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Accounts vs Potential Customers (Best Practices)

Posted on by 79

Hi all,

Any Admins here dealing with Accounts and their multiple 'Ship to' addresses? I'm wondering if these different 'ship to' addresses could be registered by using the field 'Potential Customer'. 

That is, to select a global account as Account and select a specific 'ship to' address as Potential Customer. The information in those 2 fields would be different most of the time.

I'm trying to find a way to organize Accounts and multiple delivery addresses in CRM, so I'm able to track how much we've sold into Accounts but also where geographically our products are being delivered to. Wouldn't like to create more fields, that's why I'm thinking of Potential Customer, since it seems to be quite a "limbo" field for my operation.

Will appreciate any help/feedback on this!

  • Suggested answer
    Wahaj Rashid Profile Picture
    Wahaj Rashid 11,319 on at
    RE: Accounts vs Potential Customers (Best Practices)

    Hi,

    Potential Customer concept is related to potential sales, not the multiple addresses.

    By default, Account & Contact entities have a one-to-many relationship with Address entity, you can utilize this to add multiple addresses to an account/contact.

    You just need to either add Addresses in the Related records or alternatively you can add a subgrid on the form.

    Here are the steps:

    • Go to Advanced Settings -> Customization -> Customize the System.
    • Expand Entities -> Account -> Forms.
    • Open the Account form (or the form you use) and from the ribbon select Navigation option. This will show available relations. Drag Address from the left side under Common.

    pastedimage1599133866367v1.png

    pastedimage1599133933200v2.png

    • Save the form and Publish.

    Now you should see the Addresses under Related option on the Account form.

    pastedimage1599134237211v3.png

    You may add as many addresses you need and select a type as well (Bill To, Ship To etc).

    pastedimage1599134285867v4.png

    You can lookup these addresses in in Quotes, Sales Orders and Invoices:

    pastedimage1599134385192v5.png

    You can also add a subgrid on the Account form for easier access:

    pastedimage1599134483789v6.png

    I hope this answers you query.

    Best,

    Wahaj

    (if this answers your query, please mark it as verified)

  • David Jennaway Profile Picture
    David Jennaway 14,063 on at
    RE: Accounts vs Potential Customers (Best Practices)

    In general I prefer to use the potential customer field to indicate the organisation that you are selling to (i.e. who makes the decision to buy from you), as most of the OOB reporting is based on this. For your scenario I'd normally create an additional lookup field for the Ship To customer.Also

    • The potential customer is a system required field; normally I'd expect to first know who I'm selling to, and maybe only later know the Ship to
    • If you use leads and convert them to opportunities, then the potential customer is populated from the lead, so it's easiest if this field is used as in the leda

    However, some of that comes down to preference, and you could do it so the potential customer field reflects the Ship to customer.

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