Several brands, one workspace: how agencies and groups run their brands in the CRM

With Advanzo you run several brands in one workspace: each brand has its own logo, colours, fonts and sender settings. Quotes, contracts and web forms inherit the brand automatically, so a customer of «Seegarten Wohnbau AG» never sees another brand's logo. Where one brand is not enough, you create a second workspace and switch with one click. Custom roles, teams and record visibility groups keep client data apart.

This post is for agencies that sell on behalf of several clients, for company groups with more than one brand, and for businesses that trade under two names: an electrical contractor with its own smart-home brand, for example.

The problem today: one brand per tool, or everything in one pot

Anyone running two or three brands knows both bad options. Option one: a separate CRM account per brand. You maintain users three times, templates three times, pipelines three times, and you pay three licences. A contact who buys from two brands exists twice, and nobody sees the whole relationship.

Option two: everything in one account with no separation. The quote goes out with the wrong logo. The subsidiary's web form creates leads under the parent company's sender. And the intern who works for brand A sees every deal of brand B.

Both options cost time and trust. For agencies there is a third point: client data from different accounts must not mix, and the client wants proof of that. What this means in practice is covered in data separation in a multi-tenant CRM.

What a brand is in Advanzo

In Advanzo a brand is a set of settings that applies to documents and web forms. It includes:

• Logo: appears on quotes, contracts and forms.
• Colours: primary and accent colour for documents and forms.
• Fonts: the typeface documents are set in.
• Sender settings: the name and address under which documents go to the customer.

A workspace can hold several brands. When you create a document or a web form you pick the brand, and the result takes on its logo, colours, fonts and sender. You do not design each document from scratch, you set things up once per brand. AI drafts for quotes and contracts also take the brand into account; a person reviews and sends the draft.

Important: contacts, companies, deals and pipelines are not tied to a brand. One contact can have a deal with brand A and another with brand B. The brand decides how something looks on the outside, not who sees it internally. That is what roles and visibility groups are for, more on that below.

Brand or separate workspace: what you need when

Advanzo has two levels. The brand lives inside the workspace and controls the look. The workspace is the container for all data: contacts, deals, users, roles, settings. One account can have several workspaces. You switch through the workspace picker, and you can transfer ownership of a workspace to another person.

Rule of thumb: if the same people serve the same customers under different names, a brand is enough. If the data belongs to another company, use a separate workspace.

How to set up several brands: step by step

Step 1: Create the brands

Open the workspace settings and create one brand per identity. Upload the logo, set colours and fonts, enter the sender settings. Allow ten minutes per brand if you have the logo and colour codes ready.

Step 2: Test documents per brand

Create a test quote per brand from an existing deal. Check logo, colours, font and sender in the online view and in the PDF. The placeholders for customer name, deal value and product table stay the same for every brand.

Step 3: Create web forms per brand

Create the forms each brand needs, such as contact, quote request or demo request. Every form inherits the brand. Embed it with the snippet on the matching website or share the hosted link. Submissions create contact, company and deal automatically.

Step 4: Assign pipelines and stages

If the brands sell differently, create one pipeline per brand with its own stages. If they sell the same way, one pipeline is enough, and a custom field «Brand» on the deal makes reporting possible. Saved views per brand show each team only its own deals.

Step 5: Set roles, teams and visibility

Create teams per brand, define roles with permissions per resource and set visibility groups so records are shown only to the people who work on them. Management gets a role that sees everything.

Step 6: Build a dashboard per brand

Build one dashboard per brand from cards: deals by stage, won versus lost, forecast, activities by rep. In the Monday meeting you see within two minutes which brand is moving and which one is stuck.

Keeping client data apart: roles, teams and visibility groups

For agencies this is the decisive part. Three tools work together:

• Custom roles: you define permissions per resource, meaning contacts, companies, deals, documents or settings. A role «Sales brand A» may edit deals but not manage users.
• Teams: you group people into teams, for instance per brand or per client account.
• Visibility groups: records are assigned to a group. Anyone outside the group does not see the record.

On top of that there is the audit log, which records who changed what. Every workspace is isolated from the others at the data layer. So if a client insists that their data must not sit in the same data set as other clients, a separate workspace is the answer. How to assign permissions cleanly is explained in setting CRM permissions right.

For the case where an agency builds the CRM for a client and hands it over later, there is ownership transfer: the agency creates the workspace, sets up brand, pipeline and forms, then transfers it to the client. The procedure is described in the post on client workspaces for agencies.

Checklist: are you ready for several brands?

• You have logo, colour codes and font at hand for every brand.
• You know which sender each brand uses for documents.
• You have decided which brands share contacts and which data belongs in a separate workspace.
• A test quote exists for every brand, and someone on the team has proofread it.
• Every website has its web form embedded with the right brand.
• Roles and teams are defined, and one person has clicked through the permissions of each role.
• Visibility groups are set, and a test user without permissions has confirmed they see nothing that is not theirs.
• Every brand has a dashboard with deals by stage and forecast.

Mini scenario: a communications agency with 16 people in Zurich

«Nordlicht Kommunikation AG» trades under three names: the agency itself, the design subsidiary «Formwerk» and the event label «Stadtbühne». Until now each brand ran in its own CRM account. 340 contacts existed twice, and two quotes per quarter went out with the wrong logo. On top of that the agency runs the CRM for two clients, and those clients want their data kept separate.

The new structure: one workspace with three brands for the agency's own identities, plus two further workspaces for the two client accounts. The two client workspaces run on their own subscriptions: one with three users, the other with one person for now. The AI runs on the agency's own Anthropic key. After two weeks: zero duplicates, no wrong logo, and every client can see in the audit log who changed what in their workspace.

Typical mistakes

• Putting everything in one workspace: client data from different accounts does not belong in the same data set. Brands separate the look, not the data.
• Creating a workspace for every small thing: two identities of the same business with the same customers need two brands, not two workspaces. Otherwise you maintain contacts twice.
• Taking roles from the default list and never adjusting them: define permissions per resource deliberately. Someone who only edits deals does not need access to settings.
• Forgetting visibility groups: a role controls what someone may do. The group controls which records someone sees at all. Both together give you the separation.
• Not checking the sender: the logo is right, but the quote arrives from the agency's sender. Test every brand with a real document before the first customer receives one.
• Never handing over the workspace: if the client is meant to run the CRM themselves, transfer ownership. Otherwise their subscription hangs on your account.

Frequently asked questions

How many brands can a workspace have?

Several. Each brand carries its logo, colours, fonts and sender settings. Documents and web forms inherit the brand you choose. Contacts, companies and deals stay in the same data set for all brands.

Do my staff see the deals of every brand?

Only if you set it up that way. With custom roles you define permissions per resource, and with teams and visibility groups you control which records a person sees. A team for brand A then sees only the records of its group.

When do I need a second workspace instead of a second brand?

When the data belongs to another company or must be fully separated. Every workspace is isolated at the data layer and has its own subscription. An agency running a client's CRM uses a separate workspace for it.

Can I hand a workspace over to a client?

Yes. Ownership of a workspace can be transferred to another person. The agency sets it up, the client takes over and pays their own subscription. You can keep working in it as an invited user with a suitable role.

Do emails inherit the brand too?

The brand applies to documents and web forms. Emails go out through your connected Gmail, Microsoft 365 or IMAP account with your personal signature. For documents the brand's sender settings apply.

If you want to try this in Advanzo: advanzo.app.