An account is one Instagram or WhatsApp identity that you have connected to {{brand.name}}. It is where you spend your day in the panel: the inbox, contacts, automations, media and reports always show the data of the account that is currently open.
💡 Empty accounts are never created. An account comes into existence the moment you connect a channel. There is no "create the account first, connect it later" step; inside a portfolio you choose Connect account, and once the connection completes the account appears there.
What an account is for
An account is the boundary of your data. Nothing inside one account leaks into another:
- Conversations and messages belong to the account. If the same person wrote to two of your accounts, those are two separate conversations.
- Contacts belong to the account. A contact is stored under that account with the identity the channel gives (an Instagram ID or a WhatsApp number).
- Automations, rules and sequences belong to the account. A flow you build in one account does not run in another by itself.
- Tags, contact fields, saved replies and media belong to the account.
- Reports and insights show that account's numbers.
The only shared layer is the portfolio's common setup: the team, roles, the access policy, assignment rules, AI keys and external service connections.
Where the account name comes from
You never name an account yourself; the name is read from the connected channel:
- On an Instagram account, the @username.
- On a WhatsApp account, the verified business name, or the phone number if there is none.
If an account holds more than one channel row (an older connection that dropped, plus the new one), the name comes from the live row; if there is no live row, from the one that was disconnected most recently. Change your username on Instagram's side and the name in the panel follows it.
The left menu of the open account is made of the sections below. Which of them you see depends on your role, the portfolio's access policy, the plan and the account's channel type:
- Home — A summary of the account.
- Inbox — Conversations. It is always open to everyone on the team.
- Automations — Flows, general rules and sequences.
- Contacts — The contact list and contact cards.
- Media — The files used in flows and conversations.
- Reports — The panel's own counts (messages, runs, agents).
- My profile — Instagram accounts only. It is the in-panel counterpart of your Instagram profile: grid, stories, comments. Insights and Publish are opened from here; neither has its own entry in the left menu.
- Settings — The settings of this account only.
⚠️ Note: Insights are Meta's measurements (reach, views, demographics), while Reports are what the panel itself counts. The names sound alike but they are two separate sections and are switched on and off separately.
The sections in account settings
Settings holds the settings of the open account, grouped under This account:
- Connection — The state of the connected channel, its permissions, the state of the access token and, on WhatsApp, the templates. Even viewing it requires the channel permission, because the screen contains sensitive detail.
- General — The account's default content language, time zone and currency. Scheduled work and reports run on this time zone; system messages sent to customers are prepared in this language.
- Business hours — The weekly schedule, holidays, the out-of-hours auto-reply, deferring flows until opening time, and skipping assignment outside working hours.
- Messaging — Making automation behave like a person: the typing indicator and read receipts. Both are off by default and today work on Instagram accounts only.
- Saved replies — Shortcut answers that appear when you type
/ in the inbox.
- Move to another portfolio — Moves the account into another portfolio you own.
- Delete this account — Deletes the account.
Moving and deleting belong to the portfolio owner alone. If the portfolio is scheduled for deletion, Move to another portfolio is the only item left in account settings: it is the way to rescue the account.
How many channels an account carries
An account is for one channel type: either Instagram or WhatsApp. If the same business runs both, that is two separate accounts, and both sit in the same portfolio.
This has practical consequences:
- To run the same automation on both channels you build the flow separately in each account.
- The triggers, conditions, actions and steps you can choose are filtered by channel. A WhatsApp account never shows the "Post comment" trigger, because it has no counterpart there; an Instagram account never shows the "Template" step.
- A contact is stored with the channel's own identity. Ayşe writing on Instagram and Ayşe writing on WhatsApp are two different contacts.
👉 The channel concept itself is covered in Channel.
A concrete example
A dental clinic creates a single portfolio called "Clinic" and connects two accounts: @dentaclinic on Instagram, and a WhatsApp number for appointment messages.
- On the Instagram account they build a flow that moves post commenters into DM.
- On the WhatsApp account they build a sequence that sends an approved template as an appointment reminder.
- Merve at the front desk is added to the portfolio with one invitation and answers both inboxes with the Agent role.
- In reports the two accounts are read separately: Instagram's comment traffic never mixes with WhatsApp's appointment traffic.
What language, time zone and currency affect
The three choices under Settings › General are felt everywhere in the account:
- Default content language — System messages sent to customers are prepared in this language. The "person's language" condition in a flow falls back to it when no language is chosen on the contact card. Lowercasing of tags also follows this language.
- Time zone — Scheduled triggers, business hours, the timing of sequence steps and the day boundaries in reports all run on this clock. A wrong time zone means the message you asked for "at 9 in the morning" goes out at some other hour.
- Currency — The default unit for conversion amounts.
All three are per account: two accounts in the same portfolio can have different languages and time zones.
Common mistakes
- Looking for a flow in the wrong account. Check the account name at the top of the panel; the automation list only ever shows the open account's flows.
- Deleting the account in order to change the channel. To refresh or replace a connection, Settings › Connection is enough; deleting the account takes the conversations, contacts and flows with it.
- Trying to connect the same Instagram account to two portfolios. One identity maps to one account at a time. If it is already connected, the panel says so and offers to take you there or to move it here.
- Assuming contacts are shared across accounts. A contact belongs to one account; you will see the same person separately in each.
Limits
- How many accounts you can connect depends on the portfolio owner's plan. You can see the limit at the top of Portfolio settings › Accounts.
- An account lives in one portfolio; when it is moved, all of its data travels with it.
- If the account's channel type has been switched off (by plan or at portfolio level), the account disappears from the lists, no message is sent and its automations are not triggered. Stored data is not deleted; when the type is switched back on, everything reappears as it was.
Think of an account not as "an identity you connected" but as "the box that holds everything belonging to that identity", and you will never look for something in the wrong place again.