Contents

Accounts - Plugixa CRM

An account is a company. It is the record most reporting groups by, and the thing almost everything else eventually points at.

The accounts list, showing name, type, industry, website, phone and owner for every company

Fields

Field Why it is there
Name The only required field
Type Customer, prospect, partner, competitor, and so on
Industry Groups the list, and reports break down by it
Website, Email, Phone The company’s own, not any one person’s
Billing address Street, city, state, postcode, country
Shipping address Kept separately, because it is often somewhere else
Parent account For a subsidiary or a division
Description Free text
Assigned user Who owns the relationship

This is the decision worth understanding, because it is what separates a CRM from an address book.

A contact is not stuck to one company. The relationship is its own record, and it carries:

  • The role that person plays at that company
  • Whether they are the primary contact there
  • Whether the link is inactive, for somebody who has moved on

So the person who signs the contract at one company can be the technical evaluator at another, and both are true at once. Neither has to be retyped, and neither is lost when they change jobs.

An account page, with its fields, the contacts linked to it, and the panels every record carries

Parent accounts

An account can name a parent. Use it for a subsidiary, a division or a franchise, where the deals belong to the branch but somebody eventually wants the group total.

It is a single link rather than a tree you administer, so it stays cheap to keep accurate.

What hangs off an account

Opening one shows the rest of the CRM from that company’s point of view:

  • Contacts, with their roles
  • Opportunities, open and closed
  • Cases
  • Activities: meetings, calls and tasks
  • Notes, files, tags, followers and the audit log, which every record carries. See Notes, Files, Tags and the Stream

Duplicates

Two people entering the same company is the most common data problem a CRM has. Administration -> Duplicates finds them, and merging brings the notes, files, activities, stars and history of both onto the survivor rather than stranding half of it. See Working with Records.

Troubleshooting

Symptom Usual cause
A contact appears under two companies That is the feature. The link records the role at each.
A contact is still listed after they left Mark the link inactive rather than deleting it, so the history stays.
The account total ignores a subsidiary Parent is a link, not an automatic roll-up. Report on the group explicitly.
An account cannot be deleted Something still points at it. The message says what.
Two records for one company Use Duplicates, then merge. Merging is not the same as deleting one.
Billing and shipping are the same They are separate fields on purpose. Fill in either or both.
Industry is missing from a report The field is empty on those accounts.

What to do next

Quick Links

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