Associate or Link Parent-Child Companies, Create Accounts Hierarchy and Relationships

Navigate to RevOps Acceleration > Associate.

Select the database and Companies record type from the top menu, then explore the templates for an existing solution. The Associate child to parent companies pre-built template can provide a good starting point that can be customized to fit your specific needs.

Under Step 1, configure the filter to find company records that might be child companies. Here, companies that do not have an associated Parent Company, and the Company Name does not include the value “hq" will be included in the results. This method assumes that parent company names will be appended with "hq" to denote that they are parent companies. 

When you click Search, Insycle will list records that match the filter criteria in the Record Viewer at the bottom of the page. If you make changes to the filter, you'll need to click the Search button again to refresh the viewer.

In Step 2, you set up the rules that tell Incycle what records to use, fields to look at, and what criteria the values must meet in order to consider them a match for creating the relationship.

1. The Action tells Insycle what to do to the records that surfaced in Step 1. Add is used to create new child-parent company associations, or you can Remove existing associations. In HubSpot, you can Replace existing associations with new child-parent associations based on your matching rules. 

2. Association specifies the type of record you want to create the relationship with. This template uses the Company to Company option.

3. Hubspot users will see a Labels field which is used to name the relationship. Here, this is set as Child to Parent.

4. The Companies Filter is used to narrow the company records down to those that might be parent companies. To identify these, this filter will only look at companies that have “HQ” in the company title. Update this filter to match the convention established for identifying parent companies in your CRM.

5. Click the Selection button to define rules for picking the company if there are multiple matches found.

The next two rows are rules that tell Insycle what values to use to identify company matches: 

6. The first Companies Field is the field from the child record you want to try and match with the parent record. 

7. The second Companies Field is the corresponding parent company field to be matched with the child record.

In this template, Insycle will try to match the child Company Name value to the parent Company Name value, and the child Company Domain Name will be matched to the parent Company Domain Name. The two matching fields are often the same for both the parent and child companies unless you are using a custom field to track an identifier.

To be considered a match, the values will have to meet the Comparison, Ignored, and Match Parts rules:

8. The Comparison Rule tells Insycle whether the values between the company records must be an Exact Match or Similar Match. This example uses Exact Match, but you can learn more about these Comparison Rules in the Pro Tip below.

9. Ignored settings can specify parts of a field value to ignore, such as specific text, whitespace, or characters. In the dropdown, check the box for the values you'd like to ignore.

In the template, the first Ignore rule tells Insycle to ignore a list of Common Terms that may appear in the Company Name field such as "HQ," "Inc." or "LLC." To view or alter the list of Common Terms, click the Terms button at the bottom of this section (see below).

In the second row, the Ignore rule says to ignore the Sub Domain in the Company Domain Name field values. For example, if the company is Microsoft, "www.microsoft.com," "dev.microsoft.com," and "app.microsoft.com" would all be considered matches. To also consider "www.microsoft.co.uk" as a match, add the Top-Level Domain (Extension) Ignore option.

10. The Match Parts field tells Insycle whether to match the entire field or just part of it—such as the first or last few words, or first and last characters.

11. The Ignored "Common Terms" can be edited using the Terms button. 

After setting the association rules in Step 2, you can create rules to copy values between the company records. If you want to ensure some values are consistent between the linked records, such as the record owner, you can execute that copy in bulk.

Under Step 3, select the field from the source record type (in this example, the child company), and the relevant field on the target records (the parent company). You can choose to copy values from the source company (child) to the target company (parent), or target company to the source.

The Copy Rule gives you three options: 

• Only when [the record you're linking to] field is empty (in this case, parent companies)
• Only when [the record you're linking from] field is not empty (child companies)
• Always copy

The preview CSV will include these fields and specify if the value was copied for each record.

Preview Changes in a CSV Report

Now, with the filters and association/linking actions in place, you can preview the changes you are making to your data. That way, you can check to ensure the relationships are being created as expected before making those changes in your live database. 

Under Step 4, click the Review button, then select Preview in the popup.

On the Notify tab, add any additional recipients who should receive the CSV (and make sure to hit Enter after each address). You can add colleagues and additional context here.

On the When tab, click the Run Now tab and select which records to apply the change to (in most cases, this will be All), then click the Run Now button.

Open the CSV file from your email in a spreadsheet application and review the columns.

For each company record that didn't already have a Parent Company value, nor "HQ" in the Company Name, Insycle tries to match it with another company record using the name and domain values. Each row in the CSV includes the result of the association step, the child and parent company info, field values that were matched, and details on the copy operation.

