How to give an agency partner access in Meta Business Suite

To give an agency access to your Meta assets, someone with full control of your business portfolio opens Settings in Meta Business Suite, clicks Partners under Users, then Add > Give a partner access to your assets. They enter the agency's business portfolio ID, choose the Pages, Instagram accounts, ad accounts or datasets and the access for each, and click Assign assets. No password changes hands, and the assets stay in your business portfolio.

Meta has renamed several things, so guides and screens disagree. Business Manager is now called a business portfolio. The settings area is called Settings in Meta Business Suite, though some screens still show an Open Business Settings button. Meta's newer help pages say full access where older ones say full control; both mean the top level. This guide uses the names on Meta's help pages today, and the glossary lists the old and new names.

Before you start

• Who can do it. Only a person with full control of the business portfolio can add partners. If nobody in your business has full control any more, Meta has a request process that asks for documents.
• What the agency sends you. The agency needs its own business portfolio, and it tells you that portfolio's ID. It is a long number; see how to find a business portfolio ID.
• Where your assets are. You can only share assets that are in your business portfolio, and each asset can be in one portfolio only. If a Page, Instagram account or ad account is not in yours yet, add it first. The guides for a Facebook Page, an Instagram account and an ad account show how.
• Two-factor authentication. Meta asks you to turn it on for the business portfolio if it is not on already.

Partner or person: why the agency gets partner access

Meta has two ways to give someone access to your business portfolio. A person is added to your business portfolio under People and given assets one by one. A partner is another business, such as an agency, that gets access under Partners.

Partner access is the better fit for an agency. The agency's business gets the access, and the agency assigns its own staff to your assets inside its own portfolio. When someone leaves the agency, the agency removes them; you do nothing. The agency cannot hand out more than you gave it: if you gave partial access, it can only give its people the tasks you chose. And when the work ends, you remove one partner instead of hunting down each person.

Give the agency access: the steps

1. Go to Settings in Meta Business Suite for your business portfolio.
2. In the menu on the left, under Users, click Partners. If you do not see Partners, you probably do not have full control of the business portfolio.
3. Click Add, then select Give a partner access to your assets.
4. Enter the agency's business portfolio ID and click Next.
5. Choose the assets to share and the level of access for each one. For partial access, select the tasks the agency will work on.
6. Click Assign assets.

You can also start from the asset. Meta's help names an Assign Partner button on the Ad accounts tab, and datasets and catalogs have Assign partners under Data sources.

Choose the access for each asset

Every asset offers full control or partial access. Partial access is a set of tasks, and Meta names them differently for each kind of asset.

• Facebook Page. The partial-access tasks are Content, Community activity, Messages, Ads and Insights. A partner with full control can manage everything except the most sensitive actions: it cannot delete or deactivate the Page, add it to or remove it from a business portfolio, or connect or disconnect an Instagram account.
• Instagram account. The tasks are Content, Messages, Community activity, Ads and Insights, plus two for Meta's creator tools. Full control adds managing access and the payment method used to run ads.
• Ad account. View performance lets the agency view ads and reports. Manage campaigns adds creating and editing ads. Manage ad accounts is full control and adds the ad account's settings, finances and permissions.
• Dataset (pixel). Use events dataset lets the agency view the data and analytics and create conversion ads with it. Manage events dataset adds all settings, events, user access and audiences.

For an agency that runs ads, that usually means Ads and Insights on the Page and the Instagram account, Manage campaigns on the ad account, and Use events dataset on the dataset. Meta says that to advertise for a Page you need full control or partial access with Ads. The guide to access levels sets these next to Google's levels. For the leads from lead ads, see the leads access guide.

When a second admin has to approve

After you click Assign assets, Meta may hold the share until someone else with full control of your business portfolio approves it. Meta recommends that two active people have full control, and calls this second admin approval: a second person has to approve sensitive actions.

If the share is waiting, ask the other person with full control to open Requests in Settings. That is where Meta's help sends people to approve actions started by someone else in the portfolio, and Meta's developer guide gives the same place for an ad account share that needs another admin's review.

Troubleshooting

Partners is missing from Settings

You probably do not have full control of this business portfolio. Ask someone who has it to give you full control, or to do the share. Check also that you are in the right portfolio: the name shows on Business portfolio info.

The asset is not in the list

It is not in your business portfolio. Either it was never added, or another business portfolio owns it, for example an old agency's. Only the owning portfolio can share an asset, so ask that business to share it with you or to remove it from its portfolio so you can add it.

The agency says it cannot run ads

Check the Page as well as the ad account. Ads need both: Manage campaigns on the ad account and Ads on the Page. Meta's own ads errors are listed in Meta sharing errors and fixes.

Check it worked, and how to undo it

Both you and the agency can see the shared assets in Settings of your own business portfolios. The agency should confirm that it sees them on its side.

To remove the agency later:

1. Go to Settings in Meta Business Suite.
2. Click Partners in the left menu.
3. Select the agency, click Options in the top right, then Remove from business portfolio.
4. Click Remove partner.

Removing a partner is a different action from removing a person. If anyone from the agency was also added to your portfolio as a person, remove them under People too. The full offboarding steps are in how to remove an old agency's access.

Why apps cannot do every step for you

Meta's developer documentation explains the gaps. Its business-to-business guide describes calls for requesting and for granting access to ad accounts and Pages, but says access to these endpoints has been limited since June 8, 2021, and apps without access get an error. The reference page for an ad account's agencies documents reading and removing an agency, and lists no operation for adding one. So an app that does not have that access cannot share an ad account for you: that share is made on Meta's own screen.

Doing it with an access link

Our access link covers this task. The agency connects its business portfolio once, so it never has to send you its ID. You open the link, sign in with Facebook, pick your Pages, Instagram accounts, ad accounts and datasets from lists, and confirm. An ad account, and for now a dataset, takes one more step on Meta's own screen: the box gives you the agency's business ID to paste, shows the steps and checks that the access arrived. For the ad account this is because Meta closed that part of its API to new apps in 2021. If you cannot share an asset, the box says why and who can, and the same link works for that person.