Create, view, or edit customers and vendors in a multi-entity shared company

Related information

Related topics

• Manage multiple entities
• Navigate 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

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-specific records

Entity-specific records (formerly known as entity private) are created at the entity level and are accessible in the entity where the data was created. You can still access entity-specific records at the top level by selecting Include private or Show entity-specific data on a page where you view records. By design, Intacct prevents creating transactions at the top level using entity-specific objects.

Users can transact with entity-specific records using either shared or entity-specific objects. For example, you can generate an entity-specific invoice for either a shared customer (created at the top level) or an entity-specific customer.

Restricted

Restricted records relate to customers, vendors, checking accounts, and savings accounts in a multi-entity shared company that the administrator can restrict to locations, location groups, departments, and department groups.

For example, you can choose to restrict a UK vendor to the UK entity in your company. You 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 in a multi-entity company and can be used anywhere in transactions.

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

Restrict by entity or department

Ensure 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.

1. Go to Company > 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 objects to enable restricting 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 objects you want 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.

View and edit customer, vendor, or bank account restrictions

You can restrict the visibility of individual customers, vendors, and bank accounts.

When you enable restrictions on customers and vendors, Intacct adds a menu item at the top level to provide a list of all customers or vendors with visibility restrictions.

For customers, vendors, and bank accounts, Intacct adds a tab on the individual vendor, customer, checking account, or savings account information. You can manage restrictions for each record that is defined with a restricted object type.

Before you begin: Enable Entity restrictions on the Multi-Entity Management page.

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?

The standard practice in a multi-entity shared company is to define objects at the top level to enable access to these objects across entities. You can also define entity-specific objects as needed. For example, you can define a set of vendors at the entity level for use only in the context of that specific entity. This is useful for cases when only one entity in your company interacts with those specific vendors.

When working at the entity level, objects that are defined at the top level or in another entity are shown as Not owned in the entity where you're working. For example, an object that you define in entity E100 is shown as Not owned in entity E102. You can still view the object in the entity where you're working.