If you work with property managers, landlords, or corporate accounts, you’ve probably run into this situation: you do the job at a child location but need to send the bill to the parent account. Bill to Parent makes this seamless. Instead of manually re-entering billing details every time, you can link child estimates and invoices directly to the parent’s billing information and even charge the parent’s card on file. Note: Bill to Parent only appears on customer records that have a parent customer linked. Learn how to set up Parent/Child relationships here.

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Enabling Bill to Parent

Bill to Parent is turned off by default. To turn it on for your account: Go to Company Settings, then click Estimates & Invoices. Click Advanced in the sub-header. Toggle on Enable Bill to Parent at the top of the page. Once enabled, the Bill to Parent toggle will appear on child customer records, and a Bill To dropdown will appear on their estimates and invoices.

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Setting Up Bill to Parent on a Customer Record

Once the feature is enabled at the account level, you can turn it on for individual child customers. Step 1: Open a child customer record and click Edit. Step 2: Toggle on Use Separate Billing Address. Scroll to the Billing section and toggle on Bill to Parent. When you toggle on Bill to Parent, a few things happen automatically:

• The parent’s billing address is pulled into the child’s billing address field. If the parent does not have a billing address on file, the parent’s service address is used instead.
• The Use Separate Billing Address toggle is hidden while Bill to Parent is on, since billing details are now inherited from the parent.
• The child inherits the parent’s tax exempt status and default net terms.

You can always edit the billing address on the child record directly, even after it is populated from the parent. If you ever unlink the parent from the child customer, Bill to Parent will turn off automatically and the customer will revert to standard billing details. Note: Any historical record that was billed to the parent will still have the parent as Bill To even if the customer record has Bill to Parent disabled.

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Using Bill to Parent on Estimates and Invoices

When Bill to Parent is enabled on a child customer, a Bill To dropdown appears on their estimates and invoices. The dropdown has two options:

• Parent Customer (the default when Bill to Parent is on)
• Customer (the child themselves)

You can change this on any individual estimate or invoice without affecting the customer record setting. When Bill To is set to Parent Customer:

• The billing address is pre-populated with the parent’s billing address. You can edit it directly by typing a custom address or clicking the address icon to quickly insert the parent address, customer address, or service address.
• The parent customer’s saved card on file is available to charge for payment.
• The parent’s email is synced to the invoice in QuickBooks Online instead of the child’s email.

In view mode on the estimate or invoice, you will see a Bill to Parent field showing the parent’s name with a link to open their record in a new tab. To save a payment method on file to the parent, toggle on Save Payment Method on File to Parent when entering Credit Card or ACH information. To use a saved payment method on file, select Charge Saved Payment Method and choose the Parent Payment Method.

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Bill to Parent Display Settings

When Bill to Parent is enabled, you can control which billing details appear on your estimate and invoice PDFs. These settings work in two layers: your Company Settings define the account-wide defaults, and the preview panel on each individual estimate or invoice lets you adjust them for that record only. To set your account defaults, go to Company Settings > Estimates & Invoices > Preview Settings. You will see a new billing section just below the existing Display Customer’s Email toggle. The available options are:

• Display Billing Name — shows the parent customer’s name in a “Bill To” section on the PDF
• Display Billing Phone — shows the parent customer’s phone number
• Display Billing Email — shows the parent customer’s email address
• Display Billing Address — shows the parent customer’s billing address
• Modify Billing Details — allows you to enter custom billing information on a per-record basis, overriding what is pulled from the parent customer. When enabled, you can enter a custom billing name, phone number, email, and address.

All of these options are turned off by default. When you are ready to start showing billing details on your documents, turn on the fields you want and click Save. Each estimate and invoice will inherit your Company Settings defaults, but you can always adjust them from the preview panel on any individual record.

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Accounting Integrations & Bill to Parent Sync

The way Bill to Parent information syncs with your accounting integration depends on the accounting software you use. The sections below describe which invoice fields are synced when Bill to Parent is enabled on an invoice.

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Sync Behavior at a Glance

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QuickBooks Online Sync

Note: For parent customers with an Account Type of Commercial, QuickBooks Online stores the billing information as:

• Line 1: Bill To Name
• Line 2: Bill To Company Name
• Lines 3–5: Bill To Address

This ensures the company name is displayed separately from the contact name on the invoice.

