Child Accounts or New Entity

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Posted on by mcw1882

I have a scenario where an account has multiple locations that we manage. Would it be better to set up those locations as Child Accounts of the Parent, or Create a separate entity?

As it stands right now, the current instance has "Locations" as a separate entity. This makes views and reporting more difficult.

Has anyone else dealt with a situation similar, and how did you proceed?

Thanks in advance...

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Aiden Kaskela 19,696 on at

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RE: Child Accounts or New Entity

Hi Michael,

If a location has similar properties of an account and you need to report on it, I'd absolutely use the Account record to manage it. You could use the Account Classification Code (or a new field) as a way to track the type of account, like Primary Office, Location, etc.

If the location has a lot of properties or relationships that aren't relevant to the account, you start to get near the point where you would want a new entity.

If this helps I'd appreciate if you would mark this as a Verified answer.

thanks,

Aiden

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ScottDurow 21 on at

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RE: Child Accounts or New Entity

Hi Michael,

This is a common data modeling conundrum. I think the key is deciding on if an Account represents a Legal entity or not - if it does, then you probably will want to use a separate child locations entity (or use additional addresses) - but if your Accounts are not necessarily legal entities (e.g. you deal with branch offices etc. as accounts - or even sub-departments within a company) then it's better to model as parent/child accounts.

Another consideration is where do you want your contacts to be parented? If they should always be parented by the legal entity - then you don't want the other locations as accounts otherwise you'll get fragmented contact records.

Also - think about what data will be different between parent/child accounts (other than address fields) - if the data is mostly the same, then it may be better to stick with a single account to prevent there being lots of copies of the same data.

Hope this helps,

Scott

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mcw1882 on at

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RE: Child Accounts or New Entity

The way our system goes now

Customer (Account) --> Location (Custom Entity)--> Container (Custom Entity)

While the two custom Entities have lots of data fields, the important financials have to roll up to the main account.

All of this is currently managed with workflows and Rollup/Calculated fields. It just seems a bit clunky to me to have to switch entities back and forth to see the data the user needs.

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ScottDurow 21 on at

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RE: Child Accounts or New Entity

What advantages do you feel that using Parent/Child Accounts will bring?

The one think that is always a consideration is the auto-rollup of activities and child opportunities/orders/case etc. when viewing on the parent account.

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mcw1882 on at

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RE: Child Accounts or New Entity

Quick access to data I think is the biggest advantage. I think eliminating two entities and condensing the data within into child accounts would make it easier for reporting, calculations, future business process flows.

My main goal is to make it as streamlined as possible for both Customer Service and Sales.

Now, I will say that it works fine now as is. I just don't think it's as "good" as it could be. I have setup subgrid views within the Account Entity. But there is no real standardization in views. I would love to use the auto rollup feature, but I can't even get users to use Activities instead of Notes.

2015 helped tremendously with the addition of Calculated/Roll-up Fields.

It would also open up the ability to use the Hierarchical Visualizations. which I believe would help both sides of the house.

I'm just trying to see if using Child accounts would make the work process for my users easier, as opposed to having to switch to different entities. It seems to me having everything under one Entity (in my case, Customer) would make everything more accessible for both reporting, calculations, etc.

Scott,

So in my scenario, Customer (account) owns multiple locations which we manage. Each location has a third party contract which dictates financials for that location. That financial info is then required to be totaled up to the Customer Account.

In the above scenario, what would you recommend?

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ScottDurow 21 on at

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RE: Child Accounts or New Entity

I think it depends on where your contacts are located - are they linked to the parent company or should they be linked to the locations? It is certainly more common to model your scenario as parent/child accounts.

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mcw1882 on at

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RE: Child Accounts or New Entity

The contacts are predominantly based off of the Account. Locations would possibly have a contact associated, but this would be due to Cases. As the Locations typically have high employment turn over, they aren't as critical as the main contacts.

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