What is Meta Business Portfolio and are you in control of yours?
Facebook and Instagram are crucial business assets. Here’s how to leverage them and make sure someone else doesn’t have the keys to your account.
By Alexandra Neves-Puffer, Wheelhouse Strategy
If you own or manage a business (particularly a small business), Facebook and Instagram are some of your most valuable digital assets for sales, marketing and advertising. But do you know exactly who can access and manage your social media channels? When you’re ready to advertise on social media, can you say with certainty that you have control of your account? Did you know Meta Business Portfolio dictates these things? Do you even know what Meta Business Portfolio is?
In our experience working with many clients, we’re surprised to find that many business owners and managers answer the above with: “No.” We understand the frustration this can cause. So, let’s take a closer look at Meta Business Portfolio and why it matters to your business.

A brief overview of Meta Business Portfolio
In March 2024, Meta (the umbrella company of Facebook and Instagram) made significant changes to Facebook Business Pages and the broader Business Portfolio management system. The result became Meta Business Portfolio (previously known as a Business Manager account): which is a centralized hub for grouping all business accounts and assets into one entity. Ultimately, it helps businesses streamline their Facebook and Instagram account access, advertising activities, and analytics in one place.
Sounds great, right? It is. But there’s a catch:
If you don’t fully understand the BP platform, how it works, and who controls it, you might be surprised to find out that someone else actually owns the keys to your business. Without them, you can’t advertise and you can’t make changes. Yikes.
Fortunately, the social experts here at Wheelhouse can help. Read on to get a better understanding of Meta Business Portfolio’s features, how they can help your business, and how to gain (and keep) control of it.
The best features of Meta Business Portfolio
Find your Meta Business Portfolio and find out who controls it.
Here’s a real world example
One of our employees last ran ads for a former employer years ago and with this roll out was made the sole user in control of their Business Portfolio. Had the employer tried to run Facebook ads before this was fixed, they would have found themselves locked out of the Meta Business Portfolio that controls their Facebook page and unable to advertise.
Now that you know what Meta Business Portfolio is. Here’s a summary of what it does for your business, and thus why it’s important to have control over it. In our experience, its best features include:
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Unified Inbox: The Business Portfolio brings together messages from Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger into a single unified inbox. This integration helps businesses manage all their communications from one place, improving response times and ensuring that no message is missed.
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Content Management and Cross-Platform Posting: Businesses can now create and schedule posts for Facebook and Instagram simultaneously. This cross-platform functionality saves time and ensures consistent messaging across both platforms.
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Comprehensive Insights: The updated insights tools provide more detailed analytics on post performance, audience demographics, and engagement metrics. These insights are crucial for businesses to understand what content resonates with their audience and to refine their social media strategies accordingly.
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Ad Management: Ad creation and management have also been streamlined within the Business Portfolio. Create, manage, and track ad performance from one central location, making advertising campaigns more manageable and effective.
Even with these impressive features, you might still be wondering, “Do I really need to use Meta Business Portfolio?” The answer is yes, for two primary reasons:
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You need it if you want to advertise on, and make the most of, Facebook and/or Instagram, then Meta Business Portfolio is how you do it.
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Meta Business Portfolio is not an optional tool, and whether you’re ready or not, Meta has already defaulted pages to it. In fact, if your page has ever run ads, a Business Portfolio was automatically created. And the reality is that the person who managed those ads is now in control of your Business Portfolio – even if this person no longer works for you. That’s right, their access remains available unless they manually change it. So the time is now to find your account and find out who controls.
Learning about Meta’s Business Portfolio management system changes is catching many businesses off-guard. The reason is often simple. Sometime in the past, an employee set it all up quickly, without fully understanding the implications. Further, Meta does not tell you who has access to your Meta Business Portfolio. So now, some businesses are realizing they can’t use advertising systems without gaining control of, and carefully managing who has access to, both their Facebook/Instagram pages and their Business Portfolio.
Need help or want to grow your business with Meta Business Portfolio? Talk to us.
Fortunately, Wheelhouse is fully versed in fixing these issues and we quickly resolved the issue. Further, we’ve helped other businesses use this link to find who has portfolio access by contacting employees that have managed the Facebook page. If we strike out in-house, we can even reach out to former employees and contractors.
OK. So now you’re up to speed and ready to see if your Meta Business Portfolio is in order and accessible for advertising.
Here’s how to do it.
Remember, business pages now live under Business Portfolios, and while you may have access to your business page, it does not guarantee you have access to your Business Portfolio, which controls your page and ability to advertise. If you already have access to your Business Portfolio (it would appear here) these are the steps to find out who else manages it:
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Access Business Settings:
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Log in to your Facebook account and navigate to the Meta Business Suite, this is where any Business Portfolios you have access to will be.
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Click on the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines) in the top left corner.
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Select "Business Settings" from the dropdown menu.
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Navigate to Users:
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In the Business Settings menu, you will see various options on the left-hand side. Click on "Users" to expand the section.
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You will find sub-sections such as "People," "Partners," and "System Users."
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View People:
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Click on "People" to see a list of all individuals who have been granted access to your business account.
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Here, you can see the names, email addresses, and assigned roles of everyone who manages your Business Portfolio.
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For each person listed, you can see their level of access, either Basic or Full Control. Basic is the default access assigned when people are added to a business portfolio.People with full control of your business portfolio can manage everything, including settings, people, tools and business assets, such as your Facebook page.
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To view detailed access permissions, click on the person’s name. A side panel will open, showing their access levels for pages, ad accounts, and other assets.
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Review Partners:
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If your business works with external partners (such as agencies like Wheelhouse Strategy), click on "Partners" under the Users section.
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Here, you will see the partner agencies or businesses that have access to your Business Portfolio.
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You can click on each partner to view the specific assets they have access to and the roles assigned to their team members.
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System Users:
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"System Users" are used for automated systems and applications that access your business account. Check this section to understand if any automated systems have management roles.
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Business Info:
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Go to the "Business Info" section in the Business Settings. Here, you can see the primary contact and business admin.
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The business admin is typically the person responsible for the overall management of the Business Portfolio.
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Page Roles (Optional):
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If you need to check who manages individual Facebook Pages within your portfolio, go to each page’s settings.
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Navigate to the "Page Roles" section to see the list of admins, editors, moderators, and other roles assigned to the page.
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There you have it. And now you can regularly review who manages your Business Portfolio, which is crucial for maintaining security and ensuring proper management of your digital assets. Keeping your Business Portfolio management transparent and up-to-date helps safeguard your business’s social media presence and ensure smooth operations when it comes time to run ads.
If you don't have access to your Business Portfolio and want to advertise on Facebook, contact us. Our expert team specializes in helping clients understand and fully leverage Meta advertising with Meta, and Business Portfolio account recovery.