Business Administrator can support a multi-business environment, though there are issues to consider.
Business structure
The key point to understand is that Business Administrator will support only one legal entity at the time. Under that legal entity, you can have as many trading businesses as you like, but they must legally be a part of the legal entity. In other words, we're talking about having a variety of trading names of the legal entity.
Do remember that Business Administrator must not be operated across jurisdictions. That means all the trading businesses must be in the same jurisdiction as the legal entity that owns them.
Key characteristics of the trading businesses
- All staff will be assumed to be working for the legal entity, for administrative purposes. For management purposes they will appear as working for the nominated business at the nominated address
- For centralisation purposes, the payroll can only be run from the legal entity
- All tax liabilities are assumed to belong to the legal entity
- All assets are assumed to be owned by the legal entity
Setting up a legal entity
It is not possible to run Business Administrator with registering a business with it. Whether or not that business is in fact a legal entity, it is assumed to be the legal entity.
You can edit the definition of the business in Business Manager in mode Businesses.
Setting up a trading business
There are three parts to setting up a trading business. First, register the new business as a company in Contact Manager in mode Companies, as you would register any other company. As you register it, you will see Mark as New Business under Ways Forward. Ensure this is ticked before closing. If you forget to tick, you can still look for the business in Contact Manager, edit, then click it.
Don't add any employees to the business at this point because Business Administrator will treat it as a commercial acquisition and move to implement applicable taxes. Add employees once the business is properly registered as a trading business.
If you have a trading business registered that ceases to be of use, you cannot delete it. You can mark it as inactive by going to Business Manager in mode Businesses and editing it from there.