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Understanding Hierarchy Preferences in Centime

Learn how to manage payment and email settings using hierarchy preferences in Centime, including global and customer-level configurations and their impact on communication and payment responsibility.

🔐 Receivables Permissions

  • Manage AR email and payment settings (Global setting)
  • Manage customer profiles, preferences, and view history (Customer-level setting)

🧱 Hierarchy Overview

Centime pulls customer hierarchies and projects directly from your accounting system. To help you understand and manage billing structure, several columns are available in the Receivables Module (they are hidden default):

  • Parent: If the customer is a child entity, this column displays the top-level parent.Yes: The customer is responsible for payment.

  • Entity Type:

    • Project: Indicates a sub-entity or job-specific classification.
    • Customer: Denotes a main billing entity.
  • Billing:
    • Yes: The customer is responsible for payment.
    • No: Another entity is responsible—refer to the Bill To column for the responsible party.
  • Bill To: Displays the customer name responsible for payments on this account.

💳 Payment Preferences

If a buyer isn’t responsible for making payments directly, you can assign a parent entity to handle communication and payment access. Centime offers three billing preference options:

  • Buyer: The purchasing entity is responsible for its own payments.

  • Top-level Parent: The highest-level parent pays invoices for all related child entities.

  • Immediate Parent: Each child’s direct parent handles its payments. The top-level parent pays only its own invoices. (This is the default for Projects.)

🌐 Set Hierarchy Globally

Apply a consistent billing hierarchy rule across all customers:

  1. Go to Settings > Receivables > General Settings.

  2. Click the ✏️ pencil icon to edit global hierarchy preferences.

  3. Choose the preferred billing structure from the dropdown.

👤 Set Hierarchy Locally

To override the global hierarchy setting for a specific customer:

  1. Open the customer profile from any Receivables tab.

  2. Go to the Summary tab.

  3. Edit the Hierarchy Preferences section.

🧩 Impact on Contacts and Online Payment Preferences

If billing responsibility is assigned to an Immediate Parent or Top-level Parent, Centime uses that parent’s settings for:

  • Contact email addresses

  • Customer Portal access

  • Online payment method preferences

This means that communication is consolidated at the bill-to level. For example, if a parent is set as the bill to for select child entities, invoices under those entities will be included in Monthly statements, workflows, and automations. 

For ad hoc statements and emails, the user must select the specific customers they would like included in communication. This allows uses to tailor communication when required. 

This ensures a consistent experience across related entities.