How to Create New Contacts/Sub-Accounts in Client Area

It is a fairly common practice when you need to assign users as sub-accounts in your Client Area with limited access to manage/create tickets, pay invoices, and any other owner-related actions. Here at FastComet, we do have a great sub-account management system that allows you to create sub-users under your main account, which then allows that contact to log in and perform the actions that you, as the primary account holder, have authorized.

In this post, we'll show you how to add sub-users (also known as Contacts) to your billing account. This lets you grant access to your account to friends, relatives, and other server administrators, allowing them to make payments, issue support requests, and more.

Table of Contents:

• What are Sub-accounts?
• Why Would You Need a Sub-account?
• How to Add a Sub-account
• How to Add a Billing Sub-account  

What are Sub-accounts?

The "master account owner" is the primary login, and any users they create under their account are referred to as "sub-accounts." Sub-accounts can be used to give third people (business partners, developers, associates, etc.) access to your hosting account so they can perform various operations.

Why Would You Need a Sub-account?

Each section of your client has its own permission settings, so the primary account holder (and any sub-accounts with permissions to manage contacts) can fine-tune the access privileges to establish various logins for different purposes.

Here are a few examples of how this could be useful:

• Billing Department – corporate users may have a dedicated billing department that has access to pay invoices and place new orders, while web/technical staff only has access to browse current products and services and send support requests, which was previously impossible.

• Web Developers – a client who is hosting with you, may hire a web developer to construct and maintain their website, and you'd like to grant that developer permission to create tickets and correspond on their behalf without having access to billing information or changing account settings. When it comes to web developers' access, we suggest you read about a few things to consider, as well as get familiarized with security principles.

As before, a contact's/sub-email account's settings can be utilized to have invoice-related emails sent to additional email addresses.

How to Add a Sub-account

To add a sub-account, you need to log into your Client Area first. Once you are logged in, click on the top-right corner button (Hello, Your_Name) and navigate to the Contacts/Sub-accounts option:

Or simply click on the following URL once you are logged in → https://my.fastcomet.com/clientarea.php?action=contacts

The page will allow you to add a sub-account:

You need to fill in the required fields like First Name, Last Name, Email, Address, etc. Once you have filled in the details, make sure to enable the sub-account activation with the tick as it is shown below in the screenshot:

Once you enable the sub-account activation, the Client Area will also ask you to input the Password, which is required.

Also, you will need to choose the Sub-account Preferences, such as Modify Master Account Profile, View & Modify Product Password,  View & Pay Invoices, etc. Make sure to choose the correct permissions for security reasons, this step is an important one.

You also can choose the Email Preferences, so the sub-account will receive the system emails that you prefer.

Note that all these preferences can be changed/modified at any time in the future. Once you are done with the details and preferences, you just need to click on the blue Save Changes button:

How to Add a Billing Sub-account  

In order to add a Billing sub-account, you need to add the sub-account and adjust the following preferences:

• From the Sub-account Preferences, make sure to enable the View & Pay Invoices.
• From the Email Preferences, make sure to enable the Invoice Emails - Invoices & Billing Reminders:

These configurations will ensure that the sub-account has access only to the billing-related options in the Client Area. They will also receive billing-related Emails.

Once the sub-account is created, the user can log into the Client Area with the Email address and the password that you have configured and complete the payment of the invoices, generate renewal invoices, and manage the Billing Details of the account. 

The created sub-account will be able to manage the invoices and the billing from the Client Area → Billing:

Conclusion

Please exercise extreme caution when deciding what level of access to give the Sub-account in question. If the account is for someone you don't know or trust, be careful to give them as few privileges as possible.