Set up Meta Business Suite so your company owns everything

The short answer

To set up Meta Business Suite properly, create a business portfolio (what Meta used to call Business Manager) using the business owner’s own Facebook profile, add a second trusted admin, and turn on two-step login for both. Then bring your Facebook Page, Instagram account, ad account, pixel and domain into that portfolio, give staff only the access they need, and give agencies partner access rather than ownership.

The order matters because ownership is hard to unpick later. Many small businesses find their ad account or pixel sitting inside a former agency’s or employee’s portfolio, and getting it back can take weeks. Ten careful minutes at the start avoids that.

Business Suite, Business Manager and business portfolio

The names confuse people. Meta Business Suite is the dashboard where you post, answer messages and see insights for your Page and Instagram account. The business portfolio is the container underneath that owns your assets and controls who can touch them. Business settings is where you manage that portfolio: people, partners, accounts, data sources and brand safety. When this guide says set up Business Suite, it means getting the portfolio right, because everything else depends on it.

Step 1: decide who owns it

• The owner or a senior person should create the portfolio from their own Facebook profile. Each admin logs in with their own personal account. Do not create a fake profile for the business: Meta’s terms expect accounts to belong to real people, and fake ones can be restricted.
• Use the legal business name and a business email on a domain you control, not a personal Gmail and not an agency’s address.
• Add a second admin straight away. If the only admin loses access to their profile, the whole portfolio is stuck. Two people with full control is the minimum; more than three is rarely needed in a small company.
• Turn on two-step login for every admin, and, where the portfolio’s security settings offer it, require it for everyone.

Step 2: bring in your assets

Add each asset to the portfolio. Where you already own it, claim it; where someone else owns it, ask them to transfer or share it.

1. Facebook Page. Add the Page you own. If an agency or old employee owns it in their portfolio, they need to remove it from theirs or you request access.
2. Instagram account. Connect the professional Instagram account so posts, messages and ads run from one place.
3. Ad account. Create a new ad account inside your portfolio if you do not already own one. Set the business time zone and currency carefully: they are hard to change later, and fixing a mistake can mean opening a new account.
4. Payment method. Add a company card to the ad account so spending is billed to the business, not to an individual.
5. Pixel or dataset. Create it in Events Manager under your portfolio and assign it to your ad account. Covered below.
6. Catalog, if you sell products, connected from your store platform.

Step 3: give people the right access

Meta separates access to the portfolio itself from access to each asset. As a rule, only owners get full control of the portfolio. Everyone else gets partial access, assigned to the specific Page, ad account or dataset they work on, with only the tasks they need.

• Office manager posting to social: content and messages on the Page and Instagram, no ad account access.
• Someone approving ad spend: view performance on the ad account, plus manage campaigns if they build ads.
• Bookkeeper: view-only access to billing on the ad account.
• Outside agency: add them as a partner using their business portfolio ID and share only the assets they work on. They manage access for their own staff, and you can remove the whole agency in one step.

Review the people and partners list every quarter, and remove anyone who has left the business on their last day. A former employee with ad account access can spend your money or change your tracking.

Step 4: connect the pixel and Conversions API

The Meta Pixel is code on your website that reports visits and actions such as form submissions and purchases back to Meta. Meta’s developer documentation recommends putting the base code in the head of every page and checking in Events Manager that a PageView event arrives. Most site platforms, including Shopify and WordPress with a plugin, can install it for you.

Create the pixel inside your own portfolio, not inside an agency’s. If an agency already created one for you, ask them to share it to your portfolio or recreate it under yours. Then add the Conversions API, which sends the same events from your server so tracking holds up when browsers block cookies. Meta’s Conversions API setup also starts from the pixel in Events Manager.

Step 5: verify your domain

Domain verification proves to Meta that your business owns your website. Meta’s documentation describes it as a way to claim ownership of your domain in your business settings, which lets you control who can edit link previews for your site. You verify either by adding a DNS TXT record at your domain registrar or by uploading a small HTML file to the root of your website.

Whoever controls your domain’s DNS can do this in a few minutes. Do it from your own portfolio, so a partner cannot claim your domain first. After verification, check your event setup in Events Manager to confirm the right events are being received for your domain.

Not sure your setup is clean?

Book a free 30-minute call. We look at who owns your Page, ad account and pixel with you and tell you what we would fix first. No obligation. Pick a time.

Getting assets back from an agency or ex-employee

1. List what is missing. Page, Instagram, ad account, pixel, catalog, domain.
2. Ask in writing for each asset to be moved or shared to your portfolio ID. Most agencies will do it promptly when asked plainly.
3. For a Page, if the person is unreachable and you can prove the business is yours, use Meta’s help center process for requesting access to a Page.
4. For an ad account, ownership often cannot be transferred. It is usually quicker to open a new ad account in your portfolio and rebuild campaigns.
5. For a pixel, ask for it to be shared to your portfolio. If not, create a new one and replace the code on your site, accepting that history starts over.

A setup checklist to keep

• Portfolio owned by the business, two admins, two-step login required.
• Page, Instagram, ad account and pixel all inside your portfolio.
• Ad account time zone and currency correct; company payment method.
• Staff on partial access to specific assets; agencies added as partners.
• Domain verified; Pixel and Conversions API sending events.
• Quarterly access review; same-day removal when people leave.

How JLB USA helps

JLB USA has helped growing businesses with web design, marketing and IT for more than 15 years, with 500+ clients and 1,000+ projects. We set up and clean up Meta business portfolios so the business keeps ownership, install tracking properly, and run campaigns as a partner with only the access we need. Our IT team also handles same-day removal of leavers across Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace accounts. See our paid advertising services and our guide to landing pages for ads.

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