Quik! provides a number of options for managing your account and sub-accounts.
This question comes up with partners, integrators and enterprise-level customers quite often. There's not right or wrong answer, just options.
Our resale partners will often need to have a Quik! account that we refer to as the parent account (i.e. an account that represents them as a partner) and child or sub-accounts for each of their customers.
First, the partner will have an account at Quik! that we’ll refer to as the Parent account. It’s the top-most account that will be used to create sub-accounts under and to roll up any reporting (usage, pricing, etc.). This Parent account can also have settings that are pushed down to all sub-accounts, but that may or may not be applicable (we can discuss these options).
Second, the parent account will be replicated into our UAT environment which can be used for testing new product features and bug fixes before a roll out. Our UAT environment is generally available but not as reliable as production given that it is a non-prod environment. Also, we don’t set up different accounts in UAT, rather we refresh UAT with production data (scrubbed and modified) periodically. See this: Testing Quik! Updates in a UAT Environment
Third, partners can provision sub-accounts (either tell us to set one up or possibly do it yourself with a web service) for development, sales demos, etc. and one for each client/firm. Sub-accounts will also replicate into our UAT environment.
For the most part, you don’t need to use our UAT environment for development, implementation or testing. If you generate forms in DRAFT Mode that is sufficient and by testing against our production environment you’re testing the customer’s actual settings (any settings performed in UAT will not propagate to PROD and you’ll have to replicate them in PROD manually).
Thus, we suggest partners have the following accounts:
Since each sub-account at Quik! is a full-fledged customer account that has all the capabilities of any other account (including the parent account), it's easy to separate customers and their forms and settings. This includes choosing which forms are seen on each sub-account, including private forms that only that account will see. In addition, each account can have their own field rules (required fields, formats, masks, etc.), their own form groups (logical bundles of forms), their own logo on the form viewer, etc.
Most integrators, like CRM providers and other systems, will need their own Quik! account for doing single-sign-on and for their own testing and validation. If the integrator will not be provisioning users or clients in Quik!, not reselling Quik! and/or the customer signs up for Quik! directly at Quik! (and not through the integrator), then the integrator really only needs one account. The integrator will use the Referral Account SAML type of integration for single-sign-on.
There are two types of enterprise customers: API customers and Quik! App customers. Most API customers only need a single Quik! account for their integration. Most Quik! App customers need a parent account and multiple child accounts for their users.
API customers are generally creating a custom solution where Quik! is embedded into their workflow and overall technology and user experience. Users may or may not even know they're using Quik!. Since the users are authenticated by the customer's site and only access Quik! via the API integration and interactions the customer built into their platform, there is generally no need for multiple Quik! accounts. The need for additional accounts only arises when:
Quik! App customers generally need to roll out Quik! to their entire sales force, many of whom are independent contractors and operate their own business. While it is possible for an enterprise to serve all their users through a single Quik! App account, this typically only happens when the customer has a single CRM for all their users (e.g. Salesforce) and their users are a captive audience who are not allowed to personalize their forms or settings in Quik!.
The more common use case for enterprise Quik! App customers is for the enterprise to have a parent account and multiple child or sub-accounts for each of their offices (i.e. an office can be 1 or many people who all share a child account at Quik!). This enables customers to give their sales offices their own forms, settings and control over users.
See this page for more: Parent / Child Accounts and User Setup