using master/sub accounts

Hi.

I’m looking for advice peeps.

I have a customer base ranging from small individual retailers as well as several multi-site retailers. Each ā€œcustomer siteā€ will have its own address and notes…about the site but may share contacts with other branches of the same customer i.e… the owner may call in from any site.

I created a new module called sites which allowed me to enter this information and then when using cases our help desk can log the customer contact regardless of which site they may typically work at.

Since creating this set-up I have realised accounts could have been set up with master / sub account (master being a head office and subs being the sites). Initially I assumed this was for big corporations rather than my use. Also I presume this may mean duplicating contacts potentially for each sub account as contacts are tied to the account. This seems an untidy approach but concious I’m not future proofing our solution.

I suppose the question I’m asking is should I use account / sub account and if so is their a way of filtering contacts to include all related subs and master account?

I hope this makes sense, apologies if it doesn’t.