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Filtering the Related Customers List by Bill To

On a parent customer’s record, open the Related Customers tab, then go into the Estimates and Invoices subtab. This shows every estimate and invoice tied to that parent’s related (child) customers, and you can filter the list two ways:

• Invoice Customer — filters by whose job it was: All (everything related to this customer), Child Accounts Only (child invoices), or Customer Only (invoices on the parent’s own record).
• Bill To — filters by who’s actually being billed: Parent Customer (only records billed to the parent) or Customer (only records billed to the child themselves).

Combine both filters to quickly answer questions like, “show me every invoice where the job was done at a child location but billed to the parent.”

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Limitations & Current Restrictions

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Recurring Billing Support

Bill to Parent is not currently supported for Recurring Billing. Recurring invoices will continue to use the standard customer billing information. Support for Bill to Parent in recurring billing is planned for a future release.

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Offline Mode Limitations

Bill to Parent details cannot be configured while working in Offline Mode. While you can still create estimates and invoices offline, you must reconnect to the internet to specify or update Bill To information before finalizing and sending the document.

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FAQs

Who can turn Bill to Parent on and off? The account-level setting in Company Settings requires admin access. The Bill to Parent toggle on a customer record can be changed by anyone with customer create/edit permissions, and the Bill To dropdown on estimates and invoices can be changed by anyone with estimate/invoice edit and create permissions. Does Bill to Parent work on the mobile app? Yes, Bill to Parent works the same on both web and mobile. Will turning on Bill to Parent change my existing estimates and invoices? No. Only new estimates and invoices created after you enable it are affected. Existing documents keep their original billing details. If I update the parent’s billing address later, do the child customers update too? It depends on whether the child’s address was customized. If the child’s billing address still matches the parent’s old address (it was inherited), it updates automatically to the new parent address. If the child’s billing address was manually edited to something different, it is preserved and won’t be overwritten. What happens if I turn Bill to Parent off for a single customer? New estimates and invoices for that customer will bill the child directly, and the Bill To dropdown no longer appears on new documents. Historical documents billed to the parent keep their Bill To details. What happens if I turn off the account-level Enable Bill to Parent setting? Will I lose data? No data is lost. When the Enable Bill to Parent setting is turned off, the Bill to Parent toggle remains on customer records for reference only. New records are automatically created and billed to the customer record, and the Bill To field is no longer visible on new estimates or invoices. Existing records and historical billing information remain unchanged, ensuring your records and audit trail stay accurate. You can re-enable the setting at any time. When I save a new card during payment, does it save it to the parent or the child? If the customer has a parent, you’ll see an extra toggle when saving a payment method: Save to Parent Customer (off by default). Turn it on to save the card to the parent’s account only; leave it off to save it to the child. I enabled “Bill with parent” in QuickBooks Online, does that carry over to FieldPulse? Yes, the setting syncs both ways. When a customer syncs from QuickBooks Online with Bill with Parent enabled, FieldPulse automatically turns on the Bill to Parent toggle and uses the billing address from QuickBooks. If QuickBooks has no billing address, the field stays blank until you add one in FieldPulse, which then pushes back to QuickBooks. Why is the Unlink button greyed out on my child customer? If any of the child’s invoices have been paid by the parent, unlinking is blocked. This follows a QuickBooks rule that preserves accounting history — unlinking in this state would cause unrecoverable sync errors. If you need to change the relationship, you can edit the parent’s information directly, recreate the customer under a new parent, or delete the linked payments in QuickBooks Online. How can I see all invoices billed to a parent across their child accounts? On the parent’s customer record, open the Estimates & Invoices subtab and use the Invoice Customer filter (web app only). Choose All (everything billed to this customer), Child Accounts Only (child invoices billed to this parent), or Customer Only (invoices on the parent’s own record). In the invoice list, why does the Customer column show the child instead of the parent? The Customer column always shows who the invoice belongs to (where the work was done), not who pays. The Bill To information tells you who’s being billed — keeping the two separate makes it easy to answer both “whose job was this?” and “who’s paying?” How many levels of parent/child customers are supported? Up to 5 levels. The parent record’s invoice filtering includes children, grandchildren, and so on, across all supported levels. Can I report on Bill to Parent activity? Yes. The Estimate, Invoice, and Customer raw data reports have columns including Bill To Parent Enabled, Bill To, Parent Customer Company Name, Parent Customer Phone, Parent Customer Email, and Billing Address, and each can also be used as a filter.

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