Whose card should software subscriptions sit on when building client systems

This is one of the most common disagreements in CRM and systems consulting, and it rarely surfaces until the build is nearly finished. One approach: put the CRM, phone number, email sending tool and integrations on the consultant's own account and bill the client one number each month. It reads cleaner to the client, often comes with better rates through a reseller setup running several clients at once, and nothing breaks unexpectedly when a card expires. The other approach: every account sits in the client's name with their card, with the consultant added as a user. Setup is slower and eats more hours on support calls while the client hunts down a verification code. But if the relationship ends abruptly, nothing turns off the next day, and the client can see exactly what they're paying each vendor. There's a middle version where the core CRM is the client's and the small supporting tools are the consultant's, which in practice tends to mean a small forgotten tool ends up holding a workflow together years later without anyone noticing. There's no clean rule that avoids every failure mode here. The safest default leans toward client-owned accounts for anything mission critical, with the consultant absorbing the setup friction, and reserving consultant-owned accounts for genuinely minor tools where continuity matters more than transparency.