Running several businesses: how to choose software that keeps them separate

Each business needs its own customers

If your businesses are separate companies, their customers belong to each company. Mixing them in one list makes it easy to email the wrong people, send an invoice from the wrong business, or use data for something it wasn’t collected for.

Look for software where each business has its own customer list, inbox, branding, invoice numbering and bank details, not just a tag that says which business a record belongs to.

But you only want one login

Separate accounts for each business mean separate passwords, separate bills, and switching back and forth all day. One login that opens each business you work in is far easier, for you and your team.

• One login per person, across every business
• Each person sees only the businesses they work in
• A quick way to switch between them

A group view for owners

As the owner, you need the whole picture without opening each business in turn: enquiries waiting, money owed, deals in progress. Check whether the software can show all your businesses together while keeping their data apart.

Data protection between companies

Under UK GDPR, each company is usually responsible for the personal data it collects, and it should only use that data for the reasons it gave people. Sharing customer lists between your companies, even when you own them all, needs its own lawful reason and should be explained in your privacy notices.

Software that keeps each company’s data apart by default makes this much easier to get right. The ICO’s guidance on controllers and data sharing is the place to check the rules.

What to check when comparing tools

Big CRMs handle several businesses in different ways. HubSpot offers a Brands add-on on some of its higher plans for managing several brands in one account. Zoho CRM lets you sign in to several separate organisations with one login, though data isn’t shared between them. Odoo has multi-company support, where some records like products and contacts can be shared across companies unless you assign them to one. Check each tool’s own help pages for the plan you’d need.

• Is each business properly separate, or just tagged?
• Can one person have one login across businesses?
• Is there a combined view for owners?
• Does each business get its own branding, numbering and email address?
• Is the price per business, or per user in every business?
• Which plan do you need for multi-company features?

How Doodali does it

In Doodali, a group holds one workspace per company. Each company has its own customers, inbox, branding, invoices and settings, and your team gets one login that sees only the companies they work in. Owners get a view across all of them.