--- title: "Login codes for teams — stop sending them to one person’s phone" description: "The login code for a shared company account goes to one employee’s mobile and everyone else waits. How teams receive those texts together, and when to use something else." canonical: "https://sharedsmsinbox.com/login-codes-for-teams" --- # The login code went to Sarah’s phone. Again. > The login code for a shared company account goes to one employee’s mobile and everyone else waits. How teams receive those texts together, and when to use something else. Shared company accounts text a code to one number. If that number is an employee’s mobile, every sign-in depends on them picking up. - [Get your number](https://app.sharedsmsinbox.com) - [Create free account](https://app.sharedsmsinbox.com) _No credit card required. Pay only when you choose your number._ ## How do you stop login codes going to one employee’s phone? ### How do I stop login codes going to an employee’s personal phone? Put a company-controlled phone number on the account instead, and connect that number to a shared inbox your approved colleagues can open. ### How do teams share SMS verification codes? The workable way is a company number connected to a shared inbox; the common way — forwarding screenshots into a chat — is what teams usually want to stop doing. ### Can several employees receive the same verification code? Yes, if the code is sent to a company number whose inbox several approved people can open. The service sending the code does not know or care whose phone is on the other end — it just texts the number on the account. So you change the number on the account to one the company owns. From then on the code arrives in a shared inbox rather than on a handset. Anyone you have approved can read it, at the same time, without asking anyone. Nobody has to be awake, at their desk, or still employed. Most teams start by asking one colleague to read the code out, then graduate to pasting screenshots into a group chat. That works, in the sense that people get in. It also means codes sit in a channel for months, more people see them than should, and one person gets interrupted constantly. A shared inbox removes the forwarding step entirely. The message goes straight to the place the team already has permission to look. One text message, one inbox, several readers. The service still sends a single code to a single number — what changes is that the number delivers to a group instead of a handset. You choose who those people are, one by one, and you can take the access away again. See [security and access](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/security) for how that works. ## When this becomes a real problem It is a small annoyance most weeks and a genuine blocker a few times a year. - **The month-end close** — Finance needs to get into the accounting system today. The code goes to a colleague who is on a flight, and the deadline does not move. - **The campaign that has to go live** — The advertising account asks for verification. The person who set it up is on leave with notifications off. - **The leaver nobody thought about** — An employee left in March. In June the supplier portal texts their old number, and now the account has to be recovered from the supplier. - **The channel full of codes** — Six months of screenshotted verification texts sit in a group chat that half the company can scroll back through. ## Four steps to move one account across Start with the account that interrupts people most. It is reversible, and you will know within a week whether it helps. 1. **Create your account** — Sign up with a work email. Nothing is charged and no card is asked for. 2. **Get your number** — Choose an available company number. _($49/month starts here.)_ 3. **Invite the people who need it** — Add the colleagues who sign in to that account. Each gets their own login. 4. **Change the number on the account** — Sign in to the service, replace the mobile number with your company number, and send yourself a test. _(Test before you rely on it.)_ ## When you should use something else instead A shared number is the right answer for a narrow situation. Here is when it is not. We would rather you set this up for the right accounts than for all of them, so: - **If the service supports individual employee logins, use them.** An account each, with its own permissions, is better than any form of sharing. Reach for a shared number only where the service genuinely offers one login for the whole company. - **If the service supports an authenticator app or a security key, prefer that.** Those are generally regarded as stronger than codes sent by text. A shared SMS inbox does not change how secure SMS is — it changes who can act on the message. - **If only one person ever uses the account, leave it alone.** There is no sharing problem to solve. What is left over is the real case: **an account a team genuinely shares, at a service that insists on a phone number.** That is common enough — accounting software, advertising accounts, supplier and government portals, booking platforms — and for those, a company number is easier to manage than somebody’s mobile. > Whether a particular service will accept your company number is decided by that service. Some accept only certain kinds of number, and many accept only numbers from their own country. Test it before you depend on it. ## Three things worth doing at the same time 1. **Write down which accounts are shared.** Most teams have never listed them, and the list is usually longer than expected. It is also the list you will need the next time somebody leaves. 2. **Check which ones still point at a former employee.** These are the ones that will fail at the worst possible moment. Fix them first. 3. **Delete the codes from your chat history.** Once the messages arrive in a shared inbox, the screenshots in the group chat are no longer serving a purpose. ## Questions about login codes ### Can my whole team see the same SMS? Yes. Every teammate you invite and give access to sees the messages that arrive at your company number, at the same time, in the same inbox. You decide who that is. Anyone who has not been given access to the number cannot see its messages at all. ### Can I remove someone’s access? Yes. An administrator can remove a person’s access at any time, and they stop being able to open the number’s messages. Because everyone signs in as themselves rather than sharing one login, removing one teammate changes nothing for the rest of the team and no password needs to be reset. ### Can I use the number for login codes? Yes — that is the most common reason teams get one. You give your company number to the account that sends the code, and the code arrives in the shared inbox where approved teammates can read it. Whether a particular service accepts the number is decided by that service, so test it before you rely on it. ### Is this better than using an employee’s personal number? For an account a team genuinely shares, usually yes: the company keeps the number, and several people can read the message. It is not an upgrade to the security of SMS itself. Where a service offers each employee their own login, or supports an authenticator app, that is normally the better choice. ### Can we see older messages? Yes. Messages stay in the shared inbox so your team can look back at what arrived and when, and the inbox records activity so you can see who has been reading messages. Because these messages can contain login codes, the inbox does not keep them forever — see the security page for what is stored and for how long. ## Where to go next - [How to share login codes with your team](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/blog/share-login-codes-with-your-team) — The full guide, including what to do when somebody leaves. - [What a shared SMS inbox is](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/shared-sms-inbox) — The plain definition of the thing that fixes this. - [Shared phone number for teams](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/shared-phone-number-for-teams) — Why it matters that the company owns the number. - [Security and access](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/security) — Who can read the codes, and how you take access away. - [How it works](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/how-it-works) — The four steps in detail. - [Pricing](https://sharedsmsinbox.com/pricing) — $49/month per number, however many people need it. ## Nobody should have to ask, “Who has the phone?” Move one shared account onto a company number this afternoon and see whether the interruptions stop. - [Get your number](https://app.sharedsmsinbox.com) _$49/month per phone number. No credit card required. Pay only when you choose your number._ --- Canonical: https://sharedsmsinbox.com/login-codes-for-teams Every page of this site is also available as Markdown. Site map: https://sharedsmsinbox.com/llms.txt