Considerations before creating a member account Create a member account

Creating a member account in an organization with Amazon Organizations

This topic describes how to create Amazon Web Services accounts within your organization in Amazon Organizations. For information about creating a single Amazon Web Services account, see the Getting Started Resource Center.

Considerations before creating a member account

Organizations automatically creates the IAM role OrganizationAccountAccessRole for the member account

When you create a member account in your organization, Organizations automatically creates the IAM role OrganizationAccountAccessRole in the member account that enables users and roles in the management account to exercise full administrative control over the member account. Any additional accounts attached to the same managed policy will be updated automatically whenever the policy gets updated. This role is subject to any service control policies (SCPs) that apply to the member account.

Organizations automatically creates the service-linked role AWSServiceRoleForOrganizations for the member account

When you create a member account in your organization, Organizations automatically creates service-linked role AWSServiceRoleForOrganizations in the member account that enables integration with select Amazon services. You must configure the other services to allow the integration. For more information, see Amazon Organizations and service-linked roles.

Member accounts can only be created in the root of an organization

Member accounts in an organization can only be created in the root of an organization. After you create a member account root of an organization, you can move it between OUs. For more information, see Moving accounts to an organizational unit (OU) or between the root and OUs with Amazon Organizations.

Policies attached to the root immediately apply

If you have any policies attached to the root, those policies immediately apply to all users and roles in the created account.

If you have enabled service trust for another Amazon service for your organization, that trusted service can create service-linked roles or perform actions in any member account in the organization, including your created account.

Member accounts must opt in to receive marketing emails

Member accounts that you create as part of an organization are not automatically subscribed to Amazon marketing emails. To opt-in your accounts to receive marketing emails, see https://pages.awscloud.com/communication-preferences.

Member accounts for organizations managed by Amazon Control Tower should be created in Amazon Control Tower

If your organization is managed by Amazon Control Tower, we recommend that you create your member accounts using the Amazon Control Tower account factory in the Amazon Control Tower console or using the Amazon Control Tower APIs.

If you create an member account in Organizations when the organization is managed by Amazon Control Tower, the account won't be enrolled with Amazon Control Tower. For more information, see Referring to Resources Outside of Amazon Control Tower in the Amazon Control Tower User Guide.

Create a member account

After you sign in to the organization's management account, you can create member accounts that are part of your organization.

When you create an account using the following procedure, Amazon Organizations automatically copies the following Primary contact information from the management account to the new member account:

Phone number
Company name
Website URL
Address

Organizations also copies the communication language and Marketplace information (vendor of the account in some Amazon Web Services Regions) from the management account.

Minimum permissions

To create a member account in your organization, you must have the following permissions:

organizations:DescribeOrganization – required only when using the Organizations console
organizations:CreateAccount
iam:CreateServiceLinkedRole

To create an Amazon Web Services account that is automatically part of your organization

Sign in to the Amazon Organizations console. You must sign in as an IAM user, assume an IAM role, or sign in as the root user (not recommended) in the organization’s management account.
On the Amazon Web Services accounts page, choose Add an Amazon Web Services account.
On the Add an Amazon Web Services account page, choose Create an Amazon Web Services account (it is chosen by default).
On the Create an Amazon Web Services account page, for Amazon Web Services account name enter the name that you want to assign to the account. This name helps you distinguish the account from all other accounts in the organization and is separate from the IAM alias or the email name of the owner.

Important
Make sure to verify that the Amazon Web Services account name is correct. Once the account has been successfully created, the account name cannot be modified.
For Email address of the account's owner, enter the email address of the account's owner. This email address cannot already be associated with another Amazon Web Services account because it becomes the user name credential for the root user of the account.
(Optional) Specify the name to assign to the IAM role that is automatically created in the new account. This role grants the organization's management account permission to access the newly created member account. If you don't specify a name, Amazon Organizations gives the role a default name of OrganizationAccountAccessRole. We recommend that you use the default name across all of your accounts for consistency.

Important
Remember this role name. You need it later to grant access to the new account for users and roles in the management account.
(Optional) In the Tags section, add one or more tags to the new account by choosing Add tag and then entering a key and an optional value. Leaving the value blank sets it to an empty string; it isn't null. You can attach up to 50 tags to an account.
Choose Create Amazon Web Services account.
- If you get an error that indicates that you exceeded your account quota for the organization, see I get a "quota exceeded" message when I try to add an account to my organization.
- If you get an error that indicates that you can't add an account because your organization is still initializing, wait one hour and try again.
- You can also check the Amazon CloudTrail log for information on whether the account creation was successful. For more information, see Logging and monitoring in Amazon Organizations.
- If the error persists, contact Amazon Web Services Support.
The Amazon Web Services accounts page appears, with your new account added to the list.
Now that the account exists and has an IAM role that grants administrator access to users in the management account, you can access the account by following the steps in Accessing member accounts in an organization with Amazon Organizations.

The following code examples show how to use CreateAccount.

.NET

Amazon SDK for .NET

Note

There's more on GitHub. Find the complete example and learn how to set up and run in the Amazon Code Examples Repository.


    using System;
    using System.Threading.Tasks;
    using Amazon.Organizations;
    using Amazon.Organizations.Model;

    /// <summary>
    /// Creates a new AWS Organizations account.
    /// </summary>
    public class CreateAccount
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// Initializes an Organizations client object and uses it to create
        /// the new account with the name specified in accountName.
        /// </summary>
        public static async Task Main()
        {
            IAmazonOrganizations client = new AmazonOrganizationsClient();
            var accountName = "ExampleAccount";
            var email = "someone@example.com";

            var request = new CreateAccountRequest
            {
                AccountName = accountName,
                Email = email,
            };

            var response = await client.CreateAccountAsync(request);
            var status = response.CreateAccountStatus;

            Console.WriteLine($"The staus of {status.AccountName} is {status.State}.");
        }
    }

For API details, see CreateAccount in Amazon SDK for .NET API Reference.

CLI

Amazon CLI

To create a member account that is automatically part of the organization

The following example shows how to create a member account in an organization. The member account is configured with the name Production Account and the email address of susan@example.com. Organizations automatically creates an IAM role using the default name of OrganizationAccountAccessRole because the roleName parameter is not specified. Also, the setting that allows IAM users or roles with sufficient permissions to access account billing data is set to the default value of ALLOW because the IamUserAccessToBilling parameter is not specified. Organizations automatically sends Susan a "Welcome to Amazon" email:


aws organizations create-account --email susan@example.com --account-name "Production Account"

The output includes a request object that shows that the status is now IN_PROGRESS:


{
        "CreateAccountStatus": {
                "State": "IN_PROGRESS",
                "Id": "car-examplecreateaccountrequestid111"
        }
}

You can later query the current status of the request by providing the Id response value to the describe-create-account-status command as the value for the create-account-request-id parameter.

For more information, see Creating an Amazon Account in Your Organization in the Amazon Organizations Users Guide.

For API details, see CreateAccount in Amazon CLI Command Reference.

Javascript is disabled or is unavailable in your browser.

To use the Amazon Web Services Documentation, Javascript must be enabled. Please refer to your browser's Help pages for instructions.

Best practices for member accounts

Accessing member accounts