Accounts: ar they needed for each company? Clients only? Partners?

[patdine]

We are a small consulting firm. We have a lot of contacs (2000) that are not accounts we want to sell into, but contacts that are partners, referrals, friends etc. Should we always create an account that this contact is linked to ior a custom field for "Company"? Is there any reason not to us accounts? or should every contact have an account affiliated with him or her, i.e. eveyr company is an account, even if it is not going tobe a customer?? Please help clarify

[kbrill]

In your case Accounts could be used as a way to group contacts together, however there is nothing that says you have to use accounts. You could just remove the account field and tun off the Account tab. You could also, as you said, make a custom field for company name in the contacts module.

[patdine]

Thanks. But do most consulting or services firms use accounts for all companies? May make sense since the system is then better able to group companies? Any recommednation what is better?