If you only ever work with/are hired by individuals, you can probably ignore this.

But if organizations hire you to work with one or more individuals, CoachAccountable Companies are for you.

With CoachAccountable Companies, you can:

• Organize your individual clients by company
• Invite Company Personnel to have their own accounts within the the system
• Invoice the organization, rather than the individuals you are coaching

Let’s see how this works!

Setting up Companies

As hinted at earlier, Companies aren’t relevant for all coaches.  So in the interest of not cluttering anyone’s coaching platform unnecessarily, these are by default turned off.  To get started visit the My Account page >> Add Ons and enable Companies:

Companies are available only in Version 4, so if you don’t see these you’ll need to switch over first!

Once enabled, you’ll have the new Companies tab, either on your home dashboard page (for single coach accounts) or on the team administration page (for team accounts):

Creating a company is simple.  Just give it a name, and, on Team Edition, indicate which person on your team is the primary liaison (more on that below):

Once it’s created, you can enter an address for the company (for your records, and also to appear on invoices for that company) and upload the company logo.

Tying Clients to Companies

When you have one or more Companies, you’ll have the option to associate a new client with one as part of adding that person:

This company affiliation can also be set from the Client Manager pop-up, under Basics.

From your Active Companies listing, clicking on a given company takes you to the respective Company Page:

Here’s where companies shine as a way to organize your clients: the client listing is pared down to those from that company, and appointments and reports are filtered along the same lines.

Other client lists, like for a given coach or for an entire Team Edition account, show company affiliations with the company’s logo.  Filter your client listing to only include a particular company by searching for the company’s name.

Inviting Company Personnel

To me the most exciting new possibility with Companies is your ability to create user accounts for personnel.  Personnel are members of a company you aren’t necessarily working with directly, yet who have a vested interest in the work you’re doing nonetheless.

Adding personnel is much like adding clients or other team members: only name and email address are required, and you can send an invite email immediately or later (you’ll find a new “Invite New Company Personnel” email template in Settings >> System >> Message Templates).

By carefully setting permissions, you can give each person the exact level of access they should have:

The collection of permission settings allows for granular control of what a given individual is and isn’t allowed to see and do.  This makes it possible to grant only access to manage invoices for one, a window into reports for another, and total transparency into all work for yet another.

And in case you were wondering: personnel do not count toward your subscription plan, so you’re free to get everyone in the loop who should be!

Company Groups

Once you’ve got your Companies set up (including client affiliations with those companies), you can create Groups whose client membership is defined by company.

Just create a Group as usual, and then from the Membership area click the “Membership by Company…” button.

Setting Group membership by Company means that when you add a new client to that Company, that client is automatically added into the Group.  (Likewise, removing a client’s affiliation from a Company automatically removes them from the Company Group.)

There’s still flexibility, of course: you’re still free to manually add group clients who are not from the company, and remove select company clients as desired.  Controls to deactivate and reactivate individual Group memberships remain in effect as well.

Company Happenings Reports

Speaking of handy ways to segment your clients along company lines, you can also create Happenings Reports set to include the clients in one or more companies.  If you choose to report on clients from exactly 1 company, you’ll have the option to have the report sent to personnel from that company.

For Team Edition accounts, note that proper visibility into clients is always maintained based on who a given team member is allowed to see.  If Acme Co. has clients A, B and C, and a team member is only allowed to see clients A and B, rest assured that a Happenings Reports created by that team member on the clients for Acme Co. will ONLY contain clients A and B.

Company Invoicing

You can issue invoices to Companies just as you would regular clients.  When you opt to send an invoice in the usual ways, personnel designated to receive company invoices will do so.  (And if there are no personnel set to receive invoices, the system will lovingly let you know as much when you try to send, and guide you to fix that!)

In the Client Invoicing >> Accounts listing you’ll see companies appear right alongside clients.  Those clients who are associated with companies will no longer appear in the Accounts listing – presumably, they will be billed via the company, rather than individually.

Company Primary Liaisons

The primary liaison for a company is the person who will appear as the contact for company personnel when those personnel log in. The primary liaison will also receive any notifications about company invoices. On single-coach accounts, this is of course you.

Layout-wise, company personnel will see the primary liaison at the top of the left sidebar. It’ll look much like how primary coaches appear for clients, at the top of the left sidebar. When personnel click on the avatar, they’ll see the primary liaison’s profile (if shared). They can also click to email the primary liaison.

In Summary

Generally speaking, CoachAccountable Companies are the solution for doing business with an entity that isn’t strictly the individual (or individuals) being coached.  Beyond conventional companies, this can include scenarios like being hired by parents to work with their children.

Beyond obvious wins of account organization and the ability to invoice third parties for your work (nice logistical conveniences, to be sure!), it is my hope that YOUR ability to offer a more direct window into the process will make your offering more attractive for those who’ve hired you.

Anyone who hires you, but especially in a more corporate environment, wants to demonstrate the value of working with you.  Giving them a regular accounting of the work being done and the results being gotten, either as self-service access or as a routine report that comes automatically, can go a long way towards building confidence that they made the right decision.

Enjoy!