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tegwick 3ccf841095 Resolve Customer Account question; add commercial subscription research

Record B2B SaaS subscriber tenancy and Stripe billing source notes. Resolve
the Customer Account open question: reject it as canonical, add Commercial
Record and Commercial Relationship to the Record and relationship layers, and
document Subscriber as a convenience term only.

2026-06-21 20:35:36 +02:00

4.5 KiB

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B2B SaaS Subscriber and Organization Tenancy

Source Type

Product documentation and industry practice synthesis. Auth0 Organizations and B2B SaaS multi-tenancy guidance; Stytch B2B Auth School org-tenancy model.

Domain

B2B SaaS identity, organization tenancy, subscriber administration, and vendor/customer delineation in IAM products.

Why This Source Matters

IAM vendors explicitly separate the subscribing party (customer/subscriber) from login accounts and from billing records. This source clarifies why "customer account" overloads identity, commercial, and access semantics.

Key Concepts

Subscriber: Auth0-preferred term for the immediate B2B customer — the party that holds a provisioned tenant and subscription.
Vendor: provider of the B2B SaaS application (platform operator).
Organization tenancy: architecture where organizations are first-class entities; members are scoped to their organization.
Member: end user with membership in an organization (Stytch); distinct from platform-wide user identity.
Tenant / tenancy holder: operational partition occupied by a subscriber.
Org discovery: determining which organization a user authenticates into.
Membership control: granting/revoking which users may access a subscriber's tenant.
Identity isolation: per-subscriber credential and IdP configuration vs. platform-wide user population.
B2B2C / B2B2B variants: additional "customer" and "consumer" layers below the subscribing organization.

Relevant Terminology

Term	Source meaning
Subscriber	B2B customer occupying a tenant; Auth0 avoids "customer" label.
Vendor	SaaS platform provider.
Organization	First-class customer entity; "the organization is the customer" (Stytch).
Member	Employee or invited user within an organization.
Tenant	Isolation boundary for subscriber data, branding, and config.
Customer (informal)	Often used interchangeably with subscriber or organization.
User	Login identity; may belong to multiple organizations.
Consumer	End user in B2B2C scenarios below the subscriber org.

Modeling Assumptions

The subscribing company is modeled as an organization, not as a user account or billing record.
One human can be a member of multiple subscriber organizations (contractors, agencies).
Platform stores users globally; membership scopes them to subscriber orgs.
Billing is subscription-based but handled outside core IAM in most products.
Vendor administration may cross tenant boundaries with subscriber consent; subscriber administration does not.
No IAM product defines "Customer Account" as a separate entity type.

Identity-Canon Implications

Subscriber maps to Organization actor in Customer Relationship with vendor + Tenant Scope — not a canonical noun.
Member maps to Account + Membership Relationship to Organization.
Vendor maps to Vendor Relationship role on vendor Organization actor.
Supports S04, S05 without Customer Account concept.
Individual (B2C-style) subscriber maps to Natural Person + Tenant Scope, still without Customer Account.

Terminology Conflicts

Customer vs. Subscriber vs. Organization: three labels for overlapping B2B party; IAM prefers organization or subscriber.
Customer vs. Consumer: B2B2C uses both; subscriber org vs. end consumer.
Tenant vs. Organization: Stytch equates customer to organization; tenant is the isolation fabric they occupy.
Account: must not be used for subscriber org or billing party.

Candidate Canonical Mappings

B2B SaaS IAM concept	Candidate canonical concept
Subscriber	Organization + Customer Relationship role
Organization (tenant holder)	Organization + Tenant Scope
Member	Account + Membership Relationship
Vendor (platform)	Organization + Vendor Relationship role
Tenant	Tenant (Scope)
User (login)	Account
Consumer (B2B2C)	Natural Person or Account (context-dependent)

Open Questions

None blocking Customer Account resolution. Commercial billing layer documented separately in stripe-customer-billing.md.

References

Auth0: Demystifying Multi-Tenancy in B2B SaaS — https://auth0.com/blog/demystifying-multi-tenancy-in-b2b-saas/
Auth0 Organizations — https://auth0.com/docs/manage-users/organizations
Stytch: Organization tenancy — https://stytch.com/blog/organization-tenancy/

4.5 KiB Raw Blame History