How do I Convert Contacts to Accounts?

Summary

The following article explains how to convert Contacts to Accounts, either individually or en masse.

More Information

Your system may have been set up to use contact name and addresses rather than Sales Ledger customer accounts. This allowed you to store names, addresses and telephone numbers for customers, but update a single Sales Ledger account for Unit Sales transactions and a single Sales Ledger account for Workshop transactions.

This method has been superseded in the current version of the software and all customer details are now stored as Sales Ledger accounts, since this allows not only mobile numbers and e-mail addresses to be held, but also allows you to track individual customer transactions far more easily. This improves your marketing possibilities and allows you to profile your customers in a far more comprehensive fashion. Contact information does not allow this.

It is possible to convert individual contacts, or all contacts to accounts. This creates an individual Sales Ledger account for each of the contacts specified, and deletes the contact records once converted.

Conversion Process

Go to " Workshop Maintenance Options Add or Edit Contacts".

All Contacts to Accounts

• Press <F2> to list all your contacts.
• Press <Alt+F7> to convert all the contacts listed to accounts.

Note: Remember that this will remove all contacts from the system as they are converted to accounts.

Individual Contact to an Account

• In the "Search on:" field, type the name of the contact you want to convert.
• Once you have found the contact, highlight it and then <F7> to convert the highlighted contact to an account.
• At the window that opens up, pressing <F2> will convert the contact to a new account.
• As before, this will remove this contact from the contacts file.