Manage Accounts

Accounts represent individual organizations or business units within your DialStack platform. Each account has its own users, devices, phone numbers, and settings.

Viewing Accounts

Platform admins can see all accounts via the Accounts section on the platform detail page. The list shows each account's name, email, region, timezone, and creation date.

Each account also shows its Account ID (acct_…) beneath the name. Account names do not have to be unique, so a customer with several sites may run three accounts all called "Smile Dental"; the Account ID is what tells them apart. It is the same identifier the API returns and webhooks send, so it is also the value to quote when raising a support request about a specific account.

The full ID, with a button to copy it, is on the account's own page under Account Information.

You can search by it as well. The account search box matches the ID the same way it matches names: paste a whole ID, or type any part of one, including a run of characters from the middle. Fragments shorter than three characters are treated as an ordinary name search.

Creating an Account

1. Navigate to Accounts and click New Account.

2. Fill in the required fields:

   • Name — A display name for the account (e.g., "Acme Inc.")
   • Account Mode — Choose Live or Sandbox
   • Email — Contact email for the account. Required — at creation it establishes the account owner and is used to send the onboarding invite (see Onboarding). Afterwards it is an ordinary contact address you can change at any time, or clear entirely; changing it never changes who owns the account. Note that clearing it leaves the account incomplete for onboarding purposes.
   • Primary contact name — The account owner's name (required). The owner starts as an administrator with no phone service and isn't billed as a user. During onboarding, the Team Members step lists them with a Give phone access button that adds them as a user with an extension, so they don't need to be added again.
   • Main Location — The account's address (required). It becomes the account's main location — the default location used for emergency (911) calling and for tax and fee jurisdiction — so a single-site account is set up correctly the moment it's created, with no separate step. To move the account later, edit that location's address on the account's Locations tab rather than here.
   • Pricing — Monthly rates agreed with the customer (required, see below)
   • Service agreement — Which Service Subscription Agreement this customer signs (see Choosing the Service Subscription Agreement). It starts on your platform's default, so you only touch it for a customer that differs.

3. Optionally configure:

   • Hardware — Phones to ship with the account (optional, see below)

   Telephony settings — extension length, timezone, call transcription, recording, sensitive-data redaction, parking timeout, and emergency-call notification recipients — are configured after creation from the account's detail page (the Telephony and Locations tabs). Call transcription and recording start on for every new account, and sensitive-data redaction starts off.

4. Click Create Account. Owner email, primary contact name, the main-location address, and pricing must all be filled in first — the button validates them and won't proceed until they're provided. A confirmation dialog then asks how to finish:

   • Create & send invite — create the account and immediately email the owner their onboarding invite.
   • Create account — create the account without sending an invite; you can send it later from the account's Onboarding card.

   You are then redirected to the new account's detail page.

Ordering Hardware

When creating an account, you can add hardware line items — pick a phone model from the catalog and set a quantity for each line. A few rules apply:

• Each model appears on at most one line — adjust the quantity instead of adding the same model twice.
• Orders are limited to 10 line items.

Cordless (DECT) handsets must be associated with a base station to work. If your order includes handsets without one, the form shows a reminder — order a base station too unless the customer already has one on site.

On a sandbox or demo account, the hardware order is saved as a draft and cannot be checked out: checkout charges your bank account and ships real phones, so it is only available for live accounts.

Hardware is optional, but it can only be ordered during account creation — there is no ordering flow afterward. To add or modify hardware after the account is created, contact DialStack.

To see what has been ordered for an account, open the account detail page and go to the Devices tab. The Hardware orders card lists every order for that account with its current status, so an account with more than one order shows them all.

Pricing

When creating an account, record the monthly rates agreed with the customer, in USD:

• Per-User Rate
• Per-DID Rate — per phone number
• Managed VoiceAI location rate

All three rates are required to create the account. These rates are used to compute the account's taxes and fees, so they must be kept accurate. Rate changes take effect at the start of the next billing period.

You can update these rates at any time after the account is created — open the account detail page and edit the Pricing card, or change them in the account's edit form. Each rate must fall within DialStack's approved range. If you need to set a rate outside those ranges, contact DialStack support.

Onboarding

Because the account's address (its main location) and pricing are captured at account creation, an account is ready to onboard as soon as it exists. You invite the account owner by email — a link to sign in and start onboarding. The subscription agreement must be accepted by the account's owner — the single person who holds the owner role on that account. An account admin is not enough: admins can see the agreement and that service is blocked until it is accepted, but only the owner can accept it. Platform and support admins cannot accept on a customer's behalf through their platform-level access either. The one exception is a person who genuinely is the owner of that specific account, whatever else they also are — they may accept it themselves. If the owner cannot be reached, contact DialStack support rather than looking for another admin to sign.

Sending the invite

You can send the onboarding invite:

• At creation — choose Create & send invite in the confirmation dialog, or
• Later — open the account detail page and, in the Onboarding card, click Send the invitation email.

Sending the invite requires the account to have an owner. Every account created through the portal gets one from the email you supply at creation, so this is normally already true; the Onboarding card tells you if the account has no owner, which needs support to resolve — the contact email is not the owner, so editing it will not establish one. The invite always goes to the owner's own address, which is not necessarily the account's contact email — if you have since changed the contact email, the invite still reaches the owner. Once sent, the card shows that the invite was emailed along with the owner's current invite status.

Onboarding status on the account list

The Accounts list shows an Onboarding column for each account:

• Pending — no onboarding step is done yet. Open the account to see whether the invite has been sent and accepted.
• In Progress — at least one onboarding step (account, numbers, hardware) is done; a small ring shows how far along it is.
• Complete — the account has finished onboarding.

Resending the invite

If the owner loses the email, resend it from the Onboarding card on the account detail page — a fresh link is emailed and the old one stops working.

