Create or edit an account

Can I do this task?

1. In the Navigation Pane, click Sales, and then click Accounts.
2. On the Actions toolbar, click New, or open the record that you want to edit.
3. On the General tab, enter information or observe any noted restrictions or requirements as needed:
   • Account Name

     You can use accent marks when you enter data, for example, in a customer's name. Your ability to sort and find information is not affected by these accent marks.

   • Account Number

     You must enter a number of 20 characters or less.

   • Parent Account

     If the account you are creating is 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., then you will want to set up a relationship to its parent account An account record associated with one or more other account records..

     To locate and select a parent account, click the Parent Account box. You can select a record from a filtered list in the Form Assistant pane, or you can click the Lookup button to search for other records. If you are creating a parent account, leave this field blank.

   • Primary Contact

     To locate and select a primary contact, click the Primary Contact box. You can select a record from a filtered list in the Form Assistant pane, or you can click Lookup to search for other records.

   • Relationship Type

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

     Your organization might set up relationship roles The definitions of the business relationships between accounts, opportunities, and contacts., to indicate the role of your customers as they relate to your business. This field is not required.

     If there are no relationship roles in the list or the relationship role you want is not listed, contact your system administrator and ask them to add the relationship role to the Relationship Roles area, which is located in the Settings area.

   • E-mail

     E-mail addresses must be valid. For example, someone@microsoft.com. Although this field is optional, including an e-mail address allows you to communicate with the account by using e-mail.

   • ZIP/Postal Code

     Enter a code of 20 characters or fewer. Although this field is optional, including a ZIP Code or postal code can provide basic geographical information about the account that you can use in other areas of the application, such as reports and workflows.

4. On the Details tab, observe any noted restrictions or requirements and enter all the information you have available in the following fields:
   • Territory

     You can select a record from a filtered list in the Form Assistant pane, or you can click Lookup to search for other records.

     This field can be customized, so the values will vary. If there are no territories in the list or the territory you want is not listed, contact your system administrator and ask them to add the territory to the Sales Territories area, which is located 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 to manage territories.

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

   • Industry

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

     If the account specifies an industry that is not in the list, you can work with your system administrator to get new industries added to the list. This field is used in various reports such as Account Overview.

     Another form that includes the industry field is the lead form. If your system administrator adds custom industries to the account form, he or she should also add them to the lead form to keep the two lists in synch.

   • Annual Revenue

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

     You can use commas and a decimal point, but 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 a code of 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 would be 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), Great Britain (GB), Italy (IT), Japan (JP), Netherlands (NL), Spain (ES), and Sweden (SE). For more information, go to the MSN Money Web site.

5. On the Administration tab, enter information or observe any noted restrictions or requirements as needed:
   • Owner

     This box is filled automatically with the name of the user who is creating the record. You can click the Lookup button to search for other records.

   • Originating Lead

     If this account was the result of converting a lead, then this field will automatically show the lead record. You can also enter the originating lead.

     To locate and select a lead, click the Originating Lead box. You can select a record from a filtered list in the Form Assistant pane, or you can click Lookup to search for a lead.

   • Credit Limit

     This field is not used as part of the business logic in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online; 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 Online; 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 set up, you can use Lookup to search for and select the appropriate price list.

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

   • Contact Methods
     • Preferred

       Select the option that best describes the preferred method of contact.

     • E-mail

       If you select Allow, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online allows all e-mail, including e-mails related to campaign activities, to be sent to the e-mail address associated with the record. However, if you select Do Not Allow, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online does not allow any e-mail to be sent to the e-mail address associated with the record.

     • Bulk E-mail

       If you select Allow, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online allows any e-mail as part of a bulk e-mail process, including bulk e-mails related to campaign activities, to be sent to the e-mail address associated with the record. However, if you select Do Not Allow, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online does not allow any bulk e-mail to be sent to the e-mail address associated with the record.

     • Phone

       The selected option simply provides information to anyone who views the record. This field is not used by Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to control initiating or receiving phone calls.

     • Fax

       The selected option simply provides information to anyone who views the record.

     • Mail

       The selected option simply provides information to anyone who views the record. This field is not used by Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to control initiating or receiving mail.

   • Marketing Information
     • Send Marketing Materials

       If you select Yes, 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 No, 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 Online 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 ensure that you do not send frequent mailers to a customer.

   • Service Preferences

     Select the customer's preferred time and day for appointments.

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

     You can select a record from a filtered list in the Form Assistant pane, or you can click Lookup to search for other records.

6. On the Notes tab, click Click here to enter a new note, and add the information that applies to your record.
7. Click Save or Save and Close.

   Resolve potential duplicate records.

   1. If the system detects that your record might be a potential duplicate, instead of saving the record, you'll see the Duplicates Detected dialog box.
   2. 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.
   3. 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.

   Notes

   • If you enter a duplicate record within a few minutes of entering the first record, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online will not detect the duplicate record. The matchcodes Codes created for every record that a duplicate-detection rule might apply to, used as part of the process of detecting duplicates. for new and updated records are created every five minutes, rather than as a record is created.
   • 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 Details, click More Addresses, and then on the Actions toolbar, click New Address.
   • When the Look Up Records dialog box is open, if the record you need doesn't exist, click New, and create the record.
   • 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.