Create or edit an account

Can I do this task?

1. In the Navigation Pane, click Sales, and then click Accounts.
2. In the Records group, click New or open the record you want.
3. In the General section, enter or edit information or observe any noted restrictions or requirements as needed:
   • Account Name

     You can use accent marks, in a customer's name or elsewhere, without affecting your ability to sort and find information.

   • Primary Contact

     To locate and select a primary contact, click the Lookup button .

   • Account Number

     You must enter 20 characters or less.

   • Parent Account

     If you are creating a sub-account An account record that is associated with a parent account. For example, your organization may do business with a company that has multiple divisions or physical locations. You can use a parent account to represent company headquarters and use sub-accounts to represent specific divisions, subsidiaries, or local offices., you must set up a relationship to its parent account An account that has other dependent accounts associated with it. The dependent accounts are considered to be child accounts.. To select a parent account, click the Lookup button .

     If you are creating a parent account, leave this field blank.

   • E-mail

     E-mail addresses must be valid. For example, someone@example.com. This field is optional, but entering information here can make it easier to send e-mail to the account.

   • ZIP/Postal Code

     Enter 20 characters or fewer. This field is optional, but entering information here can provide geographical information to reports, workflows, or other areas of the application.

4. In the Details section, observe any noted restrictions or requirements and enter all the information you have available in the following fields:
   • Industry

     Select an option from the list. This field can be customized, so the values will vary.

     If you do not see the industry you want, ask your system administrator to add it to the list. This field is used in various reports such as Account Overview.

     The lead form also includes the industry field. If your system administrator adds custom industries to the account form, they should be added to the lead form at the same time.

   • Annual Revenue

     You must enter numbers between 0.00 and 1,000,000,000.00.

     You can use commas and a decimal point. You cannot use a currency symbol, such as the dollar ($), euro (€), or yen (¥).

   • No. of Employees

     You must enter a whole number between 0 and 1,000,000.

   • SIC Code

     Indicate the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code for this account. You can search on SIC for organizations with a particular code to display all accounts of businesses in that category. Enter 20 characters or fewer.

   • Ownership

     Select an option that indicates how shares of the company are held. For example, if the company is held publicly, meaning its stock is traded on the open market, then its ownership is public.

   • Ticker Symbol

     If you enter a ticker symbol An identification code used to identify a publicly traded corporation on a particular stock market. for a market outside the United States, you must prefix it with the country code, for example US:MSFT (country code:ticker symbol). This information is available only for markets that are currently listed on the MSN Money Web site. In addition to the United States (US), MSN Money also provides information for markets in Australia (AU), Belgium (BE), Canada (CA), France (FR), Germany (DE), Italy (IT), Japan (JP), Netherlands (NL), Spain (ES), Sweden (SE), and the United Kingdom (UK). For more information, go to the MSN Money Web site.

   • Territory

     To select a record, click the Lookup button .

     The Territory field can be customized, so the values will vary. If you do not see the territory you want, ask your system administrator to add it to the Sales Territories area, which is in the Settings area.

   • Category

     Select an option from the list. This field can be customized, so the values will vary.

     The default values are Preferred Customer and Standard. Your organization might add other values.

     These values help determine how to set up territories so that your organization has roughly an equal number of highly rated accounts. The values might also reflect the priority of the account.

   • Relationship Type

     Select an option from the list. This field can be customized, so the values will vary.

     Your organization might set up different relationship roles The definitions of the business relationships between accounts, opportunities, and contacts. for different types of customers. This field is not required.

     If you do not see the relationship role you want, ask your system administrator to add it to the Relationship Roles area, which is in the Settings area.

   • Credit Limit

     This field is not used as part of the business logic in Microsoft Dynamics CRM; however, your organization might use it as part of a workflow process.

   • Credit Hold

     This field is not used as part of the business logic in Microsoft Dynamics CRM; however, your organization might use it as part of a workflow process.

