Parent Companies – How Do They Work – How to Set Them Up

“How does the parent company relate to functions within the system?”

Parent companies can be assigned to any type of company. It could be to a manufacturer, distributor or customer account type. The purpose is to track the relationship and be able to read sales reports as either detailed per account or rolled up to just the parent company account. 

The designation who the parent company is, open the “child” company record, hit edit and assign the parent in that field. 

Now you can use the “Summarized by Parent Company” button on the customer summary sales report. 

For all accounts, this is the extent of interrelating the accounts do. 

For Manufacturers, there is another choice point. On the activity journals, you can select which manufacturer company accounts show on the principals list or not. For example, if you only need to report back to the manufacturer on total activities, then you could just put the headquarter manufacturer account on the principal’s list. If you need to report to them by division, you may want to include the relevant manufacturer/child accounts on the activity journal principals list as well. 

Here’s an article on how to adjust the principal list for activity journals.

Parent company, on principal records allows you to open the parent company account and see all contacts, regardless of branch location, under the contacts tab.

In addition to adding CRM function, the use of parent company assignment is for sales reports on customer or distributor accounts. If you go to Sales Reports > Customer Summary and select “summarize by parent company” the dollars roll up to the parent company as a total instead of showing by branch [example Kirby or Ace in image].