Multi Business Entity Overview 

Introduction 

Businesses are continually exploring opportunities to grow and generate higher profits. Business expansion strategies include expansion to new markets, locations, product offerings, or mergers & acquisitions. To meet regional requirements based on compliance, taxation, and legal guidelines or internal operational criteria, most businesses choose to establish independent entities.

Let's review this example, ABCFarms a farm-tech company headquartered in Texas, USA decides to operate from India, Singapore, and Australia. To ensure compliance with the legal and taxation guidelines established by each of these countries, it is recommended to set up independent entities. In addition to the benefits associated with compliance, each entity will cater to its unique market needs and help measure performance separate from its parent organization.

Chargebee's Multi-Business Entity solution enables you to manage such multiple businesses as independent entities from a single Chargebee site. This solution is built to ensure you can manage each of your entities as you would an independent Chargebee site. This feature aims to improve the overall functionality of your Chargebee site with the following benefits:

  • Manage all entities from a single site offering a unified view.
  • Implement stringent Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC) across multiple entities.
  • Address Billing and Taxation challenges associated with multiple entities.
  • Customized Invoicing options including invoice numbering, invoice notes, and payment instructions.
  • Configure entity-specific smart routing settings.
  • Configure entity-specific checkout settings.
  • Associate customers and subscriptions to specific entities including self-serve checkout.
  • Advanced reporting to highlight performance metrics globally and entity.
  • Configure brand styles for each of your business entities.
  • Record your transactions in the time zone of your business entity.

Enable Multiple Business Entities 

Important

  • Enabling the Multi-Business Entity feature is an irreversible action.
  • Conduct a thorough smoke test of Chargebee's Multi-Business-Entity feature on a new or trial site to understand its significant impact on your business processes and requirements. After validating the capability on a trial site you can proceed with testing on your test site for a smooth transition.
  1. Click Enable to activate the addition of new entities.

  2. Enter the name in the Business entity name field. In Entity ID enter your own unique entity ID, if you leave the field blank then Chargebee will automatically generate a unique identifier for it. Click Confirm and Enable. Learn more about Entity ID.

  3. Click Go to Business Entities to view all entities once enabled.

  4. View the first and default business entity with details. You can also manage and add new entities as required.

Note

Once the default business entity is created, if the organization address is specified at the site, it will be set as the organization address for the default business entity as well.

Entity ID: This is a unique business entity ID that helps you to identify a specific business entity.

Create Multiple Business Entities 

Follow the steps below to create business entities for your Chargebee site:

  1. Login to your Chargebee site.

  2. Click Settings > Configure Chargebee > Business entities.

  3. View all entities and click Create Business Entity to add additional entities.
    Note: You can create up to 30 entities currently.

  4. Enter the Business entity name and click Create.

  5. A list of all added entities appears on the Business Entities page as shown below.

Modify Multiple Business Entities 

Follow the steps below to update business entities for your Chargebee site:

  1. Login to your Chargebee site.

  2. Click Settings > Configure Chargebee > Business entities.

  3. View all entities and click Edit to update any specific entity.

  4. Change the Business entity name and click Update.

  5. The name of the updated entity appears on the Business Entities page.

Switch between Multiple Entity and Profiles 

Once the business entities are created, your left navigation pane includes an additional option that allows you to switch between your entities.

Follow the steps below to switch between entities:

  1. Click the switch icon in the left navigation menu to view a list of entities.

  2. Select the entity to access from the list that displays.

  3. Review or update necessary details associated with Business Entity.

Note

The ability to switch between entities is dependent on the access assigned to the user. Users can only view entities for which they are assigned access.

Assign Access Role 

Follow the steps below to invite team members to a site or entity and assign access levels:

Site Admin User 

A Site admin user can invite another user to have the same access as themselves or lower. In this example, we will review a Site Admin providing Entity Admin access to a user.

  1. Login to your Chargebee site.

  2. Click Settings > Team Members to invite new users.

  3. Click Invite Members to assign business entity or entities and their access levels.

  4. Enter the email address of the invitee in the Email field and select the applicable radio button to give access to business entitie and click Add Entities to select entities.

  5. Select applicable entities and click Add.

  6. Click the applicable radio button to assign Roles and Access.

  7. Click Create to send the email invite and review the access view page that lists current users and their access levels.

Business Entity Admin User 

A Business Entity Admin user can invite users to have the same access or lower. In this example, we will review a Business Entity Admin providing Business Entity Admin access to a user.

  1. Login to your Chargebee site.

  2. Ensure you have selected the site view from the switch icon.

  3. Click Settings > Team Members to invite new users.

  4. Click Invite Members.

  5. Enter the email address of the invitee in the Email field and select the entities the user would access.

  6. Select the applicable radio button to assign Roles and Access.

  7. Click Create to send the email invite and review the access view page that lists current users and their access levels.

Role Based Access Control

The configuration of your site and the addition of business entities are now complete. It is now imperative that you add team members and assign them access to the site or entities created.

Select Entities Assign Roles
All entities Administrative access

  • User can fully access the site and all entities.
  • User can create new entities and modify them.
  • User can create, edit, and remove data from any entity.
  • User is allowed to configure settings at site level.
Business entity-level access:

  • User can access all entities. 
  • User can create, edit, and remove data from any entity.
Role-based access:

This allows you to assign access based on the roles configured on your site. 
  • User can access all entities. 
  • User has restricted access as per their roles. 
  • User doesn't have access to the setting page except for the Finance manager.
Specific entities Business entity-level access:

  • User can access specific entities only. 
  • User can create, edit, and remove data from only allowed entities.
Role-based access:

This allows you to assign access based on the roles configured on your site. 

