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Agency & multi-store

In plain English

If you manage shops for other people — an agency, a group, a franchise — the problem is that each shop is its own world. Ten clients means ten logins, ten dashboards, and no way to know which one needs you this morning.

This gives you one screen for the whole book.

At the top: total revenue driven across every client, total recoverable money, total open jobs, and how many are urgent.

Below that: every client shop as a row, ordered by who needs you most. Not alphabetically, not by size — by urgency. The client with three critical problems appears above the client with none, regardless of how big either is.

Two other things worth knowing straight away:

Your plan tier lifts your clients. If you're on the Agency plan, every active client on your book gets Agency-tier features, even if they'd otherwise be on a smaller plan.

Billing stays per shop. Each client is still billed for their own store. The "agency pays one bill" arrangement works as a monthly rebate paid to you, scaled by how many clients you manage and what tiers they're on — not by merging their invoices.

How to use it

  1. Click "Agency" in the left-hand menu.
  2. Read the four totals at the top — that's your whole book in one glance.
  3. Work down the client list from the top. It's already ordered by who needs attention.
  4. Click into a client to open their shop and work on it directly.
  5. Add a new client from the Agency Stores screen — they receive an invite and accept it.
  6. Check the billing screen for your rebate periods.

⏱ ~10 min/day for a whole portfolio · 💳 Agency+ · 🎯 Know which client needs you this morning

Why this matters for your business

Agencies lose money in a predictable way: attention goes to whoever shouts.

The client who emails is the client who gets worked on. The client who doesn't email — because they're busy, or polite, or because they don't know anything is wrong — gets nothing, right up until they churn. And the quiet ones are frequently the ones with the biggest fixable problems, precisely because nobody has been looking.

Ranking the portfolio by urgency inverts that. The client with three critical issues is at the top whether or not they've complained. You find the problem before they do, which is the single most effective retention behaviour an agency has.

The second cost is the login tax. Ten clients, ten dashboards, each checked properly maybe once a week. That's not a discipline problem — it's arithmetic. One screen makes daily portfolio awareness realistic instead of aspirational.

The plan-tier inheritance is worth understanding commercially. A small client who could only justify a basic plan gets your tier's capabilities because they're on your book. That's a genuine selling point when you're pitching, and it's why a client frequently gets more from working with you than they could buy directly.

What this typically unlocks

What you getTypical result
Dashboards checked per morning1, not one per client
Problems found before the client complainsRoutinely
Client churn from neglectSharply reduced
Small clients' access to advanced featuresIncluded via your tier
Portfolio-level reportingAvailable, not assembled by hand

What you actually get

The portfolio totals

TotalWhat it tells you
Store countHow many active clients
Total revenue drivenAttributed revenue across the whole book
Total recoverableMoney currently on the table, everywhere
Total open actionsOutstanding jobs across all clients
Total critical actionsThe urgent subset
Average brand authorityPortfolio-wide brand strength

How clients are ranked

Three tie-breaks, in order:

  1. Most critical issues first
  2. Then most recoverable money
  3. Then most open jobs

Why criticals lead. A critical issue is something actively going wrong — a broken tracking pixel, a catalogue that AI assistants can't sell, payments failing. Those compound daily. A large recoverable figure with no criticals is an opportunity; three criticals is a fire.

Per-client columns

ColumnWhat it shows
ShopThe client
Revenue drivenWhat the platform is credited with there
RecoverableMoney on the table at that client
Open actionsOutstanding jobs
Critical actionsUrgent ones
Brand authorityTheir brand strength score
CurrencyTheirs, not converted

Currencies are never blended

If your clients trade in different currencies, the portfolio total is shown in the dominant one and flagged as mixed.

It is never converted.

That's deliberate. Converting at a snapshot exchange rate produces a number that looks precise, is quietly wrong, and changes when the rate moves even though nothing in your clients' businesses did. A flagged total you understand beats a blended one you can't explain to a client.

Practical approach: for mixed portfolios, read per-client figures for decisions and treat the total as an indicator.

Client lifecycle

StateWhat it means
InvitedSent, not yet accepted. No access
ActiveLinked. Appears in your portfolio, inherits your tier
SuspendedTemporarily paused. Access held
RevokedRelationship ended

A client must accept before anything is linked. You can't add a shop to your book without their agreement, which protects both sides.

Plan tier inheritance

Every active client on your book is lifted to your plan tier.

You're onYour clients get
AgencyAgency-tier features
EnterpriseEnterprise-tier features

This applies while the relationship is active. If a client leaves your book, they return to their own plan.

Billing and the rebate

Each client shop is billed for its own subscription, as normal. That's a platform requirement, not a choice.

The agency arrangement is delivered as a monthly rebate paid to you, calculated per calendar month and scaled by:

  • How many clients are on your book
  • What tiers those clients are on

Rebate periods move through a simple lifecycle — calculated, finalised, and paid — and the agency portal shows them read-only, so you can see what's owed and what's been paid without being able to alter the calculation.

