Overview
A partner is a third-party organization, such as a reseller, distributor, managed service provider, or parent company, that is involved in a sale but is not the end user of your product. Your customer stays the customer of record: they hold the subscription and use the product. The partner is the party you bill. Using partners, you keep one clean record for each company, assign a partner when you build the order, and choose who receives the invoice.If you don’t see Partners in the left navigation, the feature isn’t enabled for your org yet. Reach out to us in your dedicated Slack channel.
How partners work
Every order and subscription involves two roles:- Customer of record: the company that uses the product. The subscription lives under this company, and it earns and holds any credits.
- Billed party: the company that receives the invoice and pays it. This is either the customer or the partner.
This arrangement is selected on the first order of a subscription, and stays fixed for the life of that subscription. Renewals, upgrades, and recasts inherit it and show it read-only.
Creating a partner
Partners are managed on the Partners page, accessible from the left navigation. Creating and editing partners requires the Admin role. See Permissions below.1
Open the Partners page
Go to Partners in the left navigation and click New partner + in the top-right corner.
2
Choose the default order handling
Under Order handling, answer Who receives the invoice?
- The customer: orders assigned to this partner bill the customer by default.
- This partner: orders assigned to this partner bill the partner by default.
3
Enter the partner details
Under Partner details, fill in:
4
Enter the partner's address
Under Address, enter the partner’s billing address. When the partner is billed, invoices are addressed here and tax is calculated against this address.
You can save a partner without an address and assign it to an order, but a partner-billed order cannot be closed until the partner has a complete address.
5
Add the point of contact
Under Point of contact, enter the first name, last name, job title, and email of the person at the partner who receives order and contract communications.By default the point of contact is also the authorized signatory. If someone else signs on behalf of the partner, check The point of contact is not the authorized signatory and enter the signatory’s details in the fields that appear.
6
Add the accounts payable email
Under Billing details, enter one or more Accounts payable email(s), separated by commas. These addresses receive invoices and billing notifications whenever this partner is billed. Check Same as point of contact to reuse the contact’s email.At least one accounts payable address is required.
7
Save
Click Create partner. The partner appears on the Partners page with an Active status and is immediately available in the order builder.
The Partners page
Metrics
Two cards at the top of the page count your Active partners and Inactive partners (archived). Click Filtered view on either card to filter the table below.Partners table
The table lists one row per partner:- Partner: the partner’s legal name.
- Customers: the number of customers with a partner-billed subscription through this partner.
- Associated spend: the combined current contract value of those subscriptions.
- Renewal expectation: the combined estimated value of their next terms.
- Status: Active or Inactive.
Editing a partner
Click the dots on the right-hand side of a row and choose Edit. Changes to the partner’s name, address, tax ID, contacts, and accounts payable emails apply everywhere the partner is referenced, including the order details of existing orders. Invoice emails for existing partner-billed subscriptions go to the updated accounts payable addresses from the next send onward. If you use QuickBooks, the partner’s QuickBooks customer is resynced. Changing the Order handling default on the partner record only affects new orders. It does not change the arrangement on any existing order or subscription.Archiving a partner
Click the dots on a row and choose Archive. An archived partner can no longer be selected on new orders or invoices, but every existing order, subscription, and invoice keeps referencing it, and it stays listed on the Partners page with an Inactive status.Assigning a partner on an order
1
Open the customer information section
In the order builder, fill in the customer’s details as usual. The customer is always the end user of the product.
2
Assign a partner
Check Assign a partner and select the partner from the Partner dropdown.
3
Confirm who receives the invoice
Under Who receives the invoice?, the option selected on the partner record is preselected. Change it if this order should be handled differently:
- The customer: invoices go to the customer on this order, as on a direct deal.
- This partner: invoices go to the partner’s accounts payable address instead of the customer.
On the order form
When the partner is billed, the order form gains a Bill to block with the partner’s legal name, address, and tax ID, along with the partner’s point of contact and accounts payable emails. The customer is still named as the customer of record, so both companies appear on the document. When the partner is assigned but the customer is billed, the order form shows a single Partner line naming the partner. Nothing else changes.On the order details page
Any order with a partner shows a Partner card with the partner’s name, an Invoiced badge reading Partner or Customer, the partner’s tax ID, point of contact, authorized signatory (when the partner is billed), and accounts payable emails.Closing a partner-billed order
A partner-billed order cannot be closed until the partner has a complete address and a signatory with an email address. If either is missing, edit the partner on the Partners page and then close the order. In the manual close flow, the company address, point of contact, and accounts payable fields are read-only because they come from the partner record.What changes when a partner is billed
Selecting This partner as the invoice recipient changes who Salesbricks talks to and who pays. The customer of record does not change.Signing and checkout
The signature request and checkout link go to the partner’s authorized signatory. On the checkout page, the partner’s point of contact and accounts payable emails are shown read-only, and the buyer cannot edit the company address. A purchase order number can still be entered.Invoices
- The Bill to block shows the partner’s legal name, address, and tax ID.
- A Customer line names the end customer so the partner knows which account the invoice covers.
- Tax is calculated against the partner’s address. If the partner resells to a customer in another jurisdiction, downstream tax is the partner’s responsibility.
Communications
All billing communications go to the partner’s accounts payable emails: invoice issued, receipts, reminders, and dunning. Order and subscription communications go to the partner’s point of contact. The customer receives no billing or contract email for a partner-billed subscription.Payment and autopay
The partner pays. Any card saved at checkout or from the invoice payment link is saved to the partner, not the customer. Autopay and charge timing settings belong to the partner and apply to every customer that partner bills, so the Billing page shows an Autopay (Partner) badge on those invoices. Because the payment methods are the partner’s, the customer’s subscription management page has no Payment methods tab and no Pay now button on partner-billed invoices.Credits
Credits belong to the customer of record. A customer’s credits can be applied to a partner-billed invoice, which reduces what the partner owes. A company that is only a partner cannot hold a credit balance.QuickBooks
If you use the QuickBooks integration, the partner syncs as a parent customer and each end customer billed through it syncs as a sub-customer namedCustomer (Partner). Partner-billed invoices are created on the sub-customer and set to bill with the parent, so QuickBooks keeps per-customer detail while receivables roll up to the partner. Credit memos are issued on the same sub-customer as the invoice they offset.
A partner-level credit spanning several end customers cannot be applied cleanly across their invoices in QuickBooks. Apply credits per customer.
Partners on one-off invoices
When you create a one-off invoice for a customer, the form includes an Assign a partner or reseller card. If the customer has exactly one active subscription with a partner, that partner and its billing arrangement are preselected so the invoice follows the subscription without extra steps. Choose Bill the buyer or Bill the partner. When the partner is billed, the accounts payable field is prefilled with the partner’s addresses, and you can still edit the recipients before sending.Partners on the Customers page
- Companies that are set up as partners carry a Partner badge in the customers table and on their customer details page. Click the badge to open the partner record.
- The customer details page lists the Partner (or Partners) a customer is billed through.
- Use the Partner filter on the Customers page to see every customer billed through a given partner.
A company that is both a partner and a customer
A reseller can also buy from you directly. In that case the same company appears on the Partners page and on the Customers page, carrying a Partner badge on its customer record.- Its own orders bill it directly, and it earns credits on those orders like any customer.
- It cannot be assigned as the partner on its own orders.
- Its name and legal name are managed on the Partners page. They are read-only in the order builder.
Permissions
Partner access is controlled by the Partners permission under Customers in role management.
Every built-in role can read partners so the partner picker works in the order builder. Grant a custom role Create, Update, or Delete on Partners to let it manage partner records.