View source for Techniques to Categorize Accounts

You may wish to group multiple accounts into categories such as industry type, geographic region, or some other criteria. There are three techniques you can use:

===Using a Custom Field for Categorization===

* Add a [[Custom Field|custom field]] to the accounts and use this field to categorize the accounts.  This is the simplest technique; however, it does not provide the ability to add different groups of [[Custom Field|custom fields]] for each account category. All custom fields are visible for all accounts.

===Using a Hierarchy for Categorization===

* Place all similar accounts in the [[Hierarchy|hierarchy]] under an “organisation” used to represent the category.  This technique works when you wish to "roll-up" information such as the value of the sales pipeline in the [[Sales Tracking]] application. However, as with a [[Custom Field|custom field]] technique, it does not support different groups of custom fields for each category.

===Using a Company Category for Categorization===

* Create an organisation category using the '''Configuration''', '''Roles & Permissions''', '''Organisation Categories'''.  This is the only technique that provides the ability to specify different groups of custom fields for each account category.  You can also use this method to control the visibility of all accounts in each category to different groups of people.

==Adding Contacts to Organisations==

As with [[Internal|internal]] people, [[External|external]] contacts are always created within the context of an organisation, so when you wish to add a new person to the system you must first display the appropriate organisation.

==Standard Contact Fields==

The same fields describe an [[External|external]] contact as an [[Internal|internal]] [[User|user]]:

The standard fields can be extended through the addition of [[Custom Fields|custom fields]]. 

You can also upload accounts and contacts in bulk.

You can also create self-signup for your contact.

==See Also==
* [[Client Categories|Organization Categories]]

[[Category:System Management]]