Managing accounts

An account is an organisation your sales team follows: a prospect, a customer, a supplier, a partner or a public body. This article explains how to find an account, create it, complete it, hand it to another owner, archive or delete it, and what its record shows. It is intended for sales representatives, their managers and CRM administrators.

Before you start #

• The CRM module must be enabled for your workspace and open to you (see Enabling and administering the CRM module).
• Permissions in the role matrix, CRM menu: “CRM accounts — View” to see the list and the records, “CRM accounts — Create” for the New account button, “CRM accounts — Edit” to edit, reassign, archive and upload documents, “CRM accounts — Delete” to delete and merge. The Access level is enough.
• Each permission applies within a scope: Mine (the accounts you own), My team (yours and those of your direct reports) or All. It is set per role in the CRM scopes card (see CRM settings). By default, a Sales representative reads every account but edits only their own.

Finding an account #

Open CRM › Accounts. The list shows the organisations the CRM follows, within your scope, with the total number of accounts and page navigation at the bottom.

• Search: type a name, a legal identifier or a city, then confirm.
• Filters: account type, status, country, owner (Me, No owner or a person), industry, tag, headcount, revenue and Linked to… (the accounts linked to an account you choose).
• Status: with no choice, the list only shows active accounts. Choose Archived or Active and archived to find an archived account.
• Sort by: name, recently updated or recently created accounts, owner.
• Columns: tick the columns to display (owner, types, country, city, industry, headcount, revenue, tags, status, date updated). Your choice is remembered in this browser.

The filters are written into the page address: you can bookmark it or share it with a colleague, who will see the same list within their own scope.

With the “CRM import and export — View” permission, the CSV and Excel buttons export the filtered list, with the columns of your choice (see Importing, exporting and using the API).

Creating an account #

1. In CRM › Accounts, click New account.
2. Enter the Legal name, the only required field.
3. Tick one or more Account types. With no type ticked, the account is created as a prospect.
4. Choose the Country and, if you know it, the Head office city.
5. Under Legal identifiers, click Add an identifier, choose its type and enter its value. The types offered depend on the country, so choose the country first. The Other identifier type is always available. When the value does not match the type’s format, the screen says so and gives an example.
6. Fill in the Website, Phone and Email if needed.
7. The Owner is you by default. You can choose someone else if your scope lets you edit their accounts.
8. To attach the account to a group, search for its Parent company (at least two characters).
9. If some custom fields are required for accounts, fill them in under Required fields.
10. Click Create the account. The new account’s record opens.

Industry, headcount, revenue, tags, notes, full addresses and the other custom fields are filled in afterwards, with Edit.

When similar records exist #

Before creating, Illizeo compares what you entered with the existing organisations. If it finds similar ones, the window shows “Similar records already exist.”, with the reason for each match: same legal identifier, very similar name, same domain (website or email) or same phone number.

• Open the existing one opens the account that is already there: this is usually the right move.
• Open an account on this organisation appears for an organisation that another Illizeo module uses, but that the CRM does not follow yet: the account opens on it, without creating a second organisation.
• A record outside your scope is never named: a message invites you to contact its owner.
• Back to the form lets you correct your entry; Create anyway creates the account regardless.
• When an organisation already has the same legal identifier, of the same type and country, Create anyway is not offered: open the existing record or, if you cannot see it, ask its owner.

The account record #

The top of the record shows the legal name, the status, the owner and the account types, then the buttons your permissions allow: Edit, Reassign, Archive (or Reactivate), Merge with… and Delete.

• Overview: identity (legal name, trading name, website, phone, email), legal identifiers, addresses (the main one is marked), group (parent company and subsidiaries), CRM data (industry, headcount, revenue, tags, notes) and custom fields. A subsidiary outside your scope is not named: the record only says how many are not visible.
• Contacts, Opportunities, Quotes and Activities: each one appears if you have the permission to view that area (see Managing contacts, Tracking opportunities in the pipeline, The catalogue and quotes and Activities and “My activities”).
• Links, Projects, Memberships, Events and Pre-sales: the organisation’s links with others, its projects, its club memberships, its contacts’ events and the time spent on pre-sales. Projects, Memberships and Events only appear with the permission to view them.
• Timeline: the account’s history, most recent first.
• Documents: the account’s attachments.

Editing an account #

1. On the record, click Edit.
2. In Edit the account, correct the identity, the types, the parent company (Change button), the contact details and the legal identifiers.
3. Under Addresses, click Add an address, choose its type (Head office, Billing, Delivery or Site), enter the street, postcode, city and country, and tick Main for the main address. The identifier types offered follow the country of the main address.
4. Fill in the Industry, Headcount, Revenue, Tags, Notes and Custom fields.
5. Click Save.

An organisation cannot have one of its own subsidiaries as its parent company: saving is then refused.

Reassigning one or more accounts #

1. On the record, click Reassign.
2. Choose the New owner, then click Reassign.

The new owner is notified once, by the bell and by email; you are never notified about an account you assign to yourself. The list only offers active people who have the permission to view CRM accounts and are within your scope.

To reassign several accounts at once, you need the My team or All scope for editing accounts. Tick boxes then appear in the list: select the accounts (or the whole page), then click Reassign in the banner. It is all or nothing: if one of the accounts is outside your scope, none is reassigned. The final message says how many accounts changed hands and how many already belonged to that person.

Archiving or deleting an account #

Archive removes the account from the lists without erasing anything; Reactivate brings it back. Archiving only affects the CRM account: the organisation stays as it is for other modules.

Delete asks for confirmation. The account’s notes, custom fields, tags, attachments and links with other organisations go with it; its contacts remain, but their attachment to this account is removed. The organisation itself is deleted, unless another module uses it: the message tells you which.

An account with a sales history (activities, opportunities, quotes, projects or club memberships) cannot be deleted. The “This account cannot be deleted” window shows what holds it and offers to Archive it.

Documents #

1. Open the record’s Documents tab.
2. Click Upload a file and choose the file: 20 MB at most, in PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenDocument (text or spreadsheet), CSV, plain text, PNG or JPEG format.

Each attachment shows its size, who uploaded it and when. The download icon opens it; the bin icon removes it, after confirmation. Uploading and removing require the permission to edit the account; viewing it is enough to download.

The timeline #

The Timeline tab traces the account’s life: creation, changes, changes of owner and status, attachments, contacts attached or detached, merges, the activities, opportunities and quotes you can read, and the emails logged with its contacts. Filter by Event type to see only one kind.

The content of notes never appears there: only the fact that they changed is recorded.

Good to know #

• An account’s identity (legal name, legal identifiers, addresses, contact details) is that of its organisation, which other Illizeo modules may share. The Active or Archived status belongs to the CRM account alone.
• A record outside your read scope is shown as non-existent: “This account does not exist, or it is outside your scope.”
• The New account window only asks for the required custom fields; the others are filled in afterwards, with Edit.
• If your workspace submits the creation or change of some records for validation, the message “Sent for validation: nothing is written until a person approves it.” appears, with View the request: the account is only created or changed after the decision.
• Lists (account types, industries), custom fields and tags are set in Settings › CRM › CRM settings (see CRM settings).
• Two duplicate accounts are brought together with Merge with… (see Finding duplicates and merging records).

FAQ #

I cannot see the Reassign button in the list. #

Bulk reassignment requires the My team or All scope for editing accounts. With the Mine scope, reassign accounts one by one from their record, or ask your administrator for a wider scope.

An account has disappeared from the list. #

It may be archived: choose Active and archived in the status filter. If it still does not appear, it may have changed owner and left your scope, or been absorbed by a merge.