Choosing the Service Subscription Agreement

Every account signs one of the agreements your platform is cleared to offer:

• Standard — the ordinary Service Subscription Agreement.
• Healthcare (HIPAA) — the same agreement plus the Business Associate Agreement, for customers that handle protected health information.

It is a property of the account, not of your platform, so one platform can serve both. Your platform has a default that new accounts start on; a super admin sets it, and changing it affects only accounts created afterwards — never ones that already exist.

Changing it later

You can change an account's agreement freely until the customer accepts it — which is how you correct a choice made at creation. The selector is on the account's General card, and it is yours: the customer's own admins see which agreement they are on but cannot change it.

Once they have accepted, it locks. Changing it then would mean the agreement they signed no longer covers what they are required to sign, which blocks all of their calling, including 911, until they sign the new one. So from that point it is done by DialStack together with a re-signing deadline that keeps their service running while the customer signs. Contact support with the account and which agreement it should be on.

If you try it anyway, the save is refused and nothing changes.

Getting it right the first time

Picking Healthcare (HIPAA) for a customer that needs it matters more than it looks: if they sign the standard agreement, there is no BAA in place, and putting that right means a re-signing round with the customer. If you are unsure whether a customer is a covered entity, ask before creating the account rather than after.

Subscription-agreement (SSA) coverage

Live accounts must accept the Service Subscription Agreement before they can place any calls — including 911. The Accounts list surfaces where each account stands with an Agreement column:

• Signed — the account has accepted the current agreement; the acceptance date is shown beneath the badge.
• Unsigned — a live account that has not accepted yet (or accepted an older version that has since been updated). These accounts are blocked from all calling until they accept.
• Not required — a sandbox or demo account. These are never prompted for the agreement.

Use the Agreement status filter above the list to isolate a single group — for example, Unsigned to see every live account still blocked from calling.

Note that Unsigned also covers an account that accepted the other agreement — for example one that signed the standard agreement but is now on the healthcare one. It holds a real acceptance, but not of the document it is required to sign, so it is blocked just the same and cannot have its agreement changed in-band.

Live vs. Sandbox accounts

Every account runs in one of two modes — Live or Sandbox — and the mode is locked at creation.

• Live accounts connect to the real telephone network. Calls place and ring real phones, text messages go to real handsets, and everything is billable.
• Sandbox accounts are completely isolated from the real world. They exist so you can explore the platform, build integrations, or run demos without affecting a live customer and without a phone bill.

Nothing you do in a sandbox — placing a call, ordering a number, sending a message — touches real carriers or real phones. Sandbox actions do not affect live accounts, and live accounts do not see sandbox activity.

Sandbox phone numbers are not dialable

Phone numbers in a sandbox account are synthetic. They follow the reserved format +1AAA555‑01XX (North American 555-01XX range), which the telephone industry reserves for fictional use. Two quick ways to recognize a sandbox number:

• The seven digits after the area code begin with 555 (not a real exchange).
• The line portion is in the 0100–0199 range.

Calling a sandbox number from a real phone will not reach DialStack — the call will fail at the originating carrier. Sandbox numbers can only be used within the sandbox itself.

Editing an Account

1. Navigate to the account detail page from the Accounts list.
2. Click the Edit button in the Account Information card.
3. Update any editable fields.
4. Click Save Changes.

Account Limits

The Account Limits controls on the account's Telephony settings are visible only to platform admins. They cap how much an account can consume and act as spend and abuse guardrails:

• Phone Number Limit — the maximum number of phone numbers the account can hold (1–1000, default 25). It applies both to buying numbers and to porting them in — creating a port order, or adding numbers to one — and an order that would take the account past the limit is rejected. The count includes numbers a port order has reserved but not yet completed, so a port in flight uses up the allowance; released numbers don't count. Raising the limit unblocks a rejected order, and so does releasing numbers the account no longer needs. Recovering a previously released number counts as acquiring one, so it is refused at the limit too.
• Inbound Fax Limit and Outbound Fax Limit — the maximum number of faxes accepted or sent per rolling hour across the account (1–1000, default 25). Faxes beyond the limit are rejected.

Each field shows the account's effective value (the default when unset). Edits save automatically. Account admins can see the rest of the Telephony settings but neither see nor change these limits.

Managed VoiceAI

Also in this platform-admin section is the Managed VoiceAI control, which overrides the platform-wide default (see Platform Settings) for this one account:

• Inherit — follow the platform default.
• Show — always offer Managed VoiceAI for this account.
• Hide — never offer it for this account.

Like the platform-wide setting, hiding only affects creating new managed agents; existing ones keep working. Only platform (and super) admins can see or change this control.

Offering Managed VoiceAI does not itself charge the account. The Managed VoiceAI rate starts when an agent is created, and from that point it applies to every location on the account, not only the ones the agent answers for.

Default Outbound Caller ID

The Default Outbound Number setting controls which phone number appears as the caller ID on outbound calls from this account. By default, the system uses the first available outbound-enabled number. A temporary number is used only when the account has no other outbound-enabled number, so once the account's own numbers are ported in, they take over from its temporary number automatically. Selecting the temporary number as the default keeps it in use until you change the setting.

To set a default:

1. Open the account settings page.
2. In the Default Outbound Number dropdown, select a phone number.
3. The change is saved automatically.

Individual users can override this default from their user detail page. See Managing Users for details.

Deleting an Account

1. Open the account settings page.
2. Click Delete account.
3. Confirm the deletion.

warning

Deleting an account is permanent and removes all associated users, devices, phone numbers, and data.

Switching Between Accounts

Use the account picker in the top navigation bar to switch between accounts. All account-scoped pages (Users, Devices, Phone Numbers, Locations) automatically reflect the selected account.