Agency client routing in SGEN

How agencies operate multiple client sites from one SG-Dashboard account

Running ten client sites out of one SGEN account is not the same as running one site with ten sub-sections. Agency client routing in SGEN is a deliberate operational model: the agency holds the account, each client gets their own isolated site, and SG-Dashboard gives the agency a single surface to see and manage all of it.

The agency tier adds a layer on top of standard multi-site. It brings client-level billing isolation — so each client's subscription can be tracked, charged, or passed through independently. It brings white-label admin chrome — so the admin panel the client sees carries the agency's branding, not SGEN's. It brings per-client domain configuration — so each client's site lives on the domain they own. And it brings cross-client reporting — so the agency can pull aggregate data across the portfolio without opening each site individually.

This guide explains when the agency tier is the right choice, how its features work, and how it differs from either a standard multi-site account or separate SGEN accounts per client.

What is this for?

Read this guide when you are setting up an agency account, evaluating whether agency tier or separate accounts is the right model for your client relationships, or configuring white-label features for a client who will log in to the admin directly.

For the invite mechanics that bring clients or client team members into a site, read Invite collaborators. For the role matrix that controls what client team members can do once they are in, read Manage team roles across SGEN sites. For the foundational multi-site setup that precedes agency configuration, read Set up a multi-site deployment.

Good use cases

• A digital agency that manages SGEN on behalf of clients and bills each client separately.
• A web development firm that builds and then hands off sites to clients while retaining a maintenance relationship.
• An agency that wants clients to log in to a branded admin panel without seeing SGEN branding.
• A franchiser managing a network of franchise location sites where each location has its own billing but the franchisor retains operational oversight.
• A holding company that manages multiple independent brand subsidiaries as separate client entities with their own billing lines.

What NOT to use this for

• Do not use the agency tier when each client should own their own SGEN account independently.

If a client relationship ends and the client needs to take their SGEN site with them — owning the account, the billing, and the data — the agency tier is the wrong model. An agency-tier site lives under the agency's account. When the relationship ends, transferring ownership requires coordination with SGEN. If full client ownership from day one is the requirement, set up the client's site under their own independent SGEN account and use Invite collaborators to join their account as an administrator.

• Do not use the agency tier to combine sites that share content.

If two "clients" share a blog feed, a product catalog, or any content layer, they are not truly separate clients — they are sub-sections of one site. The agency tier is for operationally independent clients that happen to be managed by the same agency.

• Do not use the agency tier for internal brand teams.

If all the sites belong to one company — three sub-brands all owned by the same parent — standard multi-site is the right model. The agency tier is for operator-client relationships, not internal brand portfolios. Internal brand portfolios go through standard multi-site setup as documented in Set up a multi-site deployment.

How this connects to other features

• Set up a multi-site deployment — the foundational layer.

Agency client routing builds on top of multi-site. Sites must exist before agency-tier features can be applied to them.

• Client Manager — the SG-Dashboard surface that shows all client accounts the agency administers.

This is the primary routing interface for agency operators.

• Billing Overview — per-client billing state surfaces through Client Manager and is managed inside each client's billing panel.
• Team roles guide — the seven canonical roles apply within each client site.

The Platform Admin role at the agency level gives the agency operator cross-client access.

• Invite collaborators — bringing client team members into their site's SG-Admin panel uses the standard invite flow documented there.

Before you start

Confirm your SGEN plan includes the agency tier. Standard multi-site plans do not include client-level billing isolation, white-label admin, or cross-client reporting. These features require an agency-tier plan. Check your plan in SG-Dashboard under Account, then Billing. If you do not see agency-tier options in the billing panel, contact your SGEN account manager.

Decide upfront whether each client relationship requires agency-tier features or standard site access. Not every client relationship needs white-label or billing isolation. Some agency clients are comfortable logging in to a SGEN-branded panel and being invoiced through the agency's standard billing. Apply the agency tier features only where they add real value for the client relationship.

Gather per-client billing contacts and plan tiers before configuring billing isolation. Client-level billing isolation requires knowing, for each client, the plan they are on and the email address that should receive their billing communications.

Where to go

Open SG-Dashboard and click Client Manager in the left sidebar. Client Manager lists every client account the agency administers. Each entry shows the client's site count, subscription state, and a link to open the client's account.