Apply Changes to the CRM

If everything in your CSV preview looks correct, return to Insycle and move forward with applying the changes to the live CRM data.

Under Step 4, click the Review button, select Update mode, then click Next.

On the When tab you can choose to run and apply the update now, or you can set up an automation to run the template regularly. The first time you apply these changes to the CRM, we suggest you Run Now.

In the Run Now tab, you can control how many records to run the template on. Click Run Now to apply the changes to your CRM.

Save Templates and Setup Automation

After you've seen the results in the CRM and you are satisfied with how the operation runs, you can save all of the configurations as a template, and set up automation so this association process runs on a set schedule. 

By automating with a template, you'll save time and ensure that your company records are consistently associated on an ongoing basis.

You can create multiple templates for different types of associations, and bundle them together using Recipes. Additionally, Hubspot users can integrate Recipes into HubSpot Workflow Builder. 

In Step 2, the Comparison Rule defines what kind of likeness to look for when deciding if field values should be considered a match for association.
It's a good idea to start with Exact Match for the straightforward matches, then use Similar Match to broaden the search and look for edge cases.

Exact Match looks for values that match exactly, with no differences from one record to the next. Any unique identifying fields should use Exact Match.

Similar Match looks for values that may be close but with a one-character difference (like a typo, extra character, or missing character) and broadens the search. This search behaves like when Google shows results for a slightly different term or says “Did you mean...”

For example, if a Company Name of, “Acme” is found, it could include records with the Company Name values, “Akme," "acm," or "Acma,” as matches.

Similar Match uses looser criteria that cast a wider net for what can be considered matches. Make sure to carefully review the results to ensure the relationships being created are what you're expecting.

  If using ID fields to match, note that they will only work with Exact Match, not Similar Match.

Select the CSV File for Import

In the Magical Import module, select the database and the record type in the top menu.

Click the Choose button and select the CSV file that you would like to import. Uploading a file into Insycle does not import it to the CRM right away, instead, you can prepare the data in a variety of ways before actually importing it to the CRM.

Map CSV Columns to CRM Fields

After uploading your CSV data, Insycle analyzes your file and compares the columns in the file to fields in your CRM database. A column is included for each field in the CSV, with the CSV Column header appearing as the top row. Insycle automatically detects the matching CRM fields and maps them for you. The second row shows the mapped CRM field names.

If your CSV contains fields that are not matched to your CRM, a red exclamation point icon will show. These unmapped fields need to be mapped manually by clicking the dropdown and finding the appropriate CRM field. If they remain unmapped, they will not be imported.

To remove fields from the import, hover over the column name and click the “X”.

If a field in your CRM includes dropdown values and the data included in your CSV does not match, the row will display an "Invalid picklist value" error.

Specify How to Import Values for Each Column

With all relevant fields mapped, tell Insycle how to use the data on a field-by-field basis by selecting the Import Mode, in the third row of the table.

To make any final changes to values before they are imported, you can edit the import data directly in Insycle by hovering over a value and clicking the pencil icon.

If there are issues with a record, the red warning icon will be shown on the left side of the row. When you hover over the red exclamation mark, an explanation of the error will be displayed.

Records that have errors in them will not be imported. 

Insycle uses Identity Fields to compare your CSV to your CRM data. Identity Fields must be "unique identifiers." These are data points that would only belong to a single company—such as company name, company domain, phone numbers, addresses, or ID numbers.

Under Step 2 on the Import tab, select the Identity Field you'll use in your import.

Note that when using an email field, Insycle will automatically cross-reference any additional email fields in the records for a match. If using a domain field, Insycle will check additional domain fields. 

Select the Records Mode to tell Insycle how the imported data should be handled during the import process:

• Update existing and create net new – If Insycle is unable to find a corresponding company record, a new record will be created in your CRM.
• Only update existing – If a corresponding company record is found, it will be updated with the data from your CSV import. Records that are not matched with an existing CRM record will not be imported.
• Only create net new – Only records that can not be matched with an existing record in your database will be imported. Company records that already exist in your CRM will not be updated.

You can make changes to the CSV data in Insycle before it is uploaded to your CRM. You could apply formatting to a field, cleanse data, organize, and perform other actions before import.

Under Step 4, click the Associate tab (this may also be called the Link tab, depending on the naming convention in your CRM).

