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Subsidiary companyIn ContactsLaw, a subsidiary company is an entity contact that is owned/operated by The Practice. Examples of types of entities that can be modelled using the subsidiary company features include:
  • Service companies / service trusts
  • Superannuation funds
  • Family trusts
  • Separate small businesses
You can run the day-to-day operations of subsidiary companies within ContactsLaw; a complete list of entities you manage are listed under 'Companies' on the main ribbon. Switching to a different company gives you access to the files, activities and accounts for that company. Contacts are shared across all companies. When you switch to another company, the title of the ContactsLaw window changes accordingly.

File numbers

Each subsidiary company uses a separate stream of client numbers, creating the potential for the same file number to appear more than once across the system. To deal with this, each subsidiary company's files are prefixed with a short alphabetical code; e.g. XYZ.1.2

Documents

Each subsidiary company has its own set of document types, templates and folders. Folders and globally-available document types can be shared between companies.

Workgroups

Workgroups themselves are not confined to a single company, however departments can be configured as such; which affects the workgroups contained within them as well. You can choose how you wish to structure your practice.

General accounting

Each subsidiary company operates a separate chart of accounts. Financial reports such as the profit and loss, balance sheet and trial balance can be produced on a per-company basis. 

Trust accounting

Trust accounting features operate from The Practice only. They are not available for use with subsidiary companies.

CRM

The CRM features operate at a contact level and are therefore unaffected by subsidiary companies. 

Permissions

Subsidiary companies are only viewable by those members who have been granted the 'view company' privilege. You can use permissions to control which members have access to management settings, files, accounts and reports.

Management settings

A limited subset of the management settings offered for The Practice can be independently set for subsidiary companies. In particular, you can configure billing and contact/file creation policies that differ from those that apply to the practice. 

See also