ObraLedger

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Signing in and account security

Two-factor authentication, API keys, login history and the password rules you set for your company, plus what happens if you close your account.

On this page

An accounting system holds your bank matching, your customer list and your tax returns, so the sign-in is worth ten minutes of attention.

None of what follows is a paid add-on. Charging extra for an account being hard to break into has always struck us as a strange way to price software.

What you can do

  • Turn on two-factor authentication with any authenticator app.
  • Set password rules for your whole company: strength, and expiry if you want it.
  • Decide how long a session can sit idle before it signs itself out.
  • Issue API keys for your own scripts and tools.
  • Review login history: when, from where, and how.
  • Reset a forgotten password by email, on a link that expires.
  • Close your account through a defined process rather than a support request.

How it works in practice

Turn on two-factor authentication (Your profile → Security). Scan the code with whichever authenticator app you already use, then confirm with a code from it. That confirmation step is required, so an account can’t end up locked behind a code nobody can generate. After that, signing in asks for the app’s six digits once you’ve entered your password.

Set the rules for everyone else (Settings → Security). Password strength, whether passwords expire and after how many days, and the idle timeout that applies to every user in the company. The timeout is short by default, and it’s a setting rather than a fixed value because a shared machine at a trade counter and a private office genuinely want different numbers.

Issue an API key when something needs to talk to the system (Your profile → API keys). A key belongs to a person and carries that person’s permissions, which is the honest model: anything the key can do, the person could do. Treat it like a password, and remove it when whatever used it is retired.

Check the login history if something feels wrong. Every sign-in is recorded with its time, the address it came from and the country that resolves to. It’s the first place to look when you suspect a shared password, and the quickest way to confirm nothing untoward happened.

If you forget your password, the reset link is emailed to you and stays valid for a limited window. Requesting a new one invalidates the old.

Closing the account is a process with steps, not an email to support: the request, a confirmation, and a record that it happened. You’re asked why, which you’re free to ignore. Take your exports first - see getting your data in and out.

Good to know

  • Two-factor authentication is per person, not per company. You can require it of yourself right now. Getting a colleague to turn theirs on is a conversation rather than a setting, and if everyone in your company handles money, it’s a conversation worth having.
  • Authenticator apps only. Codes by email or SMS aren’t offered. Text messages in particular are the weakest common form of two-factor, and offering a weak option next to a strong one mostly gets the weak one chosen.
  • Keep your recovery method. If you lose the device your authenticator lives on and have no backup, getting back in becomes a support matter with identity checks. Most authenticator apps offer a backup, so use it.
  • An API key is as powerful as the person who owns it. There’s no separate, narrower key, which means a key belonging to an administrator can do administrator things. Create keys from an account whose permissions match the job.
  • Permissions are what actually limit people, and they’re per company. See users, roles and companies. Sign-in security protects the account; roles decide what that account may do once it’s inside.
  • Signing out everywhere isn’t the same as changing your password. If you think a password has leaked, change it. That’s what stops somebody who already has it.

Something here wrong or missing? Tell us - the guide is maintained alongside the product.