Access and safety

Cross-shop actions verify that an active link exists between your agency and that client before anything happens. A suspended or revoked relationship fails the check.

Every operation is scoped to both your agency and the specific client shop, so there's no path to reach a shop you don't manage.

How it works (without the technical bits)

Real merchant scenarios

Scenario A — The quiet client about to churn

Setup. Agency with 14 clients. Attention followed the inbox.

First portfolio view:

ClientCriticalsRecoverableContact in last 30d?
Client H6£14,200No
Client C1£3,100Yes, weekly
Client A0£8,400Yes, weekly
Client K0£900Yes, daily

Client H had six critical issues and hadn't been in touch for a month. Client K, with nothing wrong, was emailing daily and consuming most of the account manager's time.

What was wrong at H. Their tracking pixel had broken seven weeks earlier. Attribution was blind, ad spend was being optimised against nothing, and roughly £14,200 was recoverable.

They were two weeks from giving notice.

Action. Fixed the pixel, worked the recoverable list, and called them with what had been found and fixed.

Result. Client H renewed and increased their retainer. The agency changed its process to work the portfolio list first and the inbox second.

Scenario B — The login tax, measured

Setup. Agency with 9 clients. Account managers were meant to check each dashboard daily.

What was actually happening:

IntendedActual
Client checks per day92–3
Full portfolio reviewedDailyRoughly weekly
Time per full review~45 min~45 min

Not a discipline problem. Nine logins at five minutes each is 45 minutes before any actual work.

With one portfolio screen:

BeforeAfter
Time to full portfolio awareness~45 min~4 min
Full reviews per week~15
Issues found before the client noticed~20%~75%

Scenario C — Mixed currencies, handled honestly

Setup. Agency with UK, EU, and US clients. The previous reporting tool blended everything into pounds at a daily rate.

The problem it caused. Portfolio revenue appeared to move several percent in weeks when no client's revenue had changed — it was just the exchange rate. Monthly reports needed a caveat nobody could explain simply.

With flagged mixed currency: the total is shown in the dominant currency and marked as mixed. Per-client figures stay in their own currency.

How they used it. Client reporting per client, in that client's currency. Internal portfolio tracking in unit terms — client count, criticals, actions closed — which don't move with exchange rates.

Their monthly report stopped needing a caveat.

Scenario D — Tier inheritance as a sales argument

Setup. Agency pitching a small merchant, roughly £180k/year, who could only justify a basic plan directly.

The pitch. On the agency's book, that merchant would get Agency-tier features — the full intelligence suite, advanced attribution, cross-engine automation — that they could not otherwise access at their size.

What the merchant compared:

OptionMonthly costFeatures
Direct, basic planLowerBasic
Through the agencyHigherAgency tier

They chose the agency. The retainer was justified partly by capability the merchant genuinely couldn't buy alone.

The agency's win rate on small merchants improved noticeably once they started leading with this.

Scenario E — A suspended client, correctly blocked

Setup. Agency suspended a client during a payment dispute.

An account manager, unaware, tried to run a campaign for that client.

The action was blocked — the relationship check requires an active link, and suspended doesn't qualify.

Why that's right. Working on a suspended client's shop during a commercial dispute is exactly the kind of thing that turns a billing disagreement into a serious complaint. The check made it impossible rather than relying on everyone remembering.

Best practices

Work the list top-down, not the inbox. Scenario A.

Check the portfolio every morning. Four minutes.

Treat criticals as same-day. They compound.

Report to clients in their own currency. Never a blended figure.

Lead with tier inheritance when pitching smaller merchants. Scenario D.

Suspend rather than revoke during disputes — reversible, and it blocks work safely.

Don't let the noisiest client set your priorities.

Don't blend currencies in client reporting. It creates movement nobody can explain.

Don't add a shop without their acceptance. They must accept; that's the protection for both sides.

Don't assume a client with no criticals needs nothing. Check recoverable too.

Plan tiers

CapabilityFreeStarterProAgencyEnterprise
Portfolio roll-up
Urgency-ranked client list
Client lifecycle management
Plan tier inheritance for clients
Mixed-currency flagging
Agency rebate portal
White-label surfaces
Cross-store team management

Frequently asked

How many clients can I manage? There's no fixed limit. The portfolio view is built to roll up many shops.

Do clients see that they're managed by an agency? They accept the relationship explicitly, so yes. White-label surfaces control what carries your branding.

Can I add a shop without the client's involvement? No. They must accept the invite.

What happens to a client's features if they leave my book? They return to their own plan tier.

Why isn't there one merged bill? Per-shop billing is a platform requirement. The agency arrangement is delivered as a monthly rebate to you instead.

How is the rebate calculated? Per calendar month, scaled by how many clients you manage and what tiers they're on. The portal shows each period read-only.

Can my team members access all clients? Team access is managed alongside your agency relationships. See Team & permissions.

Why is the portfolio total flagged as mixed currency? Because your clients trade in more than one, and converting at a snapshot rate would produce a misleading number.

See also