Assigning Accounts for Simple Contacts or Customers?

[cbrandtbuffalo]

I have a best-practices question regarding contacts and accounts for customers.

For the simplest type of customer, who is just one person, do you need to create both a contact and an account?

Assuming you do, what do you usually use for the Account name given that it is a single person and not a company? I'm thinking last name-first name? If you use last name alone, you'll run into problems when you have two Smith's, correct?

Thanks for any guidance or shared experience.

Jim

[sacramentojoe]

I have a best-practices question regarding contacts and accounts for customers.

For the simplest type of customer, who is just one person, do you need to create both a contact and an account?

Assuming you do, what do you usually use for the Account name given that it is a single person and not a company? I'm thinking last name-first name? If you use last name alone, you'll run into problems when you have two Smith's, correct?

Thanks for any guidance or shared experience.

Jim

Jim, I guess it depends on what type of data you want to collect and / or report on.
We use both and we do a lastname as the name. The name isn't required to be unique so you will only run into issues if you have 1000's of smiths and can't tell the difference.

Sorry not much of help but good luck.

[stevec]

You can have as many accounts with the same name but there are a few issues. Minor ones are that you'll have to make sure you put appropriate other identifiers in lists - eg, city etc.

However, the biggest problem will be picking account names from the AJAX account selector tool (the one that uses javascript to match account names when creating/editing a contact as you type). It only displays the account name and no other fields - so if you have some that are the same, you will not be able to reliably use this facility. If you want to use this, maybe put the city in the account name too - or your customer number?