Adding a second login is easy. Deciding which customer it belongs to, what it may access, whose address it uses, and who owns its orders requires more care. Use this checklist before configuring SoftwareSilo Sublogin or evaluating another account solution.
1. Confirm the account model
Write down the commercial owner of the relationship. SoftwareSilo attaches subaccounts to an existing Magento customer. The parent customer remains the account used for pricing, tax, and business ownership, while each subaccount receives its own identity.
If the project requires separate legal company entities rather than users under a customer, compare a company-account model before implementation.
2. Inventory users and lifecycle events
List current buyers, branch users, approvers, account administrators, and observers. Decide who creates a subaccount, who activates it, whether access expires, and how password reset and reactivation are handled. Define a removal process for staff departures and customer termination.
3. Decide what is shared
For each item, choose shared, personal, or restricted behavior:
- Addresses
- Cart
- Wishlist
- Order history
- Product visibility
- Prices and checkout totals
- Payment methods
- Shipping methods
SoftwareSilo provides shared, individual, and restricted address models. It can also share carts and wishlists when configured. Test these choices together because a shared cart with individual addresses behaves differently from a fully shared account.
4. Define order ownership and visibility
Orders and quotes can retain the subaccount reference. Decide whether a user sees only their own orders or broader customer activity. Confirm which identity appears in customer service, exports, reporting, emails, and the ERP.
5. Set checkout rules
Create a matrix for each user type covering allowed payment methods, complete shipping method codes, use of new addresses, and access to checkout. Do not validate only the happy path. Include unavailable methods, virtual products, mixed carts, and a rejected address.
6. Design notifications
Choose which messages go to the subaccount, main customer, additional recipients, blind-copy recipients, or store owner. Use test addresses during acceptance. Duplicate or missing order emails can undermine an otherwise correct workflow.
7. Select optional controls
Add only what the policy needs:
| Requirement | SoftwareSilo option |
|---|---|
| Detailed roles and customer-specific hierarchy | Permissions & Roles |
| Recurring or per-order spending limits | Manage Budgets |
| One exceptional purchase limit | One-Time Budget |
| Human review of submitted orders | Order Approval |
| Products assigned to individual users | Custom Catalog |
| Data transfer by Magento import/export | CSV Import / Export |
| Programmatic subaccount management | SOAP / REST API Interface |
| GraphQL storefront integration | Separate commercial GraphQL option |
| Hyvä storefront | Matching compatibility option |
Confirm the exact package, compatibility, and API contract before purchase. A feature shown as an add-on is not part of the core license.
8. Plan data and integrations
Define stable IDs for customer, subaccount, group, role, and external employee. Decide which system creates and disables users. For bulk migration, validate a small CSV first. For an API connection, test create, update, search, delete, authentication failure, and retry behavior.
9. Run a controlled pilot
Start with one cooperative customer and realistic users. Test desktop and mobile storefronts, account administration, checkout, emails, order attribution, reports, and any Hyvä or One Step Checkout compatibility package in the actual theme.
Record support questions during the pilot. They usually reveal unclear names, missing ownership rules, or an approval policy that was understood differently by each department.
10. Prepare operations
Assign owners for access reviews, failed imports, approval substitutions, budget resets, and customer offboarding. Document the few recovery actions support staff genuinely need. A maintainable process is a better launch criterion than the longest feature list.
Related reading
Last reviewed: August 9, 2026.