In this article, you'll learn how to run several businesses or locations from one place. If your login opens more than one company, you can make one your home base and pull the others into it, so you're not switching back and forth all day just to answer a text or check the schedule.
You don't turn this on in Features. Each business stays its own company in the CRM, with its own settings, team and phone line. You just decide what each one does inside the business you work from.
To open Linked businesses:
- At the foot of the menu, click the gear (Settings).
- Under General, click Linked businesses.
Set this up on the web from a computer. On a phone-sized screen the page only tells you that linking is done on the web CRM from a desktop. What you choose still applies on your phone.
Choose your primary business
The primary is the business you work from. Your other businesses get pulled into it.
- Open the Primary business dropdown.
- Pick the business you want as home base.
There's only one primary. If you pick a different one later, every link moves over to it. Changes on this page save as you make them, so there's no Save button.
Decide where each business's calls and texts go
Under the primary, each of your other businesses has its own row with a coloured dot beside its name. That colour follows the business everywhere it shows up in the primary.
- Find the business in the list.
- Open its Calls & texts dropdown.
- Pick one:
- Ring and show in your primary: texts to that business's line land in the primary's inbox, and its calls ring there under that business's name. This overrides any forwarding set on that line.
- Forward to a number: type the number in the box that appears, then click away from it. Calls forward there, and texts follow as copies.
- Keep in that business: its calls and texts stay in its own CRM.
Show or hide a business inside the primary
Whether a business's conversations, calls, voicemails and appointments show up in the primary comes down to one switch: the eye next to its name in the business list on your Home page. The settings page tells you whether each business is Shown or Hidden in the primary, but the eye is where you change it.
- In the menu, click Home.
- Click the business card at the top of the page to open your list of businesses.
- Click the eye to the left of a business:
- A green eye shows that business's conversations and appointments in the primary.
- A red, crossed-out eye hides them.
A business you've never switched on starts with a red eye. The eye only shows when you're in your primary business. Switch into one of the others and the list is just names, with nothing pulled in.
The phone app's Home screen has the same eye, and it's the same switch. Flip it in one place and Conversations and the schedule follow on both.
What linked businesses look like
- Conversations: a thread from another business carries that business's name. Open it and the header says replies go out from that business.
- Schedule: that business's appointments show with its colour down the left side and its name on the card.
- Replies and bookings still belong to that business. A text you send goes out on its own phone line, and an appointment lands on its own calendar.
- Full pages: opening one of its jobs or contacts on its full page switches you into that business. A bar at the top says where you are, and Back to your primary takes you home.
To book a new appointment for a linked business, see Booking jobs for another of your businesses.
Good to know
- Nothing is copied between companies. Each business keeps its own settings, team, payments and reports.
- To unlink a business completely, set its Calls & texts to Keep in that business, then turn its eye red on Home.