Account Management
The Account is one of the objects in Microsoft CRM to which most other objects are attached or parented. In Microsoft CRM, it represents a company with which the business unit has a relationship. Information included in an account is all relevant contact information, company information, category, relationship type, and address information.
Account management is one of the crucial concepts of CRM because an organization wants to see all the activities they are having, or have had, with another company. It is at the account level that all of these activities come together.
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Definition of Terms
Account: A company with which a business unit has a relationship.
Classes
The following table describes the classes of the account management objects.
| Class | Description |
| CRMAccount | Methods to manage accounts |
| CRMCustomerAddress | Methods to manage additional addresses
(This class is needed if you want to store more than two addresses for an account.) |
Details
The Account object can be a parent to virtually any other object, including another account. Both accounts and contacts are part of managing a customer and are related to each other in the following ways:
- An account can be a stand-alone object.
- An account can have only one account as its parent.
- Accounts can have multiple child accounts.
- Accounts can have multiple child contacts.
The basic operations that you can perform on an account include Create, Delete, Read, Update, Delete, Assign, and Share.
For more general information, see Actions on Objects.
Tips
How To Create, Update, and Retrieve Address Information for Accounts and Contacts
For more information about Contact Management tips, see the Tips section within the Contact Management section.