Client Groups organize related client records so firm staff can view, filter, and work with them together while each client remains a separate record.
If your firm is on Aiwyn Practice, then Client Groups are managed within Aiwyn. If your firm does not use Aiwyn Practice, then Client Groups are synced from your practice management system and must be managed there instead of in Aiwyn.
What a Client Group represents
A Client Group is a logical collection of clients. Firms can use groups for structures such as a parent company and its subsidiaries, a family of related entities, a region, or another firm-defined segment.
A group is an organizational relationship. It does not merge the clients into one account. Each member keeps its own identifier, profile, balances, contacts, engagements, invoices, and communication settings.
Group membership
A client can belong to only one Client Group at a time. There is no limit to the number of clients that can belong to a group.
Membership is stored on the client record. Each member client points to its Client Group, and Aiwyn uses those relationships to assemble the group. This means:
- removing a client from a group does not delete or deactivate the client;
- renaming a group does not change its membership; and
- moving a client to another group changes which group-based filters and workflows include that client.
Primary Client
Applies to Aiwyn Practice only.
A group can designate a Primary Client. The Primary Client is the representative client when a group-level workflow needs to resolve the group to one client record.
The Primary Client remains an individual client with its own data. The designation does not make the other members subsidiaries in a technical hierarchy, combine their balances, or replace their client-specific settings.
Contacts and communication settings
Contacts remain associated with client records. A contact linked to a member client is related to the group only through that client.
Aiwyn-managed groups can include group-level Primary Contact and Billing Contact fields where enabled, and selecting a Primary Client can prefill them from that client's details. These group fields do not replace the contact roles and delivery preferences maintained on each client.
Invoice recipients, statement recipients, payment confirmations, engagement contacts, and portal access can differ across clients in the same group. Review each member client's Contacts section when you need to confirm who receives a communication.
For a parent company with several subsidiaries, each subsidiary can remain a separate client with its own contacts and delivery settings. The Client Group provides a shared way to find and work with the related records.
How groups affect other areas
Supported areas use Client Group as a way to select or organize member clients. Depending on the products your firm uses, you can:
- display, sort, and filter the Clients list by Client Group;
- view unbilled projects and WIP by Client Group in Aiwyn Practice; and
- include all clients in a Client Group when creating an engagement letter in Aiwyn Engagements.
A group selection includes the member client records. It does not automatically combine their balances, recipients, permissions, or historical activity.
Source of truth
- For a firm connected to a practice management system, Client Groups and membership are normally determined upstream and mapped during implementation.
- For a firm using Aiwyn Practice, Aiwyn-managed groups can be created and maintained directly in Aiwyn.
Make changes in the system that owns the group. Local changes to externally managed data can be unavailable or overwritten by a later refresh.
Related
- How Aiwyn builds client groups
- Where client group is used in Aiwyn
- Manage Client Groups
- Client record and grid reference