Configure the rules that will create the relationship between the two record types:

1. For associating on import, choose “Add" from the Action field. 
2. Click the Associate field and choose "Company to Company."
3. Then, under Labels choose "Child to Parent."
4. In the CSV Column field, select the field from your CSV to use to identify matches. When associating child to parent companies, you would likely choose the “Company Name” or “Company Domain” field from your CSV import.
5. On the Match Field, select the field in your CRM that should match your CSV value. For example, if you are using the “Company Domain” field from the CSV, you'd want to match that to the “Company Domain Name” field in your CRM.
6. If no matching Company is found, an association will not be created. In these cases, you can choose to automatically create a new Company record based on what is in the CSV. Check the Create new Companies when no matching is found box to enable.

By default, Insycle will attempt to import all of your formatted CSV data into your database. Leave the checkboxes blank to import all of the records. If there are only a few records you want to apply the association to—perhaps to test things out before importing the entire CSV—return to the table under Step 1 and check the boxes beside the desired records. 

To import, click the Import Companies button.

⚠️ Note that changes are applied to your CRM immediately, there is no preview step. 

After the import runs, the Import Result breaks down the import information—how many records you tried to import and how many succeeded, failed, were updated, deleted, or unmodified. Click the Run ID to open a CSV record of the import.

After you've seen the results in the CRM and you are satisfied with how the operation runs, you can save all of the configurations as a template so you can easily reproduce the same import and associate operation in the future.

Insycle uses Identity Fields to compare your CSV to your CRM data. Identity fields must be "unique identifiers." These are data points that could only belong to a single contact—such as email addresses, phone numbers, street addresses, or ID numbers.

Additionally, when using an email field, Insycle will automatically cross-reference any additional email fields in the records for a match. If using a domain field, Insycle will check additional domain fields. 

When you make your Identity Field selection, the data under Step 1 will refresh, and you'll be able to see which records are already in your CRM. The records that Insycle found will become blue links that will open the record in your CRM.

In this scenario, if you use the Update Existing and Create Net New setting, Insycle will create a new record for any CSV rows that don't match all five criteria.

If you use the Only Update Existing setting, there will most likely be few records that match all your criteria, and much of your CSV data will not be imported because Insycle will not be able to find the correct record to update.

Typically, it is best to use a single identity field to improve the likelihood of finding existing records in your CRM.

If you're using a field that is not truly unique as an Identity Field, it's likely that Insycle won't be able to identify one single record to use. For instance, there could be many companies with the Industry, "Education" in your CRM, this wouldn't help you ensure you are pulling data from the correct company. This is why uniqueness is key.

Incorporating company hierarchy data in HubSpot can be a game-changer. This information is crucial for understanding the structure and relationships within and between organizations.

However, records with multiple levels of hierarchical associations aren’t automatically linked together in a chain or nested like matryoshka dolls. Instead, you create different types of parent-subsidiary relationships.

One: Create Custom Fields to Capture Information About Relationships

In HubSpot, create a custom property to capture the extended relationship info. In this example, we're using the existing Parent Company property and creating a custom property, "Grandparent Company." 

Two: Create a CSV File Containing Relationship Information

This CSV file is configured for companies that already exist in HubSpot. Use the existing record IDs to fill in the Parent Company and Grandparent Company info.

Three: Import the CSV data into HubSpot

Use the Magical Import module to import the CSV data into HubSpot.

For in-depth instructions on how to do this, see the Associate Child-Parent Companies from a CSV with the Magical Import Module section above.

In Step 4, use the Associate tab to create child-parent associations using the record IDs.

Once run, you'll see the parent-child associations in HubSpot. Although you have now added the Grandparent ID value, additional steps are needed to create a labeled association.

Four: Create a Custom HubSpot Label for the Grandchild-Grandparent Relationship

In your HubSpot company settings, create a new label. For this example, we’ll use “Grandchild Company” and “Grandparent Company.”

Create A pair of labels where many companies can have the “Grandchild Company” label, and only one company can have the “Grandparent Company” label.

Five: Make Grandchild-Grandparent Associations

Use the Associate app to associate grandchild with grandparent companies. 

For complete step-by-step instructions, see the Associate Child and Parent Companies with the Associate App section above.

The process of checking Salesforce hierarchies and re-creating them in HubSpot is labor-intensive, costly, and an easy way to introduce errors. Challenges arise from the inherent differences in how these platforms structure and manage data, as well as the complexities involved in syncing information across multiple systems. 

In Insycle, there are a couple steps you can take to optimize and automate this process.

