How should I represent a company group and its separate legal entities?

Keep two levels: a Group record for the relationship overview, and separate Legal entity records for anything that signs, bills, or pays. Every contract and invoice should point to one legal entity, not only to the group.

*Diagram · group overview with entity-level deals*

Suggested model

How to work day to day

1. Create the Group once.
2. Add each subsidiary as its own Legal entity under that Group.
3. When logging a deal, pick the entity that appears on the paperwork.
4. Build a Group view that lists child entities and open contracts (via relations), so leadership sees the whole family without mixing signing parties.

How to verify

• Opening a Group shows all entities.
• Opening an invoice shows the correct entity name (the one on the PDF).
• Filtering “contracts for Acme DE” does not pull Acme US rows.
• Group-level revenue reports aggregate child entities intentionally—not by putting the Group on the invoice line.

Boundaries

• Nicknames and trading names belong as aliases on the entity (or Group), not as extra “fake companies.”
• If two entities truly co-sign, model that explicitly (multi-party field or a join table)—do not silently attach the deal only to the Group.
• Do not use one “Acme” record for both relationship and legal billing; month-end reconciliation gets painful.

If you already have mixed rows, start by tagging each existing counterparty as Group vs Entity, then re-point contracts before cleaning names.