   • Payment Terms

     This field is mapped to any orders that are created for the record.

   • Price List

     If your organization has price lists Groups of the specific prices that can be charged for each unit in the unit groups of products. Price lists are used to determine the pricing in a quote for a customer. A default price list can be added to a product. set up, you can click the Lookup button to search for and select the appropriate price list.

     This field is mapped to any orders that are created for the record.

5. Under Information, click Notes and Activities. In the Notes section, click Add a new note, and add the information that applies to your record.
6. In the Preferences section, enter information or observe any noted restrictions or requirements as needed:
   • Owner

     By default this is set to be the creator of the record. Click the Lookup button to search for other records.

   • Contact Methods
     • Preferred

       Select how this person wants to be contacted.

     • E-mail

       Selecting Allow allows all e-mail, including e-mails related to campaign activities, to be sent. Selecting Do Not Allow will disallow any e-mail to be sent to this address.

     • Bulk E-mail

       Selecting Allow will allow any e-mail as part of a bulk e-mail process, including bulk e-mails related to campaign activities, to be sent. Selecting Do Not Allow will disallow any bulk e-mail to be sent to this address.

     • Phone, Mail

       Users can see this information, but Microsoft Dynamics CRM does not use it to control initiating or receiving communications.

     • Fax

       Users can see this information.

   • Marketing Information
     • Originating Lead

       If this account is a converted lead, this field will automatically show the lead record. You can also enter the originating lead.

       To select a lead, click the Lookup button .

     • Send Marketing Materials

       If you select Send, marketing material corresponding to campaigns is sent to the respective addresses (e-mail, physical address) for the record. This includes general marketing mailers that might be sent on a regular basis that are not part of a targeted marketing campaign. If you select Do Not Send, marketing materials are not sent, nor can activities related to sending marketing materials be created for the record.

     • Last Date Included in Campaign

       Microsoft Dynamics CRM automatically sets the date for this field when any marketing communication is sent to the addresses for the record. You can also manually update this field and enter a date. This field is used as filter criteria in Marketing Automation. For example, the Anti-Spam Setting area of a Campaign form uses the date in this field to make sure that you do not send frequent mailers to a customer.

   • Service Preferences

     Select the customer's preferred time and day for service activities.

     Click the Lookup button in the Preferred Service, Preferred Facility/Equipment, or Preferred User box to search for the appropriate record.

     Click the Preferred Service, Preferred Facility/Equipment, or Preferred User box to search for the appropriate record.

7. Click Save or Save and Close.

   Resolve potential duplicate records.

   When you publish a duplicate-detection rule A rule that specifies criteria for identifying a record as a duplicate., a matchcode A code that is created for every record that a duplicate-detection rule might apply to, used as part of the process of detecting duplicates. is created for every record in the matching record type for that rule. Publishing occurs in the background as a system job.

   1. To open a record to make sure it is a potential duplicate, in the Potential duplicate records list, double-click the record.
      • If the duplicate-detection rule A rule that specifies criteria for identifying a record as a duplicate. identified potential duplicate records in other record types, review records from each record type listed.
   2. If your new or updated record is not a duplicate, to create the new record, click Save Record.

      - OR -

      If your new or updated record is a duplicate, to cancel your changes, click Cancel.

   Note

   Duplicate detection can take place only if duplicate detection is enabled in Duplicate Detection Settings and if at least one duplicate-detection rule A rule that specifies criteria for identifying a record as a duplicate. exists for the record type.More information: Avoiding Duplicate Records

   Tips

   • You can add more addresses to handle various locations for a given account or contact. To do this, under Common, click More Addresses, and then in the Records group, click Add New Address.
   • When the Look Up Records dialog box is open, if the record you need doesn't exist, click New, and create it.
   • If you create both accounts and subaccounts, and create relationships between them, then you can use the reporting features to get subtotals or total revenue reports for all the related accounts.