First, you can use a custom ID to ensure relationships between child and parent companies are consistent between HubSpot and Salesforce, in bulk and automatically.

Then, you can use the filters in the Associate app to segment the companies from both CRMs, and make the process run more efficiently.

Setting Up the Custom ID Property

In HubSpot, create a custom property to hold parent company ID information. This new field must be a “dropdown select” field type.

In Salesforce, add a new sync rule and mapping to share Salesforce’s parent company ID with HubSpot. On the HubSpot-Salesforce integration page, go to the field mappings for the Company property, and set the Salesforce Parent ID field mapping to “Always use Salesforce.”

Now you can go to Insycle and use the Associate app to create the child-parent relationships in bulk. 

Configuring the Association Using the New Property

In Step 1, filter your HubSpot records to find those that don’t have a parent company, and do have a listed Salesforce Parent ID.

The Salesforce ID is an 18-character alphanumeric value. When using this ID as the matching key, Insycle has to crawl through this string for the child and parent companies, comparing all 18 characters for each record on both sides. This can take a long time to complete.

To optimize the matching process, you can limit the number of characters Insycle will look at for the comparison. So instead of looking at all 18 characters of the Salesforce ID, you can tell Insycle to only compare the last 9. With this approach, matching will run about 300x faster!

In Step 2, configure the association settings using the new Salesforce Parent ID property and the Salesforce Account ID field. Use the Match Parts parameter to only look at the Last 9 Characters.

Then save a template and set up automation to ensure the company hierarchies automatically remain consistent from here on.

If no matching record is found, you can choose to automatically create a new record based on what is in the source record. The option is located in a different place in each module.

Associate App

Under Step 2 of the Associate app, check the Create new [record] when no matching is found box to enable, then select the field to use for naming the new record.

Magical Import Module

Under Step 4 of the Magical Import module, check the Create when no matching is found checkbox to enable.

A "Failed" Result with the Message "Multiple target matches (x)..." or "Multiple sources matched..." appears when multiple records meet your matching specifications. For example, if you were linking contacts to companies, and Insycle found ten company records with the name "Microsoft," it wouldn't know which Microsoft to establish the relationship with.

There are a few options for resolving this issue:

1. If there shouldn't be multiples of these records you should first go through the process of merging duplicates before trying to create these relationships.
2. If using the Associate app, and there are supposed to be multiple similar but distinct records, you can add another matching field in Step 2 to make the criteria more specific. A record would have to match both field values to be considered appropriate for making the relationship.
3. You can also use the filter in Step 2 of the Associate app to narrow the records to be associated.
   
   In the filter popup you could, for example, add the "Company name," field and set the Condition, "contains" "HQ." This tells Insycle to only consider companies for association if the Company Name value includes the term "HQ."
   
4. In cases where there are multiple target records that could match, you can add Selection rules for picking the appropriate record.
   
   You can create rules in the selection pop-up to choose the most recently created record that has an owner assigned.
   

An "Unmodified" Result with the Message "Unmodified, no matching record found (use 'Grid Edit' to troubleshoot)" result occurs when there aren’t any records that meet your matching specifications.

You can examine the data in the unmatched records and troubleshoot using the Grid Edit module. Look at different fields and values to identify why your associate setup didn’t work for the record. Then decide what match options could work or if some cleanup is needed.

Learn more about reviewing your data using the Grid Edit module.

When using the Associate app, you have the option under Step 2 to Count unmatched records as Failed. When checked, any record where there is no match to create the association will be counted as failed. This will be reflected by a "Failed" Result with the Message "No matching record found (use 'Grid Edit' to troubleshoot)" in the CSV report.

You can examine the data in the unmatched records and troubleshoot using the Grid Edit module. Look at different fields and values to identify why your associate setup didn’t work for the record. Then decide what match options could work or if some cleanup is needed.

Learn more about reviewing your data using the Grid Edit module.

Insycle does not automatically know what company the parent is. You have to make that clear through the data itself. A common way of tagging the parent company is to include "HQ" in the company name field. Or, you can create a custom field and manually tag parent companies before bulk associating with relevant child companies.

Yes. If no matching record is found, you can choose to automatically create a new record based on what is in the source record.

In the Associate app, under Step 2, check the Create new [record] when no matching is found box to enable, then select the field to use for naming the new record.

In the Magical Import module, under Step 4, check the Create when no matching is found box to enable.

Yes. For information about making child-parent associations from a CSV file, see the Associating Child-Parent Companies from a CSV Using the Magical Import Module section above.