How to set up SugarCRM for a company that's a matchmaker for 2 classes of clients?

[DBREE]

I'm a business owner, experimenting with SugarCRM and would love to use it for my business.

We are essentially a matchmaker who puts other businesses together. We have two totally different types of clients, whom we match together. I'll call them Class A and Class B.

Clearly, Opportunities would need to link them both together.

But I want to run reports on how much business we do with specific Class A clients, and specific Class B clients.

The most obvious solution seems to be to make Class A clients into Accounts, and Class B clients into Contacts -- assuming I can run reports by Contacts. Can I?

Then there's the problem of recording actual people at my Accounts. I guess I could group them with the Class B clients under Contacts and it probably wouldn't cause problems.

Also, I could make Class A clients into Users and Class B clients into Accounts. That'd be fine since I'm the only account rep right now, but that runs into problems as soon as I hire more people.

Other ideas?!

Thank you in advance!

David

[swhitlow]

Hi David,

I would say that if the Class A and Class B are just more of a "flag" in your system then you could just use a drop down to identify the Classes of your clients without having to change much.

If Class A is widely different (layout, fields, etc.) than Class B another option would be to create a new Module and then relate it back to the Accounts module (which Accounts would be your Class A) and then relate the new Module to Opportunities as well.

So, then if you create a new Opportunity, you could then add a custom field that allows you to choose the Account related to the Opportunity and then choose the Class B Record that is related to the Opportunity. Then, your reports would be able to view it all.

Speaking of Reports - I would assume you are using the Professional version correct? Otherwise, reports are not available in the CE version. Just thought I would add that in here.

Hope this helps!

[DBREE]

Thanks, Scott. Sounds like a new module might be the way to go.

I'll contact you when we start talking to developers about customizing Sugar!

David