Understanding Branches in Pulse

A branch in Pulse is an independent workspace linked to your main organisation. It has its own staff, clients, projects, invoices, inventory, and everything else Pulse provides — but it sits under your HQ account so you can see and manage all locations from one place.

How a branch relates to HQ

Your main Pulse organisation is the HQ. Branches are separate workspaces that belong to it. Think of it as a franchise or multi-location business: each branch runs its own day-to-day operations, but HQ has oversight across all of them.

Data does not automatically flow between branches or between a branch and HQ. A project created at Branch A is not visible at Branch B or at HQ unless someone with access to both explicitly checks. Each workspace is isolated — the connection is at the visibility and management layer, not at the data layer.

What is different about HQ

HQ is the master account. It creates and manages branches, controls who from the HQ team can access each branch, sees the group dashboard, and manages the billing for each branch subscription. A branch cannot itself create sub-branches — the hierarchy is one level deep.

Plan requirement

The Branches feature is available on the Operate Pro plan and above. If your organisation is on a lower plan, you will see an upgrade prompt on the Branches page instead of the branch management interface.

Branch lifecycle

A branch moves through the following states:

• Pending Payment — the branch has been created but the monthly subscription payment has not yet been confirmed. Branch users cannot log in during this state. HQ can cancel the branch from here without completing payment.
• Active — payment confirmed. Branch staff can log in and work. HQ admin access is available immediately.
• Suspended — the subscription payment failed or was cancelled. Branch users are locked out. Data is preserved. Reactivation requires completing payment again.
• Cancelled — the branch was deliberately cancelled by HQ. Users are locked out immediately. Data is preserved and reactivation is possible through the billing flow.

Branch subscription cost

Each active branch carries a monthly fee billed through PayFast directly from HQ. The subscription is recurring and continues until the branch is cancelled. You manage branch subscriptions from the Branches page in HQ.