Siebel Consumer Goods Guide > Managing Accounts >

Setting Up Account Hierarchies

For overview information about account hierarchies, see About Account Hierarchies.

To set up account hierarchies, you create parent-child relationships between accounts. A list of guidelines for creating account hierarchies follows:

• Accounts can have any number of child accounts.
• Accounts can have only one parent account.
• An account hierarchy can have any number of levels.
• You can define Accounts as Buying Groups (an attribute flag of account).
• Accounts can have any number of associated product categories and products.
• Each account can have only one profile (based on Account Type).
• An account can have any number of associated assessments, and assessments can have many assessment values.

If your company uses the Sales Volume Planning module, you must create one contiguous account hierarchy with all the accounts for the sales volume planning process. For example, you might create a five-level hierarchy with your corporate headquarters at the top level and your company's divisions at the second level. You can place the accounts representing all of the headquarters offices for your customers in the third level, distribution centers in the fourth level, and retail outlets in the fifth level. For more information about sales volume planning, see Sales Volume Planning.

This task is a step in Process of Managing Accounts.

To create an account-subaccount (parent-child) relationship

1. Navigate to the Administration - Data screen, then the Account List view.
2. Verify that the parent account record exists; if it does not, create it.

   For more information about creating accounts, see Creating or Modifying Accounts.

3. Verify that the child account record exists; if it does not, create it.
4. In the Accounts/Orgs list, select the child account record.
5. In the Account form, click the select button in the Parent Account field.
6. In the Pick Account dialog box, select the Parent account record, and click OK.

   NOTE:  You cannot create a new account from the Parent Account field; the account must already exist. For more information about creating accounts, see Creating or Modifying Accounts.