Best Practices for Managing Account Types in Salesforce

With the growing trend of using CRMs for more than just sales in the Quote-to-Cash (QTC) process, managing multiple account types — such as customers, suppliers, partners, resellers, and competitors — has become increasingly important.

In many cases, a single account can assume multiple roles simultaneously, posing a challenge for CRMs that have traditionally been designed for sales and managing customer accounts (or slight variations like Customer – Direct or Customer – Channel).

For example, in wholesale telecommunications, providers often act as both customers and vendors to one another, leading to accounts with dual roles.

This scenario introduces several key implementation requirements for CRMs:

1. Each account type is different, i.e., has somewhat different data points that need to be viewed differently (as account management and vendor management teams will usually be different).
2. Still, some information is common (billing addresses, account numbers, contacts, etc.).
3. Having a single account record is advantageous (all contacts in one place, 360° view of sold and purchased items, etc.) as opposed to creating duplicates for each account type.

This post explores possible approaches for implementing multi-role accounts in Salesforce, though most of these solutions can be applied to any modern CRM system.

Type Drop-Down/Picklist

The simplest, straightforward approach to managing multiple account types in a CRM is by using a Type drop-down or picklist field.

This field is typically standard in most CRMs and can be easily customized to include the necessary account types. For accounts that need to represent multiple roles simultaneously, the Type field can be converted into a multi-select picklist, allowing for more flexibility in account classification.

This solution will display a single layout for each account but enable creation of list views for particular account types such as Resellers, Customers, and others.

Using Record Types

Record types can be thought of as special master fields identifying record sub-types. Record types can drive data visualization (page layouts), allowed picklist values, actions, process flows and others. Record types can be easily added to standard Salesforce accounts.

Record types can be used to define account types such as Customer, Reseller, Supplier and assign different page layouts, fields, picklist values, etc. to each account type. This is great; however, when an account plays two roles at the same time, two separate records need to be created leading to data duplication.

Single Record Type with Multiple Page Layouts/Apps/Lightning Pages

When maintaining a single record is essential, but different viewing modes are needed for various teams, this can be accomplished using profiles, apps, Lightning pages, and page layouts.

In this setup, the way an account is displayed is determined by the user’s profile. For example, the sales team would view the account as a customer, while the vendor relations team would see it as a vendor.

Automated Account Type Assignment

Up until now, we’ve assumed that the account type is known upfront. However, an alternative approach involves determining the account type automatically based on other data within the system. For example:

• If an account has at least one closed-won opportunity, it is classified as a customer.
• If an account is listed as a vendor on a product item, it is classified as a vendor.

For example, Nextian Quote-to-Cash automatically flags whether an account is a customer, reseller, or vendor based on subscription service data:

Conclusions

As a general rule, if each account plays only one role, using record types is ideal. However, if accounts fulfill multiple roles, consider using profiles or other methods to create distinct views. In most cases, a combination of the approaches outlined above will provide the optimal solution.

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