Set Up Customer Hierarchies and WhoPays

Customer Hierarchies and WhoPays let you organize Customers into parent/child relationships and assign billing responsibility across the hierarchy. These features support centralized billing, consolidated Invoices, and streamlined Subscription management. They are especially useful in SaaS billing scenarios such as reseller models, franchise operations, or when a parent Customer is responsible for child Subscriptions.

Enablement and Settings

In the application’s Settings → Configuration, you can enable Customer Hierarchies and WhoPays. Although they work together, they are independent:

Enabling Customer Hierarchies alone lets you define parent/child structures without assigning payment responsibility.
Enabling WhoPays requires Customer Hierarchies, since payments can only be assigned to a related ancestor.

How Hierarchies, WhoPays, and Groups Work Together

Customer Hierarchy: Defines relationships such as parent/child.
WhoPays: Assigns billing responsibility up the hierarchy.
Subscription Group: Invoices multiple Subscriptions as one.
Consolidated Invoicing: Places grouped Subscriptions on one Invoice.

Example: If a parent is the payer for multiple child Subscriptions in a group, Maxio issues a single consolidated Invoice.

Subscription Billing Options in a Group

Accrue charges until the group renewal: Collect charges but defer billing until the group’s Invoice date.
Align billing date with the group: Set the Subscription’s cycle to match the group’s cycle.
Prorate billing for the current period: Issue a prorated Invoice from start date to group renewal date.

When enabling WhoPays, you can set a Default Payer & Consolidation. Subscriptions for Customers with a parent will use this default unless overridden during creation.

Customer Hierarchies

Use Customer Hierarchies to group Customers into parent/child relationships for structure or billing via WhoPays.

Move to the child Customer record, then select Choose Parent under Customer Hierarchy.
Alternatively, from the new Subscription form, create a new Customer and assign the parent inline.

Customer record with parent assigned

A Customer with a parent who is responsible for their Subscription.

Select the parent, preview, and click Confirm to establish the relationship. The UI will display older ancestors (grandparent, etc.).

Payer settings screen

You can also add a child either by:

Creating a new Customer as a child.
Selecting an existing Customer to add.

Add new Customer as child option

Limitations

Parent accounts can have unlimited children.
Hierarchies support up to 10 levels deep.
The Public Signup Page does not currently support creating Hierarchies, Groups, or WhoPays. Use the application or API instead.

Parent/child relationships cannot be removed at this time.

Set the Hierarchy

Add a Parent

Go to Customers, locate the Customer you want to assign as a child, and click View.
Scroll to the Customer Hierarchy section and click Choose Parent.

Choose Parent action in the Customer Hierarchy section.
Select a parent record, click Preview Selected, then Confirm.
The UI will now display the parent in the hierarchy section.

Add a Child

Create a new Customer to add as a child, or
Select an existing Customer to add as a child.

Delete a Parent or Child

Click Remove to detach a parent or child. This is only possible if:

The parent/child Subscriptions are not grouped, or
You have grouped them but there are no Open, Pending, or Canceled Invoices.

Create Subscription Group

From Subscriptions click Create New Subscription.
Click Create Customer.
Complete the Customer form and click Submit.
Enable Consolidated Invoices to create the Subscription in a group.
Fill in the Subscription details and click Create Subscription.

The Subscription group is now created.

Subscription group created confirmation

Add Existing Subscription to a Group

Assuming you have created a group and have two Subscriptions under the same Customer or within a parent/child hierarchy:

Step 1 of adding existing Subscription to group

Step 2 of adding existing Subscription to group

Step 3 of adding existing Subscription to group

Step 4 of adding existing Subscription to group

Step 5 of adding existing Subscription to group

Step 6 of adding existing Subscription to group

Add New Subscription to Existing Group

If you already have a group and understand parent/child relationships:

Edit Customer to add parent

Select parent for new Customer

Confirm relationship screen

Create Subscription for existing Customer

Subscription form for existing Customer

Select the parent as WhoPays on the Subscription form to link billing responsibility.

Select WhoPays parent option

Choose the default top‑level parent to assign WhoPays correctly, then confirm.

WhoPays confirmation in group

Assign WhoPays to a Subscription

To assign WhoPays on a new Subscription:

Create a Subscription for a Customer in a hierarchy.
Select an existing Customer or create one and assign its parent on the fly.
Choose the appropriate ancestor as WhoPays and complete the form.

Select Customer for WhoPays assignment

Confirm WhoPays choice

Frequently Asked Questions

If I set up Customers into a hierarchy in Advanced Billing, will the Parent field in Maxio Platform be automatically populated?

No. The Parent field in Maxio Platform is not automatically populated from Advanced Billing. You must explicitly send this information via integration or API.

Can I change the primary Subscription in a Subscription group after creation?

No. Once created, the primary Subscription is fixed. To change it, you must:

Remove all members from the current group
Create a new group with a different primary Subscription