Chapter 5: Working with Accounts

In a typical B2B (Business to Business) scenario an account is an organization, such as a company or a department in a company, with which your organization doing or planning to do business. In the account record you can store account information, including address, number of employees, annual revenue, and other details.

You can associate an account with contacts (persons) within the organization with whom you are communicating till the sales is happened. You can also associate potentials or business opportunities during pre-sales. In case your organization is providing customer support & service after sales (post-sales), you can associate customer-specific cases with the account.

The Accounts home page contains,

• Accounts List
• Account Reports
• Tools, such as Import, Export, mass transfer, and delete accounts
• Quick Create pane
• Search
• Alphabetical Search
• Custom Views
• Change Owner
• Delete
• Page Navigation

You can perform the following operations in the Accounts module:

• Navigate accounts
• Search accounts (Alphabetical or advanced options)
• Create list views
• Create accounts (Form filling, quick create, or duplicate options)
• Import accounts (from external sources)
• Associate account with other records
• Export accounts to spreadsheets
• Change account owner (individually or in bulk)
• Print account details
• View reports
• Delete accounts (individually or in bulk)
• Customize accounts

Navigating Accounts

(Access Privilege: Read permissions)

You can navigate accounts according to the type of account.

To navigate accounts

1. Click the Accounts tab.
2. In the Accounts Home page, under the Account List section, select one of the views from Select View drop-down list to display the list of accounts according to the type of the account (For example, Prospect, Investor, Reseller, and others).  
3.  In the Account List section, click the Start, Previous, Next, or End links to access the respective list of accounts. 

Searching Accounts

(Access Privilege: Read permission)

You can search the contacts alphabetically or filling the required information in Search box.

To search accounts

1. Click the Accounts tab.
2. In the Accounts Home page, under the Account Search section, do one of the following:
   • Specify the search criteria in Search box and click the Go button. Or
   • Select one of the alphabetical search links.
3. In the Contact List page, list of accounts are displayed as per search criteria.

Creating List Views

(Access Privilege: Read/Write permissions)

In the Account List you can create/modify/delete the custom views, sort columns in the list view (ascending/descending order), search the records available in the current list view. In addition, you can modify some of the columns in standard list views. By default, the following standard list views are available in the Accounts module:

• Standard Views
  • All Accounts
  • My Accounts
  • New This Week
  • New Last Week
• Recent Views
  • Recently Created Accounts: Accounts created during 24 hours.
  • Recently Modified Accounts: Accounts modified during 24 hours.
  • Recently Viewed Accounts: Accounts viewed during 24 hours.

Note: User created list views are displayed under User Created Views category in View drop-down list.

To create custom views

1. Click the Accounts tab.
2. In the Accounts Home page, under Account List section, click the Create View link.
   Note: Under Account List section some of the standard list views are displayed. You can only rearrange the order of columns and more columns.
3. In the Create New View page, do the following:
   • In the View Information section, specify name of the custom view in the View Name (mandatory) field. The custom view name appears in the View drop-down list. You can also set the custom view as a default list view by selecting the Set as Default View check box.
   • In the Specify Criteria section, specify the filter criteria. For more details refer to the Specifying List View Criteria section.
   • In the Choose Columns section, select the columns to be displayed in the List View. For more details refer to the Selecting List View Columns section.
   • In the Accessibility Details section, select the users to whom custom list view has to be enabled. For more details refer to the Enabling View Access section.
4. Click Save. The custom list view is displayed in the View drop-down list.

Creating Accounts

(Access Privilege: Read/Write permissions)

In Zoho CRM, you can create accounts by:

• Entering data in account details form
• Duplicating the account with a few changes from the existing account details
• Using the New Account, a quick create component present in left hand-side of the Accounts Home page
• Importing accounts from other Contact Management and CRM applications
• Synchronizing Microsoft Outlook contacts with Zoho CRM (Special case: An account will be created in Zoho CRM while Company Name field is specified in the Microsoft Outlook)
• Converting leads to accounts

Note: Some of the standard fields listed below may not be visible/editable depending on your organization business process and field-level security settings. In case your organization added/modified fields please contact your System Administrator for more details about usage of the other fields.

List of Standard Account-related Fields

In the Account: Edit form, you need to specify the account-related information. The following table provides descriptions of the various standard fields in the form.

Notes: By default, the person who creates the account owns the account. If you want to assign the account to a different user, in account creation form, select the user name from Assigned To field. In addition, the account status is marked with a default account status, as per your organization's sales process.

To create accounts individually

1. Click the New Account link.
2. In the Account: page, specify the account details.
   
   

   Note: Account Name is a mandatory field. Refer to the List of Standard Account-related Fields section for more details.

3. Click Save. Account details are displayed in Account: <Account Name> page where you can perform the additional operations. Refer to the Associating Accounts with Other Records section for more details.

To create accounts instantly

1. Click the Accounts tab.
2. In left hand-side under the New Account section, enter the mandatory details, such as Company name.
3. Click Save. Account details are displayed in Account: <Account Name> page where you can update additional details or perform the additional operations.

To create duplicate accounts

1. Click the Accounts tab.
2. In Account List view page, select the account to be duplicated.
3. In Account: <Account Name> page, click the Duplicate button.
4. In Edit: <Account Name> page, modify some of the account details.
5. Click Save. Account details are displayed in Account: <Account Name> page where you can perform the additional operations.

Importing Accounts

(Access Privilege: Data Import permission)

You can import your accounts from other legacy Business applications to Zoho CRM to have a better-centralized database.

To import accounts

1. Click the Accounts tab.
2. In the Accounts: Home page under Account Tools section, click the Import My Accounts or Import My Organization Accounts button.
   