  • User can access specific entities.
  • User has restricted access as per their roles. 
  • User doesn't have access to the setting page except for the Finance manager.
Note

It is important to note that the access level that a user can assign while inviting a new user is limited to their own access or lower.

Accepting an Invite 

Advise your team members to review the receipt of an email and click Accept Invite to be added to the Chargebee site.

Customer Management 

The creation and management of customers can be fulfilled by users based on the access that is assigned to them.

To elaborate, a site admin can add customers to any of the entities while an entity-level user can only add customers to the entity to which access is provided.

Site Admin User 

In this example, the site admin user with access to multiple entities is creating a customer for the Australian entity:

  1. Login to the Chargebee site.

  2. Click Customers from the left navigation menu.

  3. Click Create Customer to add a new customer.

  4. Select the applicable option from the Business Entity drop-down list.

  5. Type the required details into other fields and click Create.

View Customer List 

When using the site view, the All Customers list is an effective way of viewing all customer records associated with the site and/or entity.

However, the increased number of entities may result in additional records making it harder to navigate and locate a required customer record. The filter options have been optimized to now include Business Entity allowing you to view customers associated with a business entity.

Entity-Level User 

An entity admin can create customers, however, the customers can be created only for entities that the user has access to. Review the screenshot below for user limited to creating customers for associated entities only.

Subscription Management 

Subscriptions are created based on the access levels that are associated with the user. Follow the steps below based on the access level assigned to you:

Site Level Admin 

A site admin user may have access to multiple entities and can create a subscription using the customer base from all entities. However, it is important to note that the entity of the customer determines the entity of the subscription too.

Follow the steps below to create a subscription for a customer:

  1. Login to your Chargebee site.

  2. Click Subscriptions.

  3. Click Create New Subscription.

  4. Select an applicable customer from the Customer List or click Create new customer.

Entity-Level User 

A business entity admin can only create subscriptions for entities assigned only. Follow the steps below to create a subscription for a customer associated with an entity.

  1. Login to your Chargebee site.

  2. Click Subscriptions.

  3. Click Create New Subscription.

  4. The associated with the customer displays at the top, enter the subscription details required, and click Create.

  5. The entity associated with the subscription displays at the top of the subscriptions page with the subscription details.

Brand Style Management 

Branding is a key element of your business while interacting with your prospects and customers. While using Chargebee for your billing automation, you can ensure that all the customer-facing essentials such as emails, invoices, checkout pages, and portal that are generated and managed by Chargebee reflects your brand logo, icon, and color schemes.

If you are a business with multiple entities, you could be using the same branding across all your entities, or you could be using exclusive branding for each of your entity. Either way, Chargebee allows you to configure brand styles for your business with ease. By default, the brand style for each entity is inherited from your site. You can override this default brand style and create a custom style for each entity as required.

Click here to learn more about branding.

Note

The site admins have access to the brand style management for the site and all entities, and the business entity admins can only access and update the brand styles of their respective entities.

Configuring Brand Styles for Site 

To configure brand styles at the site-level, follow these steps:

  1. Login to your Chargebee Billing site.

  2. Click Settings > Configure Chargebee > Brand styles.

  3. On the Brand Styles page, click the tabs Logo & Color, Email, Invoice, Checkout, and Self-serve Portal to customize your brand styles for each of them respectively.

    Click here to learn more about configuring brand styles for your Logo & Color, Email, Invoice, Checkout, and Self-serve Portal.

  4. After customizing the layout for all features, you can use the Send test email (for Email), Preview sample invoice (for Invoice), to verify your brand style configuration for the respective features. The See it in action button is not available for Checkout & Self Serve Portal at the Site level as there is no site level checkout/self serve portal when MBE is enabled. The button will be disabled if the new checkout feature is not enabled.

Overriding the Brand Style of Site for Entities 

Once you've configured the brand style for your site, your entities will inherit this same style automatically. While the site-level branding carries your parent or the core brand elements, your business entities could each have a brand style of its own. Using a single brand style across all your entities might not serve you entirely right.

In such cases, you can override the default site style for each of your entities thereby enabling them to speak for themselves with relevant customers. You can choose to override one or all of your brand elements. For instance, you can override the brand elements for checkout and self-serve portal alone at the entity-level to display your entity branding, while your emails and invoices inherit your site branding. While updating the brand elements for entity, you will be prompted with an additional alert message to confirm the override operation as follows:

Note

If you've overridden the brand style of invoices, email, or any other tab for one or more entities, any changes that you make further to the site-level branding will not be updated to these entity changes.

To configure brand styles at the entity-level, follow these steps:

  1. Login to your Chargebee Billing site and select the business entity for which you want to configure the brand style.
  2. Click Settings > Configure Chargebee > Brand styles.
  3. On the Brand Styles page, navigate to Logo & Color, Email, Invoice, Checkout, and Self-serve Portal tabs to customize your brand styles for the respective customer facing features. Click here for more details.
  4. After customizing the layout for all features, you can use the Send test email (Email), Preview sample invoice (Invoice), and See it in action (Checkout, and Self-serve Portal) to verify your brand style configuration for the entity's respective features.

Restoring the Brand Style of Site for Entities 

At any point, if you want to consolidate your branding or do it all over again for an entity, click Restore default styles to remove the custom brand style that you've added to your entity and restore the default style of your site for this entity.

Note that the Restore default styles option will restore the brand elements for all the tabs - Logo & Color, Email, Invoice, Checkout, and Self-serve Portal and not any single tab in particular.

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