Account hierarchy

Account hierarchy models complex billing relationships by linking child accounts to a parent account, so a business can represent a headquarters, franchise network, or multi-entity customer as one connected structure instead of a set of unrelated accounts.

In Recurly, the hierarchy is modeled directly on the account object and surfaced in both the admin console and the API, so operations and engineering teams work from the same structure. It gives a business two things at once: control over which entity is billed for each child account, and a consolidated view of subscriptions and invoices across the whole customer relationship.

What account hierarchy means

The parent represents the top-level entity, such as a headquarters, holding company, or reseller. Each child represents a subsidiary, location, department, or end customer under it. The relationship is visible in the admin console and exposed through the API, so both operations teams and engineering can work with the same structure.

The most commercially important decision the feature unlocks is billing responsibility. For each child account, a business chooses one of two configurations:

• Child bills to itself: the child account behaves like a standard account. It manages its own billing information and receives its own invoices. The only difference from a standalone account is the parent association, which shows up in the UI and in exports.

• Child bills to parent: all payment information, invoices, charges, and credits are owned by the parent account. The child account does not need its own billing information for subscriptions or charges to be created.

An account hierarchy overview page, reachable from either the parent or a child account, organizes the relationship into three views: all child accounts under the parent, all subscriptions belonging to those child accounts, and all invoices belonging to the parent and its children, filterable by whether charges were billed to the child or the parent.

Why account hierarchy matters

Selling to organizations with multiple locations, subsidiaries, or franchise arrangements gets complicated fast without a structure like this. Consider a nationwide chain: some locations are independent franchises that should be invoiced directly, some are owned by corporate and should be invoiced together with a line item per location, and others sit under a separate management company that wants its own invoice entirely. Account hierarchy makes all of these billing arrangements possible on the same underlying customer relationship, rather than forcing a business to treat each variant as a one-off.

The reporting side matters just as much as the billing side. A consolidated view into a parent account and all its child accounts, including payment responsibility and invoices, streamlines financial reporting and cuts down the manual work of tracing revenue back to the right entity.

Because the hierarchy is exposed through the API, with a parent account code field on account creation and updates and a child accounts endpoint, these relationships can be managed programmatically rather than only through the admin console. Invoice Rollup extends the base feature by consolidating line items from multiple child accounts into a single parent invoice, organized by originating account, and it is built on Recurly's Calendar Billing feature. Automatic consolidation has limits, though: bill-to-parent configuration and Invoice Rollup do not guarantee that every child transaction lands on one identical invoice, since differences in billing context, shipping address, tax treatment, or renewal timing can still produce separate invoices within a hierarchy.

Account hierarchy and Invoice Rollup are not included on every plan tier, so contact Recurly Sales to confirm eligibility for your site.

How to set up and use account hierarchy

1. Assign a child account to a parent account, either through the admin console or via the API's parent account code field.

2. Choose the billing configuration for that child: bill to itself, or bill to the parent.

3. If consolidating multiple children onto one parent invoice, configure Invoice Rollup, which is built on Calendar Billing's Aggregate Invoices and Alignment capabilities and requires child accounts set to bill to the parent. Invoice Rollup is not self-serve; Recurly Support must activate it on your site, along with Calendar Billing Alignment if needed, before it can be used. Bill-to-parent configuration and Invoice Rollup do not guarantee that every child transaction lands on one identical invoice in every scenario, since differences in billing context, shipping address, tax treatment, or renewal timing can still produce separate invoices even within a hierarchy.

4. Validate the hierarchy behavior with a realistic test case before a large migration, since invoice grouping can be affected by differences in billing context, address, tax treatment, or renewal timing across the child subscriptions involved. Any charge tied to a shipping address is incompatible with Invoice Rollup and will always bill separately.

5. Confirm how your finance team will identify the billed party in exports (the parent-child relationship and the billing ownership logic are related but separate things to check) before relying on hierarchy reporting operationally.

Benefits and examples

• A reseller or franchise business can bill some locations directly, consolidate others under a corporate parent, and separate out a subset managed by a third party, all within one account hierarchy rather than juggling separate customer records.

• Discounts, credits, and taxes can still be applied at the individual child level even when billing is consolidated at the parent. A credit for a specific location's service issue, or a different tax treatment for a child entity in a different state, is reflected accurately on the parent's invoice.

• Consolidated parent-and-child reporting reduces the manual work of reconciling revenue and invoices across a multi-entity customer, compared to tracking each child as an unrelated account.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a parent account and a child account? A parent account is the top-level entity in the hierarchy, such as a headquarters or reseller. A child account is a subsidiary, location, department, or end customer linked underneath it. The relationship is visible from either account's page.

Does account hierarchy always produce one invoice for the whole hierarchy? Not automatically. Bill-to-parent configuration and Invoice Rollup are related features, but differences in billing context, address, tax treatment, or renewal timing across child subscriptions can still result in separate invoices rather than one consolidated one.

Can different child accounts in the same hierarchy be taxed differently? Yes, but only when the child-address taxation setting is enabled. By default, Invoice Rollup taxes every line item based on the parent's taxable address. Once enabled, it can reflect different tax treatment for different child entities, such as one location taxed under one state's rules and another under a different state's rules, while still consolidating the invoice presentation to the parent.

Is account hierarchy available on every Recurly plan? No, it is gated to certain plan tiers. Contact Recurly Sales to confirm eligibility for your site.