Organization with Child Companies for consolidated billing
Pointerra supports an organisation structure where one parent company manages the subscription and organisation-wide settings for one or more child companies.
This is designed for organisations that need central control over billing, licensing, SSO, and subscription features, while still allowing individual business units, regions, contractors, or project groups to manage their own data and users. If you are interested in using this feature please contact support.
Getting Started
An organisation is set up by Pointerra support. Existing companies can be linked into an organisation as child companies.
When an existing company is converted into a child company:
The organisation's subscription, billing, and user licensing move to the parent company.
Existing users of the child company are moved under the parent company and continue to access the child company through an identity. Their sign-in email and password (or SSO login) do not change.
The child company's projects, datasets, teams, and permissions are unaffected.
Your Pointerra contact will coordinate the conversion with you and confirm timing so there is no disruption to your users.
What Changes for Non-Admin Users
For standard users, there should be no noticeable change.
Users continue to sign in, access projects, view data, upload, share, and work in Pointerra as normal, based on the permissions they have been given.
If a user is a member of more than one company in the organisation, they access each one through an identity:
A user with a single identity is switched into that company automatically when they sign in.
A user with identities in multiple companies chooses which company to work in, and can switch identities at any time.
Organisation Admins
Organisation admins manage the parent company.
The parent company controls:
Subscription and billing
User limits and user licence tiers
Shared storage quota
Subscription-enabled features such as API access, sharing, branding, archiving, and other plan-based capabilities
SSO configuration
Organisation-level user and identity management
User licences
User licence tiers are defined by the parent company's subscription and shared across the whole organisation. Every user, including users who access child companies through identities and pending invitations draws from the same organisation-wide licence pool. The parent's tier configuration also sets the default tier for new users across the organisation.
This includes external users. when someone whose primary account belongs to another company is given an identity in one of your child companies, that identity uses a licence from the organisation-wide pool (where licence tiers are enabled). External identities also appear in the parent company's user list, so organisation admins have full visibility of everyone with access across the organisation.
Storage quota
Storage quota is shared across the organisation. The limit comes from the parent company's subscription and usage from all companies in the organisation counts toward it.
Usage can still be reviewed per child company, so organisation admins can understand how much storage each child company is using. Child company admins see their own company's usage alongside the organisation-wide total (for example, "Your organisation is using X of Y").
Inviting users
Organisation admins invite users from the parent company and choose which company in the organisation the new user will belong to. The user is created under the parent company and given an identity in the selected child company, drawing a licence from the organisation-wide pool.
If the invitee's email address belongs to a domain registered for SSO, they are sent an SSO sign-in email instead of a standard invitation, and their account is created through your identity provider.
Removing users
Organisation admins manage users centrally from the parent company. Removing a user from the parent company removes them from the entire organisation, including all of their identities in child companies, and frees their licence back to the organisation-wide pool.
Child company admins can remove a user's access to their own company without affecting that user's access to other companies in the organisation.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
SSO is configured once, on the parent company, and applies to the whole organisation:
Child companies do not have their own SSO configuration.
Registered email domains determine which users sign in via SSO.
Your identity provider can route users into the right child companies, and optionally manage their teams and licence tiers, using claims in the SSO assertion. Pointerra support can help configure this with your IT team.
Child Company Admins
Child company admins continue to manage their own child company.
Child companies still control their own operational setup, including:
Projects and datasets
Collections and folders
Teams and permissions
Child company users and access
Storage locations
Company-specific configuration
Branding assets where enabled
Child company admins do not manage subscription, billing, SSO, or organisation-wide limits unless they are also admins of the parent company.
What Is Not Shared
Only the subscription, licensing, quota, and SSO are centralised. Day-to-day working data remains separate per company:
Projects, datasets, collections, teams, and permissions belong to the company they were created in and are not visible from other companies in the organisation.
A user only sees a child company's data if they have an identity (and the appropriate permissions) in that company.
Branding assets (such as logos) are configured per company, so each child company can present its own branding where the plan enables it.
FAQ
Can a parent company admin see a child company's data?
Organisation admins can administer child companies (users, teams, settings, usage). To work with a child company's projects and data, they use an identity in that company like any other user.
Do child companies receive separate invoices?
No. Billing is consolidated on the parent company.
Do users need new logins?
No. Each person has one login. If they belong to multiple companies in the organisation, they switch between them using identities.
What happens if we add another child company later?
Contact Pointerra support. New child companies can be added to an existing organisation, and their users are brought under the parent in the same way as the initial setup.
Summary
The parent company provides central control over subscription, billing, SSO, and shared limits. Child companies remain separate working areas for day-to-day data, project, team, and permission management. Standard users should not need to change how they use Pointerra.