What is a Person Account?
In simple terms a Person Account is a Record type of Account Object.
Person Account is a combination of Account and Contact Object which are combined and shown as Person Account record.
Person Account stores information of an Individual combining certain Account and Contact fields in a single record.
- In Person Accounts we have Last name and First name rather than Account Name
- Person Accounts also have additional information like Birthdays, Mobile etc….
Person Accounts give a single object experience, when a record is created in Person Account it actually creates an Account and Contact records and exposes them as a single record.
Person Account have a separate Object in Salesforce Object Manager where in we can customize the Page layouts, Compact Layouts, Record Types and also have Flow Triggers.
To create custom fields on Person Account, we have to create the fields in contact object which can be seen on Person Accounts. These custom fields created on contact object are available on Person Accounts with an extension __pc.
Once Person Accounts are enabled in an Org, we cannot disable them.
Person account data model (image courtesy – www.salesforce.com)
What is an Individual Account?
Individual Account is used as a combination of Account and Contact Objects.
Individual record type is used when a client is a person.
When an Individual Account is created an Account and a Contact record are created. The Account records the Contact ID in the Primary contact field to record the relationship between them however an Individual ID is also added to Account and Contact that helps to refer with a single ID.
Individual records appear as a single record except for some situations like: In global search results, it can appear as a duplicate of the Account and Contact. At times we need to look them as Account only context or a Contact only context.
In Individual Model, required fields are created only on Account Object.
Individual Account Data Model (image courtesy – www.salesforce.com)
Considerations for Moving from Individual Account to Person Accounts
One should review the following to move from Individual Model to Person Accounts
- Triggers, flows, and workflow rules
- Components
- Reports
- Sharing—Once Person Accounts are enabled Organization-Wide Defaults (OWD) sharing are limited to either Controlled by Parent on Contact or Private on Account and Contact.
- Business processes—If org includes business accounts, contacts, and person accounts, consider whether you need to write separate business processes or workflows.
- Integration—Integrations between Salesforce and third-party systems via the API use the Account object to access person accounts. You can query and update the Contact object via the API, but person accounts are created with the Account object.
- AppExchange packages—Check whether your third-party applications support Person Accounts.
