Account Hierarchy
Use account hierarchy to model parent and child billing relationships for groups, branches, or multi-location customers.
Account hierarchy lets one account relate to another account for billing and reporting purposes. It is useful when a customer has multiple branches, departments, locations, or family members that should be tracked separately but billed through a shared billing owner.
Parent and Child Accounts#
In a hierarchy, a parent account is the main billing owner and a child account is a related account. Child accounts can represent locations, departments, teams, or related customer records.
An account can carry hierarchy fields such as:
- A parent account reference.
- A bill-to setting that determines where billing responsibility belongs.
- Account identity and address fields that remain unique to the child account.
When to Use Hierarchy#
Use account hierarchy when you need to separate operational records while still connecting billing responsibility.
Examples:
- A pet-care group has several branch locations, but head office pays the invoices.
- A company books grooming services for several departments, but finance needs a central billing account.
- A family or group has multiple customer profiles, but one person owns billing.
- A franchise or multi-site operation wants reporting by branch while keeping payment responsibility centralised.
Bill-To Behaviour#
The bill-to setting describes whether an account is billed directly or whether billing should be handled by the related billing owner.
| Billing pattern | What it means |
|---|---|
| Self-billed account | The account receives and pays its own invoices. |
| Parent-billed account | The account remains visible as a child record, while billing responsibility belongs to the parent or billing-owner account. |
The exact values used by the backend and UI can differ by workflow, but the business concept stays the same: decide where invoice responsibility belongs.
Current Product Support#
The shared Account model and mba-api backend include hierarchy fields for parent account relationships and bill-to behaviour. Subscription and invoice mini account records also include hierarchy information, which means the billing domain can carry those relationships through related records.
The current Account UI should be treated conservatively for end-to-end hierarchy administration. It can display and store the account fields that exist, but full hierarchy management, rollup review, and consolidated billing workflows still need a clearer operational surface.
Recommended Setup Rules#
- Use unique account codes for parent and child accounts.
- Keep child account names descriptive enough to identify the location or department.
- Keep the parent account email and tax settings accurate if it will own billing.
- Confirm the billing owner before creating subscriptions or charges.
- Review invoice behaviour after setup, especially when subscriptions belong to child accounts.