In Sage Sales Management (SSM), a Branch is a mandatory attribute for key entities, including:
User
Company
Opportunity
Order
Product Family
Product
Related entities such as Contacts and Activities do not have their own Branch attribute. Instead:
A contact inherits the Branch of its parent company.
An activity inherits the Branch of the user who owns it.
Purpose of Branches
Branches allow you to:
Group records to manage visibility.
Create isolated compartments, similar to how a company works in an ERP system.
User and Branch relationship
Each user must have one main Branch, called the Home Branch.
A user belongs to one Branch but can view and manage records from other Branches if they have the appropriate roles.
Records (companies, opportunities, orders, product families and products) can belong to only one Branch.
How Branches are assigned
Branch list
Defines the Branch name and currency.
Role creation
Best practice: create a role with the same name as the Branch.
This role controls access to that Branch.
Assign roles to users
The Branch role is assigned like any other role.
The user’s Home Branch is their main Branch.
If the user needs access to additional Branches, assign the corresponding roles.
Important note on permissions
Assigning a Branch role alone is not enough.
Each entity has permission settings within roles that define whether the user can view or modify records in other Branches.
Roles must explicitly allow visibility and modification for each entity in additional Branches.
Additional visibility by Branch
Visibility by Branch can also apply to:
Extra fields, which are only visible if the user has access to that Branch.
Values displayed in dropdown lists.
Common use cases
1. Zones
Segment customers and users by zones, with each zone working independently within the same database.
2. Companies
Assign 1 Branch = 1 ERP company.
Note: companies and users require one Home Branch in SSM, so shared records are not allowed.
For shared records, create a general Branch and assign users who need access to shared data to that Branch as their Home Branch.
3. Role-based customisation
Example: define an Admin role in an Admin Branch with actionable fields visible only to users in that Branch.
Useful for different field views by company, zone, or similar structures.