Switching your working business unit does not open these pages to anyone who could not already use them.
Warning
The Setup menu shows every accounting Setup entry to everyone who can reach Setup, even when they do not have the permission a specific page requires. Seeing an entry in the menu does not mean you can open the page; the page checks its own permission when you open it.
What Members See in the Portal
A signed-in Portal member can read a limited view of one business unit: its name, whether it accepts multiple currencies, which currencies it supports, and its base currency. For example, this lets a member paying an invoice see which currencies they can use. Portal members cannot list, create, change, or delete business units, G/L accounts, bank accounts, departments, or accounting projects; every other accounting-structure action is refused to a Portal member.
Dependencies and Precedence
- Your working business unit is set from the same control everywhere it appears. When you change it on one Setup page, it stays changed for every other page you visit next until you change it again.
- A business unit's supported currencies decide which currencies its own G/L accounts, bank accounts, and merchant accounts can be created in, regardless of which business unit you are currently working in.
Change Impact and How to Revert
Switching your working business unit changes only what you see and what a new record defaults to. It does not move, hide, or change any existing record. Switching back to your previous working business unit restores the previous view exactly.
Permissions
You need the accounting Setup permission from your administrator to open the G/L accounts, bank accounts, departments, accounting projects, and business units pages, no matter which working business unit is selected. There is no separate, narrower permission for any one of these pages.
Validation and Errors
There is nothing to validate on the working business unit control itself. If you try to open an accounting Setup page without the required permission, the page refuses you and tells you which permission is missing, regardless of your working business unit.