Core concepts: tenants, clients, customers & users

ParcelPilot supports multiple organisations. Most admin screens and records are limited by organisation, and often also by client.

This guide explains the main “who is who” concepts so it’s easier to understand permissions, scoping, and where settings live.

Quick definitions

Tenant: the top-level account (your organisation / 3PL instance). Many records are owned by a tenant.
Client: a customer account within a tenant (a brand/store you fulfil for). Clients own items, orders, shipments, integrations, tariffs, etc.
Customer: the end-customer / recipient record used on orders and shipments (name/email/address). Customers are not “accounts” that log in.
User: a person who can log in to the admin panel. Users have roles and (often) belong to a tenant and optionally a client.

A user’s role determines what they can access.
Tenant scoping ensures data isolation between tenants.
Client scoping ensures users only see the clients they’re allowed to operate on.

Common patterns you’ll see in the admin:

Tenant users work within one tenant.
Client users are typically locked to a single client and see only that client’s orders/shipments/etc.

Tenants: manage top-level tenancy settings and branding.
Clients: manage client-specific settings (branding, tariffs, routing rules, integrations).
Customers: manage end-recipient records used by orders/shipments.
Users: create logins, assign roles, and (optionally) associate users to a tenant/client.