Create a company and its branches
Add a legal entity, complete its registration details, add branches, and switch between them.
Before you begin
- Creating a company needs a superuser, or a user who is allowed to create companies. Others see no New company button and the system says 'You do not have permission to create companies.'
- Editing branches needs
reference.manage. - Have the trade licence, VAT registration number (TRN) and address to hand.
Create a company
- Go to Administration > Workspace > Companies and click New company.
- Type the Legal name (up to 160 characters) and, if you wish, the Arabic legal name.
- Type the Code: 2 to 16 upper-case letters, digits or hyphens, starting with a letter, for example
TST01. It must be unique across all companies and it never changes ('A company with this code already exists.'; 'Company code cannot change after creation.'). - Enter City / emirate and choose the Business model: B2B + B2C, B2B or B2C.
- Click Create.
You become the company's administrator, every available app is installed, and the standard payment terms are added. The audit trail records company.created.
Complete the company record
Open the company and click Edit. Work through the tabs:
- Identity: logo, trading name, company status (Active, Inactive, Suspended).
- Registration & Tax: trade licence number, authority, issue and expiry dates, VAT / TRN, corporate tax number, legal form, establishment date. An expiry before the issue date is refused: 'The licence expires before it was issued.' The screen warns within 90 days of expiry. The TRN is not format-checked, so check it yourself; changing it clears the verified mark.
- Address: country (AE, SA, QA, KW, BH, OM), emirate, city, address, PO box, phone, email, website. A bad email gives 'Enter a valid email address.'
- Business defaults: base currency, fiscal year start month, time zone, language, date and number formats, first day of the week, working calendar.
Click Save. A setup progress percentage rises as you fill in the required items. Changes show before and after values in the audit trail.
Add a branch
- Go to Administration > Workspace > Branches and click New branch.
- General tab: type the Branch name, a Branch code (2 to 30 letters, digits,
_or-, upper-cased, locked after creation), the Branch type (Head Office, Branch, Showroom, Retail store, Warehouse, Office or Site), and optionally a legal name for documents and a parent branch. A branch cannot roll up to itself. - Finance & Tax tab: switch on Separate TRN only if the branch has its own, and then type it ('Give the branch's own TRN, or use the company's.').
- Operations tab: choose default, sales and purchase warehouses. A warehouse that ships for another branch is refused.
- Settings tab: A run of its own keeps separate document numbers for the branch and is on by default for new branches. The Mark in the number is letters and digits only, up to 12.
- Set Open from and Closed after dates if the branch has a life span.
- Warehouses tab: add warehouses. This saves immediately, and each warehouse belongs to one branch.
- Click Save.
A branch dimension value with the same code is created automatically, and numbering for the branch follows the pattern SO-DXB-000001.
Switch company and branch
In the header, pick the active company and the active branch. Lists, menus and new records then belong to them, and the choice is remembered after reload. Companies read together lets lists show records of several companies, with a +N badge; new records still go to the acting company. You can only choose companies you belong to ('You do not belong to any of those companies.').
Good to know
- Closing a branch (a Closed after date in the past, or Inactive) closes its dimension value and stops its own numbering.
- The Parent company field on the company record does not save yet. Do not rely on it.
- A viewer sees an Edit button on a company but the system refuses the save.
- Users still need a membership in the new company. See Create a system user.