Aug 27 • General discussion
Never remove the old admin first — Meta access rules that save WABAs
Access is where most builds stall. The client says yes in the meeting, and then two weeks disappear into screenshots, offers of a password, and one Facebook account nobody can log into anymore.
This one comes from the Academy page on partner access. The click paths, the permission levels and the WhatsApp warning are theirs. The ordering advice and the war story are mine.
People access and partner access are not the same door
The docs draw the line clearly, and getting it wrong is what creates the two-week version:
- People access is for individuals. The client's own employees. Use it for your team and the client has to invite each of your teammates one by one, and when someone leaves your agency the client has to remember to remove them.
- Partner access is for businesses. Agencies and freelancers with a portfolio. One grant from the client, and you assign your own people to their assets yourself. Someone leaves, you remove them on your side and the client does nothing.
Ownership does not move either way. Partner access never transfers ownership, and the client keeps everything. Worth saying out loud on the call, because it is the thing they are quietly worried about.
You need your own portfolio before any of this
Partner access is business to business, so you need a Business Portfolio of your own at business.facebook.com. Your ID is the 16-digit number under your business name in Business Settings → Business Info.
Keep it somewhere you can paste from. You read it out on almost every onboarding call.
Route A: the client grants access
The client does the work, from their own settings:
- Business Settings → Partners → Add → Give a partner access to your assets.
- They enter your 16-digit Business Portfolio ID.
- They pick the assets to share.
- They set the permission levels and click Assign.
The assets appear in your portfolio within a minute. This route is fine when the client is technical, or when you are sitting next to them anyway.
Route B: you ask, they approve
Same menu, other option. You do the work, and the client's entire job is one Approve button:
- Business Settings → Partners → Add → Ask a partner to assign you their assets.
- Enter the client's email and their Business Portfolio ID.
- Specify the assets and the permission levels you are asking for.
- The client gets a notification and clicks Approve.
- Track what is still pending in your Partners tab.
The docs put it plainly: this is what separates agencies that launch in a day from agencies that spend a week emailing screenshots. Make Route B your default. The only thing you need from the client before you start is their portfolio ID, and that is one message.
Ask for task-level access, not the keys
Ask for partial access matched to the job. The docs are direct about why: it is what security-conscious clients expect, and it protects you too, because you cannot be blamed for what you could not touch.
What to request:
- Ad account → Manage campaigns. Enough to launch, edit, and optimize ads.
- Facebook Page → Ads + content, or messaging if you run the inbox. Publish click-to-WhatsApp ads, manage responses.
- Instagram account → Messages + ads. DM automation and ad placements.
- Pixel or dataset → Manage. Fire CAPI events, build audiences.
- Portfolio-wide → don't ask. Full control of the whole portfolio is almost never needed, and asking for it triggers the "is this safe?" conversation.
WhatsApp is the exception, and partner access is not enough
Everything above covers ads and pages. Connecting WhatsApp to Chatfuel does not run on partner access. The person clicking Connect has to be logged into a Facebook account with Full control of the client's portfolio.
Two ways that stay clean:
- Screen-share. The client logs in and clicks while you tell them where to click. Fifteen minutes, no extra access granted, nothing to revoke afterwards.
- One senior person with People access. For a long relationship, the client adds one of your senior team under Business Settings → People with Full control, and you stop depending on their calendar every time something needs reconnecting.
Never remove the old admin first
This is the one that costs real money, and it happens when a client switches agencies. The new team gets set up, someone tidies up by removing the previous agency's admin, and the account goes dark.
Straight from the docs: removing the old admin first can lock everyone out of the WABA, and getting it back means a support case with Meta. Make sure the new account has full access and can actually see the WhatsApp Business Account under Accounts → WhatsApp accounts before removing anyone.
The version of this I have watched go wrong was not even careless. The handover was documented, the new admin was added, everybody agreed the old agency was finished, and nobody opened the WhatsApp accounts tab to confirm the new admin could see the number before the old one was pulled, which turned a Tuesday afternoon into three weeks of a client's leads going nowhere while a support ticket sat in a queue.
Verify the new door opens before you close the old one.
When something is still red
The docs list four things to check, and between them they cover nearly everything:
- The request never arrived. Usually the wrong email or the wrong portfolio ID.
- Assets were shared but you cannot see them.
- You have access, but not enough of it for the task.
- The admin left the company. The worst one, and the reason for the rule above.
I wrote out the scripts for asking a client for access a while back. This post is what happens after they say yes.
Honest question
Have you ever lost access to an account you built, and was it the client who pulled it or someone on your own side who removed the wrong person?
My bet is on your side, and on a cleanup that happened in the week the client stopped answering.
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Never remove the old admin first — Meta access rules that save WABAs
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