Working with Parent/Child Accounts

You can create Child Accounts for a main or Parent Account in m3ter. You might want to do this if your Organization has end customers with multiple Accounts and instead of issuing multiple Bills to the end customer, you want to provide them with a Bill for a single Parent account that pools usage data across multiple Child Accounts.

How Bills are calculated and compiled for Parent/Child Accounts depends upon:

• The Account Plan location - whether it is on the Parent or Child Accounts.
• The billing mode settings you use when you attach a priced Plan to Parent/Child Accounts to create Account Plans for the Accounts.

For more details on the configuration options available for controlling billing for Parent/Child Accounts, see Billing Hierarchy Modes for Parent/Child Accounts.

This topic explains how to create a Child Account and how to review and work with Child Accounts and their Parent Accounts in the Console:

• Creating Child Accounts
• Reviewing Parent/Child Accounts
• Recalculating and Running Billing for Parent/Child Accounts

Important!

• Parent/Child billing for Recurring Charges not supported. If you price a Plan using a Counter to apply unit-based pricing for recurring subscription charges and attach the Plan to Parent or Child Accounts, Parent/Child billing is not supported for the recurring charges.
• Limit on Child Accounts. A Parent Account can have a maximum of 999 Child Accounts.

Creating Child Accounts

You can define an Account as a Child Account either when you first create it or by updating an existing Account. See Creating an Account.

Important! Grandparent Account Creation is Blocked. To prevent circular reference, if you try to create a Parent for an Account that has a Child Account, the request will be blocked.

Reviewing Parent/Child Accounts

When you have created a Parent Account for one or more Child Accounts, you can go to the Account Overview page of the Parent Account and review its Child Accounts.

Tip: Is an Account a Child or a Parent? If you want to check whether or not an Account is linked to another Account as Child or Parent, then open the Account - only Parent Accounts or Accounts that have not been designated as Child Accounts will have a Child Accounts tab.

To review Child Accounts:

1. Select Accounts. The Accounts page opens.
2. Select the Name text of the Parent Account. The Account page opens with the Overview tab selected.
3. Select the Child accounts tab. The Child accounts panel lists any Accounts that are defined as children:

4. If you want to review the details of a Child Account, select its Name text. The Account page for the selected Child Account opens with the Overview tab selected and you can review any Bills, Prepayments, Plans, or Contracts for the Child Account:

Tip: Child Accounts don’t have Child Accounts tab? Since a Child Account cannot also be a Parent Account, the Child Account page doesn’t carry a Child Accounts tab.

5. If you want to return to the Parent Account, on the Account details panel, select the hotlink text under Parent account. You are returned to the Parent Account page.
6. If you want to remove the Child Account from the Parent Account, select Remove child account. You’ll receive a confirmation message that the Child has been removed.
7. If you want to review the details of any of the Parent Account’s other Child Accounts, repeat steps 4 and 5.

Recalculating and Running Billing for Parent/Child Accounts

Warning: Billing does not run for Child Accounts separately!

• Recalculating Parent/Child Account Bills: Only when you recalculate a Parent Account will its Child Accounts be recalculated. See Reviewing and Recalculating Bills for an Account.
• Running billing for Parent/Child Accounts: Only when you run billing for a Parent Account will billing run for its Child Accounts. See Running Bills Manually.