   

   Note: Import link is displayed only if you have privilege to use Import feature. Please contact your administrator in case these links are disabled.

3. In the Specify Import File: page, browse the accounts-related import file (CSV/XLS format) and then click the Next button.
4. In the Fields Mapping page, map the CSV/XLS column header with account fields in Zoho CRM.
5. Click the Import button. It will take a few seconds to complete the importation.
6. In the Accounts: Home page, imported accounts are displayed under the Accounts List section. You can continue the importation further or complete the operation.

Associating Account with Other Records

(Access Privilege: Read/Write permissions)

You can create a 360 degrees view of the account to display all the associated details, such as contacts, potentials, trouble tickets, activities, attachments, and notes in a single view.

To associate account with other records

1. In the Account: <Account Name> page, update the following details:
   • Potentials: To add potentials to the account
   • Contacts: To add contacts to the account
   • Open Activities: To add tasks and events (meetings, and calls) to the account.
   • Closed Activities: To display the closed activities
   • Products: To add products to the account.
   • Quotes: To add quotes to the account.
   • Sales Orders: To add sales orders to the account.
   • Invoices: To add invoices to the account.
   • Attachments & Notes: To attach documents and notes to the account.
   • Member Accounts: To add other divisons or subsidiaries to the parent account.
2. After updating the associated records, you can move to the next record.

Exporting Accounts

(Access Privilege: Data Export permission)

Occasionally it is very useful to export the accounts from Zoho CRM to Spreadsheet programs, such as Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice, and others for further data analysis.

To export contacts to external sources

1. Click the Accounts tab.
2. In the Accounts: Home page under Account Tools section, click the Export All Accounts button.
3. In the File Download pop-up dialog, Click Save to save the Accounts files in CSV/XLS file format.

Changing Account Owner

(Access Privilege: Owner change permission)

When the prospecting is in progress, occasionally it may be very useful to change the owner of some of the accounts in a single step. You can change the owner of an individual account or a group of accounts.

To change owner of accounts individually

1. Click the Accounts tab.
2. In the Accounts: Home page, select the contact.
3. In the Account: <Account Name> page, click the Edit button.
4. In the Account: <Account Name> page, change the account owner from the Account Owner lookup field.
5. Click Save to update the account owner.

To change owner of accounts in bulk

1. Click the Accounts tab.
2. In the Account: Home page, go to the Account List section and select the check boxes corresponding to the accounts. You can also select all the accounts.
3. Click the Change Owner button.
4. In the Accounts: Change Owner page, select the user from the Select New Owner pick list and click the Update Owner button to change the owner of the accounts permanently.
   
   

   Warning: Accounts ownership will be changed to another user, irrespective of its existing owner. Use this operation carefully, otherwise accounts belonging to different users will be changed to new user. To overcome this problem, first you may search the accounts with a required owner name then change the owner in bulk.

Printing Account Details

(Access Privilege: Read permission)

You can view a printable form and print the account details using browser’s Print function.

To print account details

1. Click the Accounts tab.
2. In the Accounts: Home page under the Account List section, select the required account.
3. In the Account: <Account Name> page, click the Print Preview button.
4. In the Account: <Account Name>, page, click the Print Page button to print the document.

Viewing Reports

(Access Privilege: Read/Write permissions)

You can directly access some of the standard reports pertaining to accounts from the Account Reports section. By default, the following reports are displayed under accounts module:

• Contact Mailing List
• Key Accounts
• Accounts by Industry

To view account reports 

1. Click the Accounts tab.
2. In the Accounts: Home page, go to the Account Reports section.
3. Click the required Report link. The Report is displayed in Reports page which can be further customized as per your requirements.

For more details about reports customization refer to Chapter <>: Working with Reports

Deleting Accounts

(Access Privilege: Read/Write/Delete permissions)

Rarely, you may need to remove some of the unnecessary accounts (customers) from the Zoho CRM database to have a better control over the existing accounts.

You can delete accounts that are not useful, individually or in bulk. All the deleted accounts are stored in Recycle bin. If required you can restore the accounts. But if you delete the records from Recycle Bin your records will be deleted permanently, hence use this option carefully.

While deleting the accounts, the related activities, notes, and attachments are also deleted.

Warning: The deleted accounts are temporarily stored in Recycle Bin. If required you can restore the deleted accounts again. But if you delete accounts from Recycle Bin, you cannot restore again.

To delete accounts individually

1. Click the Accounts tab.
2. In the Accounts: Home page, select the account.
3. In the Account: <Account Name> page, click Delete.
4. In the Confirmation dialog, click OK to delete the account permanently.

To delete accounts in bulk

1. Click the Accounts tab.
2. In the Accounts: Home page under the Account List section, select the check boxes corresponding to the accounts to be removed.
3. Click the Delete button.
4. In the Confirmation dialog, click OK to delete the selected accounts permanently.

Customizing Accounts

(Access Privilege: Customize ZohoCRM.com permission)

Customization of the accounts module includes, renaming the tab name, modifying the pick list values in standard fields, adding new custom fields, modifying accounts page layout, and show/hide the related list views according to your Account management process requirements.

For more details, refer to Chapter 24: Customizing Zoho CRM

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is B2B?

Ans: Business-to-business (B2B) is a business transaction between two or more companies. In B2B scenario the sales cycle involves a complex selling process and multiple purchasing influencers.

2. Can I setup parent-child relationship between accounts?

Ans: In the Zoho CRM solution you can setup parent-child relationship between various accounts by selecting the required account from Parent Account lookup field. This is very useful for setting up main organization and various departments within an organization.