Account Contact Relationship in Salesforce

Today, we are going to understand about Account Contact relationship in Salesforce

Generally, how is the account and a contact related to each other?

Multiple contact is associated to one account. This means that if I am doing business with a company then there can be multiple point of contact associated to that company. This is a direct relationship between account and contacts.

Direct relationship:- The relationship between account and its associated contacts is a direct relationship.

One Contact associated to multiple Accounts

Let’s understand the concept with help of example. There is an independent consultant, Andy and he is point of contact for multiple businesses. In that case, one contact is associated to associated to multiple accounts.

Indirect relationship:– Multiple accounts associated with the contact represent indirect relationships.

I hope now account contact relationship is clear to you.

Enable Contact to multiple Accounts

Go to Setup Enter “Account Settings” and Check the checkbox beside “Allow users to relate a contact to multiple accounts”. 

Under Contact to multiple Account Settings we have following option:

When users try to delete an account that has direct contacts that are related to other accounts, choose the either one of the option below.

i) Block users from deleting the account.

ii) Allow users to delete the account, and automatically delete all direct contacts even if they are related to other accounts.

When users replace the primary account on a contact record, choose the below either one of the option

i) Save the relationship between the contact and the previous primary account as an indirect relationship.

ii) Delete the relationship between the contact and the previous primary account.

Now go to Object Manager -> Account -> Page Layout -> Select the page layout in which you want to make change ->Add Related Contacts to the related list -> Save

Go to any account record -> Go to related.

You will see Related Contacts in the related List

So, as you see in the related contact, all the direct contacts of the account will automatically display here

Now Click on Add Relationship Button.

On the next screen, select the Contact that you wish to associate with this Account and their Role, and then click on Save.

Account Contact Relationship Object

The Account Contact Relationship (AccountContactRelation) is a Standard object is like a junction object between Account and Contact. It enables the creation of many-to-many relationships between account and contact. Account Contact Relationship is having lookup to  Account and contact instead of master-detail relationships.

Account and Account Hierarchy

Next topic is Account Hierarchy. Go to an Account record and there you will see a field called parent account. What is that field?

Let’s consider Wal-Mart. It will have child account like Wal-Mart Supercenter, Wal-Mart discount store, Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, Wal-Mart Express know all these subsidiaries will form the child account. So, the account hierarchy is used to defining the account structure.

Also note that getting access to the parent account will not grant access to the child’s account by default. For providing access, you need to use role hierarchy or security

settings but not account hierarchy.

Summary

• The parent account hierarchy is not supported for person accounts
• There is a limitation of displaying up to 500 accounts
• If the user displaying the hierarchy doesn’t have access to the account data, the additional columns displayed to the right of the account name won’t be displayed
• A Custom Report Type will be needed to report on hierarchies more than one level deep
• One account can’t have multiple direct parents