If Client Manager does not appear in your SG-Dashboard sidebar, your account is not on an agency-tier plan.

Steps — Configure agency client routing

1. Create or link a client account

In Client Manager, click Add Client.

There are two paths:

Create a new client site. Select this path when the client is new to SGEN and does not have an existing account. Fill in the client's name, their primary contact email, and the site details. SGEN creates the client site under your agency account. The client's site appears immediately in Client Manager.

Link an existing SGEN account. Select this path when the client already has their own SGEN account and is granting the agency administrative access. Enter the client's account identifier or the email address associated with their account. The client receives a linking request. Once they confirm, their account appears in Client Manager and the agency operator can route into it.

For both paths, confirm which agency-tier features to enable for this client. White-label admin and billing isolation can be toggled per client — they do not need to be applied to every client in the portfolio.

2. Configure client-level billing isolation

Billing isolation means each client's SGEN subscription is tracked, reported, and invoiced independently of other clients and of the agency's own account.

To configure billing for a client, click the client's name in Client Manager, then click Billing in the client account panel.

Set the plan the client is on. Set the billing contact email — the address that receives invoices for this client. Set whether the client is billed directly by SGEN or whether the agency handles pass-through billing.

In a direct-billing arrangement, SGEN invoices the client's billing contact directly. In a pass-through arrangement, SGEN invoices the agency, and the agency re-invoices the client. Both arrangements show the same subscription state in Client Manager.

3. Configure white-label admin chrome

White-label admin chrome replaces the SGEN logo and product name in the client's SG-Admin panel with the agency's brand. When a client logs in, they see the agency's name and logo in the top bar, not SGEN's.

To configure white-label for a client, open the client account in Client Manager, then go to Settings, then Branding.

Upload the agency logo. The logo must be in PNG or SVG format. Recommended dimensions are 160 × 40px for the top bar.

Enter the agency name as it should appear in the admin panel's top bar and page titles.

Set the admin panel domain if the agency wants the client's admin URL to be on the agency's domain (for example, admin.yourfirm.com/client-a) rather than on the default SGEN admin URL pattern. This requires a DNS CNAME record pointing the agency's subdomain to SGEN's admin hosting.

Save the branding settings. The changes take effect for the client on their next login.

4. Configure per-client domain settings

Each client site needs its own domain. Domain configuration for each client site works the same as in standard multi-site: go to the client's site settings, add the domain, and add the DNS records SGEN specifies.

From Client Manager, click the client's name to open their account. Click the site within their account. Open Settings, then Domains. Click Connect Domain and follow the on-screen DNS configuration steps.

For a client on a white-label admin domain, confirm the admin domain CNAME is also active and resolving. The client site domain and the admin domain are separate DNS records — both need to be verified.

Run the DNS verification check from the domain settings panel after adding both records. Verification confirms the records are propagated and pointing correctly.

5. Pull cross-client reporting

Cross-client reporting gives the agency a view across the entire client portfolio without opening each client account individually.

In SG-Dashboard, click Analytics in the left sidebar. The agency analytics view shows aggregated data across all client accounts, with a filter to scope down to a single client or a subset.

Available cross-client metrics include:

• Total page views across all client sites for the selected period.
• Per-client site traffic ranked by volume.
• Content publishing activity by client — pages published, blog posts published, form submissions received.
• Subscription health summary — clients active, in grace window, or lapsed.

Use the date range selector to set the reporting period. Use the client filter to pull a report for a specific client — useful when preparing a monthly performance report for a single account.

6. Route into a client account for site-level work

All site-level work — content editing, settings changes, user management within a client's site — happens inside the client's account, not from the agency's top-level SG-Dashboard.

From Client Manager, click the client's name. Their account opens. The account shows the client's sites, billing state, and user roster.

Click the site you want to work on. Click Open site admin. The site's SG-Admin panel opens. Every action you take inside it is scoped to that client's site.

To return to the agency-level Client Manager, click the back navigation at the top of the admin panel or return to the SG-Dashboard tab in your browser.

