Accounts and contacts

The two words, and what each means

• An account is a company: Ikeja Flour Mills, Ngong Road Medical Centre, Al Yasmin Retail Park.
• A contact is a person who works at that account: the chief engineer, the facilities manager, the finance director.

One account usually has several contacts. A large industrial customer might have a plant manager who cares about downtime, an engineer who cares about the specification and a finance director who cares about payback - three contacts, one account.

Why they are separate

Before this, a contact carried its company as a line of text. That meant "Al Noor Hospital" and "Al Noor Hospitals" were two different customers, nothing could be totalled per company, and there was nowhere to record what was true of the company rather than of one person in it.

With accounts you get the company's country and currency, its industry and size, who owns the relationship, and every sizing ever done for it - in one place, no matter which of its people you were talking to at the time.

Where to start

Create the account first, then add its contacts. On any account page, "Add a contact" starts a new person already attached to that company. If you create a contact first, pick the account from the dropdown on their record; if the company is not listed yet, add it and come back.

What each screen shows

• Accounts lists the companies, with how many people and how many sizings each one has.
• Opening an account shows the company's details, every contact under it, and every sizing done for it.
• Contacts remains the pipeline view: individual people, their stage, their next action.

Who can see what

An installer sees the accounts they own and those belonging to their own empanelled company, and nobody else's. That is enforced on the query, so it holds on the list, the search, the export and the record page alike.