Set Up Parent & Child Clients

Some clients are one company. Others are a head office with sites underneath — three hotels under one group, four facilities under one health system, a national account with a branch in every state.

Parent and child clients are how you set that up. Each site keeps its own jobs, its own crew and its own records. The head office gets one invoice and one view across all of them.

Get the structure right at the start and billing takes care of itself. Get it wrong and you are either splitting invoices by hand every month or giving someone at one site a view of every other site's work.

Who this applies to

• Account managers — you know how the client is really organised and who signs off the money.
• Administrators — the Configuration tab in Step 4 is admin-only, so someone with admin access has to do that part.

Do you actually need this?

This is the part worth thinking about. The rest is clicking.

The deciding question is the invoice. Does one place pay for all the sites, or does each site pay its own bills?

The workflow

Steps

Step 1: Create every client record first

The head office is a client. Each site is a client. Create all of them before you link anything together.

Name them so the relationship is obvious in a list six months from now. Northside Health — Downtown and Northside Health — Airport sort together and read clearly. Downtown Clinic on its own does not.

Full detail on creating a client: How to Add a New Client in NextCrew.

Step 2: Link each site to the head office

This is done on the site record, not the head office. You open the child and tell it who its parent is.

Open the site's client record and set the Parent Client field to the head office.

Step 3: Repeat for every site

Each site points at the same head office. There's no list on the parent to fill in — the structure builds itself from the children.

This is the step people half-finish. A group with six sites where only four are linked bills correctly for four of them, and nobody notices until the head office asks why two invoices arrived separately.

Step 4: Turn on invoice rollup, if that's what the client wants

Rollup is what produces one invoice for the whole group instead of one per site.

Like the link itself, you set this on the site, not the head office:

1. Open CRM > Clients and select the site.
2. Open the Configuration tab.
3. Click Invoice Configuration.
4. Turn on Rollup Invoices.

Do this on every site that should be billed together. A site with rollup off keeps getting its own invoice, even if its parent is set.

Full detail: How to Rollup Invoices for Clients.

If this isn't working → Invoices aren't rolling up to the parent

What governs these steps

Step 5: Decide where each contact belongs

This is the decision people get wrong, and it's the one with consequences.

So think about it per person:

• The group's AP clerk who pays for everything — head office. They need the whole picture.
• The site manager who orders staff for their own location — that site. They have no business seeing another site's costs.
• The regional director over three of six sites — there's no clean answer. NextCrew gives you the whole group or one site, nothing in between. Usually the site that matters most, plus a conversation.

If you want one person to have access to all the sites, create them at the head office. That is the documented way to do it.

Full detail: Managing and Adding Client Contacts and Allow your clients to access the self-service portal.

If this isn't working → A contact sees too much, or not enough

Step 6: Check it before the client does

Structure problems show up in the first invoice run, and the client finds them faster than you do.

Before the first real billing cycle:

• Preview the invoice batch and count the invoices. One group with rollup on should produce one, not six.
• Check that every site you meant to include is on it.
• Open the client list and confirm each site shows the right parent.

If it's not working

There's no Configuration tab on the client

Also asked as: I can't find invoice configuration · the Configuration tab is missing · where do I turn on rollup

Check 1 — Are you an admin?
The Configuration tab on a client record is admin-only by default.

• You're not an admin → that's the answer. Ask an admin to do Step 4, or to grant you the permission. Fixed.
• You are an admin and still can't see it → Check 2.

Check 2 — Has the permission been changed?
Open Settings > Permissions and look for Allow Client Detail Page Configuration Tab.

• It's switched off for your role or group → turn it on for whoever needs it. Fixed.
• It's on and the tab still isn't there → Escalate. Send support your role name, the client name, and a screenshot of the client record with the tab row visible.

Invoices aren't rolling up to the parent

Also asked as: the client got separate invoices · rollup isn't working · one site billed on its own · I set the parent but invoices still split

Check 1 — Is Rollup Invoices on for the site that billed separately?
Rollup is set per site, so one site can be missed while the rest work.