Agency tier versus separate accounts — decision guide

This is the question most agencies ask before configuring their first client:

Use agency tier when:

• The agency manages the site on the client's behalf and the client is a named member with a role, not the account owner.
• The agency needs to track, report, or pass through billing per client under one billing relationship with SGEN.
• The agency wants white-label admin chrome so the client sees the agency's brand, not SGEN's.
• The agency needs cross-client reporting across the portfolio.
• The relationship is ongoing and the agency retains operational control.

Use separate accounts (client owns their account) when:

• The client needs to own their SGEN account outright from day one — billing, data, and all.
• The client relationship may end and the client needs to take the site with them without any account transfer process.
• The client has existing SGEN staff or an internal IT team who should be the account owner.
• The agency's role is advisory or project-based, not an ongoing managed service.

If the client relationship is ongoing and managed, agency tier is the right model. If the client needs ownership, set up their account independently and use the agency collaborator invite flow to join their account as an administrator.

What success looks like

When agency client routing is set up correctly, each of the following is true.

• Client Manager in SG-Dashboard shows all client accounts with current subscription and billing state.
• Each client's admin panel shows the agency's branding — not SGEN's — when white-label is enabled.
• Each client's domain resolves correctly to their site.
• Billing is isolated per client and billing contacts receive their own invoices.
• Cross-client analytics are accessible from the agency-level SG-Dashboard in one view.
• The agency operator can route into any client account and any client site from Client Manager in two clicks.

What to do if it does not work

Client Manager is not showing in the SG-Dashboard sidebar. Your plan is not on the agency tier. Check your plan in SG-Dashboard under Account, then Billing. Contact your SGEN account manager to upgrade to an agency-tier plan.

White-label branding is not appearing for the client. Confirm the branding settings are saved in the client's Settings, then Branding panel. Ask the client to log out and log back in — white-label changes apply on next login, not mid-session. If the branding still does not appear after a fresh login, confirm the logo file was uploaded successfully — an upload error silently leaves the default SGEN branding in place.

The client is seeing other clients' data in their analytics. Open the client's account in Client Manager and confirm their Analytics scope is set to their site only. Agency-level cross-client analytics are only accessible to agency-level users. A client-level user should see only their own site's data. If a client user is seeing cross-client data, check their role — they may have been inadvertently granted a Platform Admin role at the agency level. Correct the role and the scope restriction applies immediately.

Billing isolation is not generating separate invoices. Open the client account in Client Manager, then Billing. Confirm the billing arrangement is set to Direct and the billing contact email is correct. If billing is set to Pass-through, SGEN invoices the agency as a single line item and the agency is responsible for re-invoicing the client — SGEN does not generate a per-client invoice in pass-through mode.

The custom admin domain is not resolving. Confirm the CNAME record for the agency's admin subdomain is pointing to the correct SGEN admin hosting target. The target value is shown in the white-label branding settings panel. DNS propagation for admin domains takes the same 24-hour window as site domains. Use the DNS verification tool in the branding settings panel to confirm the record is live.

A client account linked from an existing SGEN account is not appearing in Client Manager. The client must confirm the linking request from their own SGEN account before the connection is established. Go to Client Manager and check whether the client appears in a Pending link state. If they do, ask the client to log in to their own SGEN account and approve the linking request.

Tips for a clean agency operation

Create a naming convention for client accounts before adding the first client. A consistent naming pattern in Client Manager makes the portfolio readable at a glance. Using the client's brand name rather than their contact name or their primary domain avoids confusion when a client's domain changes or a contact leaves.

Set white-label support contact email to an agency address, not a personal one. The support contact shown to the client inside the white-label admin panel should route to a team inbox — support@yourfirm.com — not to an individual. Individual contact email addresses change when staff leave.

Document which clients use direct billing versus pass-through billing. The distinction matters at invoice time. A client expecting a direct SGEN invoice and instead receiving an agency invoice creates a billing dispute. Log the billing arrangement for each client in Client Manager's notes field or in your agency's internal CRM.

Audit client access roles quarterly. As with internal team members, client-side users' roles need review. A client team member who leaves their company may retain access to the site until their role is explicitly revoked. Quarterly access reviews against the client's current active staff list keep the access picture accurate.

Route into client accounts from Client Manager, not from a saved bookmark to the client's admin URL. Routing through Client Manager logs the session in the agency's audit trail. Direct bookmark access to a client's admin URL may not associate the session with the agency operator in the audit log, which creates a gap in accountability.