How to manage multiple customers with a single invoicing entity (Parent company)

Breww makes it easy to manage multiple customers under a single parent company. You can sync all invoices and credit notes issued to customers in a parent company to a single "customer" in your accounting software. This allows you to group customer accounts in Breww under the parent company group account, and is especially useful if you have a single billing entity for a group of customers set up with a direct debit mandate in your accounting software. Here's how to do it:

Step 1: Create a parent company

1. Go to Customers -> View -> Parent companies.
2. Click the New parent company button and enter the details for the parent company.

Step 2: Add customers to the parent company

1. Go to Customers and click on the customer you want to add.
2. Click Edit in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
3. Scroll down to customer details and select the parent company from the parent company field.

Step 3: Map your parent company to your accounting software

1. Go to Integrations -> Accountancy.

2. Select your accountancy platform and head to the Tools tab.

3. Click on the Map and download customers button.

4. Map the parent company to a single "customer" in your accounting software.

   And that's it! Any invoices or credit notes issued to customers in the parent company will now be synced to the parent company and to the single entity in your accounting software.

Billing and delivery addresses

parent companies give you the flexibility to decide which addresses are shown on invoices for customers within a parent company. If, when creating a parent company, you check the option to "use this parent company address and name as the billing address on invoices raised to customers in this parent company", then you will be able to retain individual customers' delivery addresses on invoices whilst having all billing addresses show the invoice address set on the parent company itself, which is practical if you are selling to a wholesaler, or pub chain where billing is handled centrally. Equally, if you use the parent company for accounting only but wish to have the billing and delivery address on an invoice be those set on the individual customer, then you can uncheck this box.

Setting if the parent company and or its sub-customers receive automatic emails

Two separate things decide what happens when Breww emails an invoice or delivery note for a customer in a parent company:

1. Whether an automatic email is sent at all - controlled by your account default settings, which a parent company or an individual customer can override. This is covered below.
2. Who it is sent to - controlled by tags on email addresses, not by any parent company setting. See Which email addresses will be used? for the full order Breww works through.

Which addresses on a parent company are used

A parent company's email address is only ever used if it carries the relevant tag:

The tag can be on the parent company's own primary email address, or on any of the parent company's contacts. When a customer in the parent company is emailed a document, Breww adds any tagged addresses it finds on the parent company to the recipients, labelled as coming from the parent company.

To stop a parent company receiving automatic emails, remove the tag from its email address and from its contacts. You don't need to delete the address itself - an untagged address is never emailed, so you can safely keep it on record for reference.

Automatic invoice emails for parent companies

Whether an automatic invoice email is sent at all is decided by your account default setting for "When should Breww automatically send an email with the PDF invoice attached (with the exception of SIBA orders)?", set in Settings->Order/invoice settings-> Sales order & invoice settings under the heading of Invoice issuing settings.

If automatic sending is switched on, the parent company will be included in the recipients for its customers' invoices whenever the parent company has an address tagged Receives invoice emails - either its own primary email address or an email address on one of its contacts.

Automatic delivery note emails for parent companies

Delivery notes work the same way. Automatic sending is switched on in Settings->Email settings with the option to Automatically send delivery note PDF by email to customer, for example "Automatically send when delivery is completed (sent 10 minutes after to give time for signatures to be added)".

The parent company is then included in the recipients whenever it has an address tagged Receives delivery note emails. Note that this is a different tag to the invoice one - tagging an address for invoices does not opt it in to delivery notes.

Setting if the parent company's sub-customers receive automatic emails

There are a couple of variables which determine if a customer in a parent company receives an email invoice. Whether customers receive automatic emails is typically also defined by your account defaults, but there are two things that change this. The first is whether your customer is part of a parent company, in which case the parent company's automatic email settings override the account default. The second is if you set a specific automatic email setting on the customers themselves, this overrides both the account default and any parent company they are a part of.

Setting automatic email settings on a parent company

When editing or creating a parent company, you will have the option to choose whether Breww should "Automatically email invoices to this parent company's customers" and whether Breww should "Automatically email delivery notes to this parent company's customers", what you choose here will override the account defaults on whether emails should be automatically sent, but will not override what you set on the customer themselves.

Setting automatic email settings on individual customers within a parent company

You can set individual customers' own automatic email settings by editing the customer and, under customer details, choosing an option for "Automatically email invoices" and "Automatically email delivery notes". If you choose a setting here, this will override the account default and anything set on any parent companies they are a part of.

FAQs

Can I add a lead to a parent company?

Yes. This is done in just the same way as adding a customer.