Can multiple branches of a letting agency share one Certaby account, or do we need separate accounts per branch?
Today a Certaby account is one login with one shared credit balance. Branches of a single firm can share it: every transaction, result and certificate sits in the same account, kept for 7 years, and head office tops up one balance for everyone. Use your own matter reference on each transaction (for example a branch code) to find a branch's work quickly.
Team accounts, where each member of staff has their own login on the same balance and records, are on the way. If you need more than one person working from the same balance now, tell us and we will set you up.
When a separate account per branch makes more sense:
- Franchise structures where each branch is a separate legal entity with its own MLRO and its own HMRC AML supervision registration. Each franchise is then a separate firm under MLR-2017 and should keep its own records.
- Independent partner firms operating under a shared brand, for the same reason.
MLR-2017 itself is agnostic between firm-level and branch-level record-keeping for branches inside a single legal entity. What it requires is that the records exist, are retained for 5 years after the relationship ends (reg 40), and are available to HMRC at inspection.
For a firm running 3 branches doing 15 lets a month combined, one Certaby account at £3.27 a let costs about £49.05 a month, funded from one credit balance. Compared to running 3 separate SmartSearch contracts at about £700 a month each, that is a saving of roughly £2,000 a month.
Last updated 2026-05-19.