Accounts

An account is an organisation that uses Boxture: the warehouse operator itself, a client whose goods are stored, or a brand or sales channel of a client. Almost everything in Boxture belongs to an account: users, locations, products, orders, shipments, customers, vendors, packing materials, shipping methods, reasons, holidays and settings.

Accounts are organised in a hierarchy (a tree). This page explains how the hierarchy works, how to create and edit accounts, and what the account states mean.

The account hierarchy

Each account can have one parent and any number of child accounts. A typical setup:

Warehouse operator
├── Client A
│   ├── Client A – Webshop
│   └── Client A – Wholesale
└── Client B

The hierarchy determines what you can see and what is inherited:

What	How the hierarchy is used
Data you see	When you work in an account, you see the records of that account and all its child accounts. Working in "Warehouse operator" shows the orders of Client A, its sub-accounts and Client B. Working in "Client B" shows only Client B.
Accounts you can switch to	A user can switch to their own account and every account below it, as long as the account is active or inactive and has a location the user can access.
Settings	An account without its own value for a setting uses a value defined higher up in the tree, or the system default. See Settings.
Contact kinds	Additional contact kinds from the Accounts › Contact kinds setting are merged from the account and all its ancestors.
Billing contact	When an ancestor has Accounts › Billing contact required switched on, child accounts must have a billing contact.
Locations	A location belongs to one account and can be shared with that account's child accounts. See Locations.
Shipping methods and reasons	Created in one account and made available to selected child accounts.

The current account

The account you are working in is shown in the account selector at the top of the screen. Changing it switches all screens (orders, products, inventory, settings and the Admin screens) to that account. If the account has no location you can access, Boxture shows the message "account has no locations setup" and doesn't switch. When your current location does not belong to the new account, Boxture switches to the first location of that account.

When no account has been selected yet in the session, the account the user belongs to is used.

Where to manage accounts

Open Admin › Users & Accounts › Accounts. This screen is available to admins only.

The list shows the current account and all accounts below it, with the columns Code, Name, Parent Account, Locations (names of the account's own locations), State and Created at. You can filter on parent account and state, and download the list as CSV.

Creating an account

New accounts are always created as a child of the current account.

1. Switch to the account that should be the parent.
2. Go to Admin › Users & Accounts › Accounts and click Create.
3. Fill in the Attributes tab:
   • Logo: image shown for the account.
   • Code: short code for the account. It must be unique among accounts with the same parent and may not be the same as the code of any of its ancestors.
   • Name (required).
   • URL: website of the account.
   • GLN: Global Location Number (GS1), 7 to 9 digits. It is used to generate SSCC numbers for parcels. Without a GLN, 0000000 is used.
   • The account's contact (company name, name, address, phone, email, VAT number, EORI number, chamber of commerce number).
4. Fill in the Billing contact tab if needed. When an ancestor requires a billing contact, last name, postal code, city and country are mandatory.
5. Click Save.
6. Click Activate in the card menu. A new account starts in the state concept.

After saving, set up the rest of the account:

• Create locations or share an existing location with the new account.
• Create users, for example an account owner.
• Review the settings the account should override.
• Create or share shipping methods and packing materials.

TIP

When you edit your own account (the account your user belongs to), the code, name, URL, GLN and contact fields are hidden; only the logo and the other tabs can be changed. Ask an admin of a parent account to change these.

Tabs on the account screen

Tab	Content
Attributes	Logo, code, name, URL, GLN and the main account contact
Billing contact	The billing address of the account
Contacts	Additional contacts of the account (shown after the first save)
Meta Data	Notes (free text) and Metadata (YAML, used by integrations and templates)

Additional contacts

Use Add contact on the account screen to add more contacts. Each contact has a kind. Besides the standard kinds (Billing, Pickup, Delivery, Importer, Exporter), you can choose:

• the kinds defined in the Contact kinds setting of the account or its ancestors;
• Origin for location, one for each location the account can use.

Some kinds have a specific effect when shipments are created during packing:

Contact kind	Effect
Origin for location	Used as the sender (origin) address of shipments of this account that leave from that location. Without it, the location's own contact is used. Useful when a client wants their own name on the label.
Importer, Exporter	For export shipments, the importer and exporter contacts are taken from the order's customer first. If the customer has none, Boxture looks at the contacts of the product's account: first a kind named Importer_ or Exporter_ followed by the country code (for example Importer_us for the destination country, Exporter_nl for the origin country), then the plain Importer or Exporter contact.

The kinds Billing, the account's own contact and the Origin kinds can exist only once per account.

Account states

State	Users can sign in and work	Can be switched to	How to get there
concept	No	No	New account
active	Yes	Yes	Activate
inactive	Yes	Yes	Only through integrations or the API
disabled	No	No	Deactivate

On the account screen:

• Activate is shown for concept, inactive and disabled accounts and makes the account active.
• Deactivate is shown for active accounts and disables the account. Users of a disabled account can no longer sign in, the account disappears from the account selector, and order actions for that account are blocked.

You cannot deactivate the account you are currently working in. Switch to another account (for example the parent) first.

WARNING

Deactivating an account does not cancel its open orders or remove its inventory. Finish or cancel the work in progress first.

Related pages

• Users and roles
• Locations
• Key concepts
• Settings overview