A Subaccount is similar to a regular account, with some restrictions. If different departments or customers are using the MessageBird workspace, and you want to limit their financial control and capabilities, we recommend you create Subaccounts for them. If you're unsure what the best setup is for your use case, take a look at this article here: Accounts, Workspaces, Users, & Subaccounts.

Adding Subaccounts 

You can create and view your Subaccounts by clicking on the Workspace name in the upper right corner and click on ‘Your account’ in the drop-down menu. In the menu on the left on the new page you can click on 'Subaccounts' to see your Subaccount settings. 

There is no limit to the number of Subaccounts that you can have, just keep in mind that the more Subaccounts you have, the more maintenance will be required to ensure sufficient balance is available for each to continue sending messages.

To add a new account, click on '+Add'. Write down the name and the email address for the Subaccount, and select how you would like the Subaccount to use balance:

• Sharing the balance of the Workspace: all the message they sent will be deducted from the balance of the Workspace, and they will not see the balance themselves.
• Assigning a specific budget to the Subaccount: allocate a certain amount to the Subaccount

For more information on the balance usage of a Subaccount check here.

Deleting Subaccounts 

To delete a Subaccount simply click on the trash icon on the right next to the Subaccount name, and click 'Remove' in the pop-up window to confirm the deletion.

Changing the settings for Subaccounts

To edit existing Subaccount you can click on the notepad on the right next to the Subaccount name. A pop-up window will appear where you can change the following:

• Name of Subaccount
• Email address 
• The balance settings

In this window you can also set up a balance warning for this particular Subaccount, and you can add or remove balance from the Subaccount if it is set to assigned balance. We'll discuss in more detail below in this article.

Managing the balance for Subaccounts

Subaccounts are not able to purchase their own balance but either:

• Share the balance available on the main account
• Manage their own balance which is assigned from the main account as a budget.

During the creation of the Subaccount you will have chosen how the Subaccount uses balance. To change this simply click on the notepad next to the Subaccount name. 

Shared balance

Subaccounts with shared balance don't have their own credit on their account, but rather share whatever balance is on the main account. If the balance on the main account runs out, the Subaccount will also not be able to use the service anymore until the main account holder tops up. For this reason we recommend that if you are sharing balance, the main account holder has an Auto Top-Up or Balance Warning set up, so make sure that they don't run into any unexpected balance issues. If you want to ensure that Subaccounts never run out of balance, we recommend sharing balance with the main account and setting up Auto Top-Up here. For more information: How to set up Auto Top-Up

Assigned balance

Subaccounts with assigned balance have a limited amount of balance given to them by the main account. As main account holder, you can click on the notepad next to a Subaccount name to manage the balance for your Subaccounts. You can both assign and remove credit from the Subaccount on this page. To assign balance, you can enter the amount that you would like to send to the subaccount in the box next to 'Balance Debit/Credit'. If you want to remove balance from the Subaccount, simply put a minus sign before the amount. Removed balance goes back to the main account

If you have chosen to assign balance for a Subaccount, the moment the assigned amount runs out the Subaccount won't be able to continue sending messages. As main account owner a manual action is needed to ensure sufficient balance is available for each Subaccount to keep sending messages. To avoid running into unexpected low balance issues, you can set up a balance warning to go out when this reaches a certain point so you can make sure the Subaccount can keep using the service. 

Viewing the Subaccount usage

From the main account

Main account holders can view Subaccount usage via Insights. Under 'Subaccount messages' the main account holder can see both the message count as well as the cost for the messages sent per Subaccount. You are able to download a CSV to see a full overview, but note this will not include any usage from the main account.

From the Subaccount

The Subaccount holder can see their own usage by going to Insights. Subaccounts can only see the message count, but are not able to see anything related to pricing and the cost of their sending.

Subaccount restrictions

Please keep in mind that we have placed a few restrictions on Subaccounts. Subaccounts cannot do the following:

• Use Voice capabilities.
• Top-up own balance. Balance needs to be shared with or transferred from the main account. 
• View messages sent by other Subaccounts.
• Access the billing log. If you want to know the expense per Subaccount, you can take a look at the Subaccount statistics in the main account.
• Access numbers, messages and flows that are created and used in the main account. 
• Create multiple users. Only one email address has access to the Subaccount.
• Buy numbers or other products themselves. Numbers are assigned to Subaccounts from the main account, by clicking on the 'Edit' button next to a number.