Customers and vendors in a multi-entity shared company

In a multi-entity shared environment, it's typical to have customers and vendors that are common to multiple entities. These customers and vendors can be set up once, at the top level of the company, and then used by all entities or restricted by entity or department.

Are certain customers or vendors unique to a particular entity? You can set that up too by creating them at the entity level.

Overview

  • Shared records are created at the top level and are shared among entities in a company. Shared records include transactions and objects. Shared transactions include: bills, invoices, and journal entries. Shared objects include: customers, vendors, and bank accounts. When you create shared data at the top level, you enable this data to be shared across entities and at the top level. Shared records appear in the lists of records for all entities.

  • Entity-level records (formerly known as entity private) are created at the entity level and are accessible only in the entity where the data was created. Users can transact with entity level records using either shared or entity-level objects. For example, you can generate an entity-level invoice for either a shared customer (created at the top level) or an entity-level customer.

  • Restricted records relate to customers, vendors, checking accounts, and savings accounts that the administrator can restrict to locations, location groups, departments, and department groups. For example, an administrator can choose to restrict a UK vendor to the UK entity in your company. Administrators can restrict individual vendors to the top level only, or to specific locations, location groups, departments, and department groups.

Shared customers and vendors

Customers and vendors that are created at the top level are shared by all entities. This means that they appear in lists throughout all levels of a multi-entity company and can be used anywhere in transactions, including invoices and bills entered by particular entities.

  1. Go to the top level of the company.
  2. Create or edit the customer or vendor.

Restrict by entity or department

Always make sure you're at the top level when enabling and viewing restrictions.

Enable restrictions

The ability to restrict customers and vendors is a configuration option that your administrator can turn on.

If customers and vendors at the top level have a Restrictions tab, the option is already enabled.
  1. Go toCompany > Admin > Subscriptions.

    The Subscriptions page is shown.

  2. Select Multi-Entity Management, then select Configure.
  3. In the Entity restrictions section, select any of the following items to restrict them to an entity:
    • Customers
    • Vendors
    • Checking accounts
    • Savings accounts

After saving your changes, a Restrictions tab is shown on the Information page for the data types you decided to restrict.

Restrict customers or vendors

You can restrict customers and vendors to a location or department or to the top level only.

  1. At the top level of the company, edit the customer or vendor.
  2. On the customer or vendor information page, select the Restrictions tab.
    • Unrestricted (the default) means that the customer or vendor can be used in any transaction, by any location or department.
    • To restrict by location or department, select Restricted customer or Restricted vendor, and then select particular locations and departments.
    • Restricted to top level only means that the customer or vendor can be used only by transactions entered at the top level.

Entity-specific (private) customers or vendors

To make a customer or vendor private, switch to the entity first and then create it.

A private customer or vendor can't be used in transactions for other entities. For example, an office supplies vendor that is created for an Arizona entity won't appear in the Vendors list for other entities.

What does "Not Owned" mean?

In a multi-entity company, shared records such as customers, vendors, and other items can be edited only at the top level of a company. Some journal transactions, for example, recurring journal entries created at the top level, are also owned at the top and can't be edited from within an entity.

If you display the list of shared records (customer, vendor, or entry) within an entity, you can see the shared records in the list. However, these will be listed as Not owned by the entity and the Edit option won't appear. Move to the top level, which owns the record, to make any changes.