• It's off → turn it on. Fixed for next cycle — see Check 4 about the invoices you've already created.
• It's on → Check 2.

Check 2 — Is the Parent Client set on that site?
Rollup needs both. On its own it does nothing.

• It's empty → set it. Fixed.
• It's set, and to the right parent → Check 3.

Check 3 — How is the batch grouped?
Invoice grouping is chosen when you create the batch. Per Order produces an invoice per order regardless of your client structure.

• The batch was grouped Per Order → that's the answer. Rebuild the batch grouped Per Client or Use Client Specification. Fixed.
• Grouping looks right → Check 4.

Check 4 — When were these invoices created?
Configuration changes apply to invoices created afterwards. They don't reach back and merge invoices that already exist.

• They predate the change → expected. Fix the configuration, then rebuild the batch for that period.
• Created after, with everything set correctly → Escalate. Send support the parent and site names, the batch date range, and the invoice numbers that split.

A contact sees too much, or not enough

Also asked as: my client can see another site's jobs · parent client contact seeing child client timesheets · the site manager can't see their own jobs · client says they're missing locations

Check 1 — Which client is the contact attached to?
Open the contact record and look at the client on it. That single field is what decides what they see.

• They're on the head office and shouldn't be → that's why they can see everything. Add them to the specific site instead. Fixed.
• They're on one site and need the whole group → they need to be a contact at the head office. Fixed.
• The client on the record looks right → Check 2.

Check 2 — Is the site actually linked to that parent?
A contact at the head office only sees sites that point at it. An unlinked site is invisible to them.

• The missing site has no parent set → set it. Fixed.
• Every site is linked and the view is still wrong → Escalate with the contact name, the client they're attached to, and which sites they can and can't see.

How to know it's complete

• ✅ Every site has the head office set as its Parent Client — check every one, not a sample
• ✅ Rollup Invoices matches what the client agreed, on every site
• ✅ A preview batch produces the number of invoices you expect
• ✅ Each contact sits at the level that matches what they should see
• ✅ Nobody at one site can see another site's work unless that was the intention

Best practices

Set the structure up before the first job, not after the first invoice complaint. Configuration changes apply going forward, so fixing it later leaves a month of invoices in the wrong shape.

Name children so they sort under the parent. Group name — Site name. Your future self, filtering a client list of 400, will thank you.

Put the fewest people at head office that the job needs. Parent-level access is the whole group. It is easy to grant and awkward to take back.

Write down what the group agreed, on the parent's record. Who gets the invoice, which sites are included, who approves. A note takes thirty seconds and survives the account manager leaving.

Related articles

• How to Add a New Client in NextCrew — creating the records in Step 1, before any of them are linked
• How to Rollup Invoices for Clients — the invoice side in full detail
• Managing and Adding Client Contacts — adding the people in Step 5
• Allow your clients to access the self-service portal — what a contact can do once they're in, and how parent-level access behaves
• How to create invoices for clients — batch creation and the grouping choice in Check 3
• Admin guides to managing company permissions — who can see the Configuration tab
• User Guide to Manage Configuration for CRM — every other CRM setting

FAQ

Q: Can a site have two parents?
A: No. Each child links to one parent only. If a facility answers to two groups, pick the one that pays.

Q: Do I set this up on the parent or the child?
A: The child, both times — the Parent Client field and the Rollup Invoices setting. There's nothing to fill in on the parent.

Q: If invoices roll up, can I still see what one site cost?
A: Yes. Each site's billing records stay in the system for reporting. Rollup changes what the client receives, not what you can see.

Q: What does a contact at the head office see?
A: Jobs and timesheets for every site underneath. That's the point of putting them there, and the reason to think before you do.

Q: I set this up mid-month. What happens to invoices already created?
A: Nothing — they stay as they are. Configuration applies to invoices created afterwards. Rebuild the batch for that period if you need it reshaped.

Q: Is this the same as adding locations to a client?
A: No. Locations are addresses on one client record, billed as one client. Parent and child are separate client records with their own jobs and records, billed together by choice.