Important Notes about Parent-child Accounts

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Overview

This document provides additional important details to be aware of when working with parent-child account relationships. We will refer to the example shown in the diagram below at various points in this document. In the example shown below, the parent account has three child accounts and two grandchild accounts via the Child 1 account:

Parent-child diagram.png

Rules

Selecting the Responsible MPI

You can assign payment responsibility to a master plan instance (MPI) from any account in a parent pay child account's ancestry. Example: a parent pay child account can have a responsible MPI from a "grandparent" account.

The responsible MPI from the parent account must be a self pay plan.

These additional rules apply when you add or change an MPI and set the payment responsibility to parent pay:

For this account...	The responsible MPI can be from this account...	The responsible MPI cannot be from this account...
Child 1; Child 2; or Child 3	Parent	Any of the other Child accounts Grandchild 1 or Grandchild 2
Grandchild 1; or Grandchild 2	Child 1 or the Parent	Child 2 or Child 3

Removing an Account from a Hierarchy

These rules apply when you remove a parent from an account:

If this account no longer has a parent...	Its parent pay MPIs become...	Its child accounts' parent pay MPIs...
Child 1 (whose responsible MPI is from the Parent account)	Self pay	Become self pay (for accounts Grandchild 1 and Grandchild 2 whose responsible MPIs were from the Parent account)
	Self pay	Stay parent pay (for accounts Grandchild 1 and Grandchild 2 whose responsible MPIs were from the Child 1 account)
Grandchild 1 (whose responsible MPI is from the Child 1 account)	Self pay

Changing Payment Responsibility

When a self pay MPI is responsible for another account's MPI, you cannot change the responsible MPI to parent pay.
If a self pay MPI is not responsible for another account's MPIs, you can change its payment responsibility to parent pay.
You can change any MPI's payment responsibility from parent pay to self pay.
When changing a self pay child account to parent pay, the following actions will occur:
- The child account Billing Group number is cleared and responsibility level is set to either "parent pay" or "parent pay and use".
- Any charges left on the child account that are being converted to parent pay are balance transferred to the responsible parent MPI.
  - When single/multiple unpaid invoices are found, a balance transfer record will be created for each invoice.
  - For non-invoice charges, the charges will not be combined and each charge will be transferred individually to the responsible MPI. If necessary, this allows the user to void the particular non-invoice transaction then the application will able to reverse that transfer alone.
  - If the child account has open payments, then while creating any charges, the payment will be consumed and only the remaining charge amount will be transferred to responsible parent MPI.

Overall Parent-child Account Functionality

The rules described above also apply to "great-grandchild" accounts and any additional descendants below the "great-grandchildren".
The dunning processes stay the same in that the responsible account will go into dunning. The responsible account could be any ancestor or the immediate parent.
All other parent-child account functionality described in Aria documentation is the same regardless of the responsible account's level in the hierarchy.