Parent/Child Lead Hierarchy

For many sales organizations, it can be strategically important to relate accounts together by a parent, or master account, and the child accounts that are associated underneath it. Whether you work with franchises, distributors, school branches, or affiliates, this functionality allows you to navigate between related companies quickly and easily.

To create parent-child relationships in Close, we use custom fields and integration links. We'll first implement a solution that will allow you to create a list of all child accounts associated with a parent account.

Step 1: Create the Parent Account Lead Custom Field

First, create a custom field in the Settings > Customization > Custom Fields > Add Lead Custom Field section of your Close account.
Name it something similar to "Parent Account" or however your company refers to the Master account.
Label it either as a text field or a choices field.

Close Pro Tip:

Choose text if you have a large number of parent accounts; choose choices if you have fewer than 20. If you create a choices type, add each choice now.

Next, for each child account that is associated with the parent, add the parent name in the custom field on the lead.

Step 2: Create the Integration Link to Search for all other Child Accounts (from a Child Account)

Now create an integration link that will search for all child accounts associated with the Parent account listed in the custom field.

Go to Settings > Lead Customization > Integration Links.
Add a new integration link, name it ‘Search for Child Accounts (from Child)’, and choose ‘Lead’ as the type.
In the URL box, your link will look like this:

closeio://app.close.com/search/%22custom.Parent%22%3A%22{{lead.custom.[Parent]}}%22

This link prompts the system to open the link in a new page of the app and search for the lead name that is in the custom field of Parent. If you chose a different name for your Parent custom field, you’ll want to replace custom. Parent in the link above with the correct name.

Pro tip:

You can create integration links to link to pages within the Close app or within the Close browser version. In this case, we chose the URL of closeio:// to prompt the page to open in the Close app. If you use the browser version of Close more often, you’ll want to keep https:// as the URL

Step 3: Create an Integration Link to Search for the Parent Account

Our next step is to create an integration link that will quickly jump you to the parent account lead page from the child account.

Go to Settings > Lead Customization > Integration Links.
Add a new integration link, name it ‘Search for Parent Account,’ and choose ‘Lead’ as the type.
In the URL box, your link will look like this:

closeio://app.close.com/search/name%3A%22{{lead.custom.[Parent]}}%22

If you chose a different name for your Parent custom field, you’ll want to replace custom. Parent in the link above with the correct name of your custom field.

When you click on the completed integration link, you'll be jumped back to the parent account in Close.

Step 4: Create an Integration Link to Search for the Child Accounts from the Parent Account

Our next step is to create an integration link that will quickly jump you to the child accounts from the parent account.

Go to Settings > Lead Customization > Integration Links.
Add a new integration link, name it ‘Search for Child Accounts (from Parent),’ and choose ‘Lead’ as the type.
In the URL box, your link will look like this:

closeio://app.close.com/search/%22custom.Parent%22%3A%22{{lead.display_name}}%22

Now test it out! Head to a child or parent account and use the integration links you made to quickly find the leads it is associated with.