Setting up the first organization or company

Compliance officers, DPOs, and IT administrators use the Companies screen to register the legal entities whose personal-data processing DPMS will govern — without at least one company on record, no ROPA, asset, vendor, or control can be meaningfully set up.

The Companies screen is the starting point for everything in DPMS. Before you can create processing records, assign users, or run any compliance reports, the platform needs to know which organization it is working on behalf of. This is where you register that organization — giving it a name, a jurisdiction, and (optionally) a consulting relationship with another firm. One DPMS instance can host multiple companies, which makes this screen especially important for DPO-as-a-service providers and law firms that manage compliance for several clients from a single platform.

How to open it

In the left sidebar, click Group Settings, then select Companies from the menu. You land on the companies list.

Heads up: You need at least the read permission for Companies to see this menu item. If it is missing from your sidebar, ask your system administrator to check your role. To create or edit companies, you also need the respective create or edit permission.

What you see

The screen has two modes: a list view and a form view.

In the list view, you see a table of all registered companies. Above the table there is a search bar and, on the right, a Create button. The table has six columns: Name, Type, Consulted Company, Country, Created At, and Updated At. You can sort by Name, Country, and the date columns. The list scrolls continuously — new rows load automatically as you scroll down.

When you click Create or click an existing row (if you have edit permission), you move to the form view. This is a clean, card-style page with a single General section containing three fields stacked vertically: Name, Country, and Consulting Companies. A Save button sits at the bottom. A back arrow in the top-left corner returns you to the list.

Working with this screen

Registering the first organization when starting out

If your DPMS instance is brand new, the companies table will be empty. This is the very first thing to set up.

Click the Create button at the top right of the table. A small dropdown appears — select Create Company.
On the form, type your organization's full legal name into the Name field (for example, "Müller & Partner GmbH"). This name will appear in breadcrumbs, reports, and audit trails throughout DPMS, so use the name that should appear in official documents.
Click the Country dropdown and search for the country where your organization is primarily registered. Select it. This field is required and drives jurisdiction-sensitive recommendations elsewhere in DPMS — for example, suggestions about which supervisory authority applies.
Leave the Consulting Companies field empty for now. This is only needed if another firm is going to act as a data-protection consultant for this organization (see the next scenario).
Click Save. DPMS registers the company, updates the organization selector in the top navigation bar, and returns you to the companies list — where your new entry appears in the table.

From this point on, the rest of DPMS knows which organization it is working for. You can now set up users, start building your ROPA, and configure your asset register.

Adding a client company for a DPO-as-a-service provider

If you manage compliance for several clients from one DPMS instance, you will need a separate company record for each client. The process is the same as above, but with one extra step: linking the client to your own firm as their consulting company.

Click Create → Create Company and fill in the client's Name and Country.
Open the Consulting Companies multi-select. Search for and select your own firm's name from the list.
A yellow warning box appears below the field. It explains in plain language that the consulting firm you selected will gain visibility into this company's compliance data. Read it carefully — this is a real data-sharing relationship, not just an administrative label.
If everything looks correct, click Save. In the companies table, the new client entry will now show Consulted in the Type column, and your firm's name will appear in the Consulted Company column.

Tip: The Consulting Companies dropdown will never show the company you are currently editing. This prevents a company from accidentally being listed as its own consultant.

Updating a company's name or details

Company names change over time — through mergers, rebranding, or simple corrections. To update an existing record:

Use the search bar at the top of the companies list to find the company. Type part of its name and the table filters in real time.
Click the company's row. You will land on the edit form, pre-filled with the current values.
Change the Name, Country, or Consulting Companies as needed.
Click Save. The change is applied immediately across the whole application — the updated name appears in the organization selector in the top bar, in breadcrumbs, and in any reports generated after this point.

Heads up: Clicking the back arrow without saving will silently discard your changes. There is no confirmation dialog. If you navigate away by accident, you will need to re-enter your edits.

Browsing the company registry as an auditor (read-only access)

If your role gives you read-only access, you can view the full companies table — all six columns, search, and scroll — but you cannot click into individual rows or create new entries. The Create button will not be visible, and clicking a row will have no effect. Use the table to verify which legal entities are registered and in which jurisdictions. If you need to investigate a specific company's consulting relationships, you can see those in the Consulted Company column.

Field reference

Name — The legal or trading name of the organization. Required. Must not be empty or contain only spaces (leading and trailing spaces are automatically stripped). This name appears in every breadcrumb, report, and audit trail in DPMS.
Country — The country where the organization is primarily registered. Required. Chosen from a searchable dropdown. Drives jurisdiction-sensitive guidance in other DPMS modules (for example, applicable supervisory authority recommendations).
Consulting Companies — One or more other company records that act as data-protection consultants for this organization. Optional. Selecting companies here grants those consulting firms visibility into this company's compliance data, and marks the current company as "Consulted" in the list view. Removing all selections clears the consulting relationship.

How this connects to the rest of DPMS

The company you register here becomes the organizational context for almost everything else in the platform.

Organization selector (top navigation bar): Once a company is saved, it appears in the company-switcher dropdown at the top of every screen. You switch between companies from there — creating a company here does not automatically switch you into its workspace.
ROPA, Assets, Vendors, and Controls: Every record in these modules is associated with a company. If a company does not exist in this registry, those records cannot be correctly assigned to it.
User management: Users are assigned to companies. Without a company record here, user assignments may fail or behave unexpectedly.
Consulting/consulted relationships: The consulting flags you set on this screen control data-visibility boundaries across the entire platform. The detailed sharing rules are configured separately under IT Settings → Sharing, but the relationship itself starts here.

After registering your first organization, your typical next steps are: configure IT Settings (logo, locale, date formats) under IT Settings → Company Settings, then set up your user roles, and then begin building your compliance content (ROPA, assets, vendors).

Tips & common pitfalls

Heads up: A name made up entirely of spaces will fail to save — DPMS trims whitespace before checking whether the field is empty. The form will show an error toast, but the field may look non-empty. Always type a real name.

Heads up: Country is required but easy to overlook. If the Save button seems to do nothing, scroll down and check whether the Country field shows an inline error — it is often the culprit.

Rows that don't respond to clicks usually mean you lack the edit permission. There is currently no visual difference between a clickable and a non-clickable row. If this happens, ask your administrator to review your role.
The Type column will be empty for a standalone company. This is normal — it only shows "Consulting" or "Consulted" badges when a consulting relationship has been established.
Switching to a newly created company is a separate step. After saving, use the company-switcher dropdown in the top navigation bar to move into the new company's compliance workspace.
The Consulting Companies dropdown excludes the company you are currently editing to prevent circular self-consultation. If a company you expect to see is missing from the list, this is likely why.
Changes to a company name take effect immediately everywhere — including in previously generated links and breadcrumbs. Make sure the new name is final before saving.