Guidelines for using Enterprise Finance

What is Financial Management?

Financial Management lets you establish a relationship between a root account and other linked accounts, which can be existing or newly created.

After you establish the relationship, the root account can share credit controls and discounts with linked accounts. The root account can also view bills, manage invoices, and allocate funds for linked accounts. In addition, the root account can restrict a linked account's ability to make withdrawals or manage its own invoices.

With a Financial Management relationship, the root account can perform batch management operations for linked accounts. However, linked accounts still retain their own funds, credit controls, discounts, coupons, and the ability to independently transact and settle with Alibaba Cloud.

Log on to the Expenses and Costs console with the root account. Go to Enterprise Finance > Financial Association. Use Invite Linked Account or Create Linked Account to establish a Financial Management relationship with a linked account. This allows the root account to manage the finances of the linked account.

What does Financial Management include?

After a Financial Management relationship is established, the root account can perform unified settlement for the linked account's subscription orders and pay-as-you-go bills. After a linked account tops up its balance or receives funds from the root account, it can settle its own expenses.

You can enable Financial Management capabilities for primary accounts and RAM users by checking the following permissions:

• Allow syncing credit control status to the linked account:

  • The root account can allocate credit and funds to a linked account, or revoke them, only if both accounts have the same identity verification information.

  • If a linked account has a credit limit before the Financial Management relationship is established, the linked account retains its credit limit after the relationship is established. However, the root account can revoke this credit limit.

  • The credit limit of the root account is the sum of its own credit limit and the credit limits of all its linked accounts.

Note

For example, before the relationship is established, the root account has a credit limit of 1,000,000 and the linked account has a credit limit of 200,000. After the relationship is established, the root account's total credit limit becomes 1,200,000. By default, the credit is allocated as follows: 1,000,000 for the root account and 200,000 for the linked account. The root account can revoke the 200,000 from the linked account.

• The linked account can sync the settlement period from the root account to ensure both accounts have the same settlement period.

• A RAM user is granted a credit control status when a Financial Management relationship is established. This status is revoked when the relationship is terminated. If the RAM user requires these capabilities again, they must reapply.

• Allow syncing discounts to the linked account:

  • The linked account can share the root account's discounts only if both accounts have the same identity verification information. The root and linked accounts can also agree on separate discounts.

• Forbid the linked account from withdrawing its balance:

  • If you select this permission, the linked account cannot withdraw its account balance.

  Note

  If you do not select this permission, both the root and linked accounts can withdraw funds they have added. However, the linked account cannot withdraw funds allocated by the root account. The root account can revoke the funds and then request a withdrawal.

• Request to manage the linked account's invoices:

  • The root account can manage invoicing information in batches and issue invoices for the linked account. The linked account can also issue its own invoices.

• Forbid the linked account from managing invoices:

  • The linked account cannot manage its own invoices.

• Request to view the linked account's consumption information:

  • The root account can query the order and bill data of the linked account. The linked account can also query its own consumption data and income and expense details.

• Request to view the linked account's financial information:

  • You can view billing information for a RAM user.

Special instructions

• After a Financial Management relationship is established, the root account can allocate funds to and revoke funds from the linked account if both accounts have the same identity verification information. However, funds cannot be transferred between linked accounts.

• Funds allocated from a root account to a linked account can only be used for spending or be revoked. They cannot be transferred to a third-party account.

• After a finance trusteeship relationship is established between a root account and a linked account, you cannot set up a Financial Management relationship for them. To switch from a finance trusteeship relationship to a Financial Management relationship, you must first dissociate the accounts and then establish the Financial Management relationship. For more information, see Instructions for dissociating a finance trusteeship relationship.

• If you establish a Financial Management relationship with the Allow syncing the root account's credit control status to the linked account permission selected, the linked account's credit control status is purged if you later upgrade to a finance trusteeship relationship and then dissociate it.