Multi-entity customers | Paid

Overview

Multi-entity customers let you set up a parent-child relationship between customer accounts so that billing consolidates at the parent level. This is useful when a single organization has multiple teams, departments, or subsidiaries that each need their own customer record, but invoices should go to one central account.

When a child customer has an order, Paid bills the parent customer by default. Each child customer still has its own orders, contacts, and usage history — the only thing that changes is where the invoice lands.

How it works

A customer becomes a parent when one or more other customers are assigned to it. The parent does not need any special configuration — any existing customer can serve as a parent.

When you create or edit a child customer and assign a parent:

New orders for the child customer are billed to the parent by default
The parent receives consolidated invoices that include charges from its own orders and from all child customer orders
The child customer’s orders tab still shows all of its orders, but invoices for those orders appear under the parent

This means the parent account is the one that receives and pays invoices, while each child account tracks its own service usage independently.

Setting up a hierarchy

Navigate to the customer you want to make a child account, or create a new customer
In the customer form, select a parent from the Parent customer dropdown
Save the customer

Once saved, the child customer’s detail page shows a link to the parent in the sidebar. The parent customer’s detail page gains a Child customers tab listing all accounts underneath it.

What you see in the dashboard

On the parent customer

A Child customers tab appears, listing every child account with a link to each one
The Invoices tab includes invoices generated for child customer orders as well as the parent’s own orders
The Orders tab shows only the parent’s own direct orders

On a child customer

The sidebar shows the parent customer as a clickable link
The Orders tab shows the child’s orders with a notice explaining that new orders will bill the parent by default
The Invoices tab shows any invoices billed directly to the child, with a note that most invoices appear under the parent

Overriding the billing target

The parent default applies automatically, but you can override it on a per-order basis. When creating an order, choose a different billing customer to bill that order directly — including billing the child itself.

This is useful when a specific order should be billed directly to the child rather than rolling up to the parent.

Changing or removing a parent

You can change a child’s parent or remove the relationship entirely at any time by editing the customer. Updating the parent does not retroactively move existing invoices — it only affects how new orders are billed going forward.

Multi-level hierarchies

Hierarchies can go deeper than one level. A child customer can itself be a parent to other customers, forming a tree. Paid prevents circular references, so you cannot assign a customer as a parent of its own ancestor.

Common use cases

Resellers: a reseller account is the parent, each of their downstream customers is a child. The reseller receives one consolidated invoice.
Enterprise departments: a company’s finance team is the parent account, and each business unit or team has its own child customer with separate usage tracking.
Holding companies: a parent entity manages billing for multiple subsidiaries, each with independent orders and contacts.