SugarCRM® For Dummies®

Chapter 4. Working with Accounts, Contacts, and Leads

In This Chapter

• Understanding Leads, Contacts, and Accounts

• Creating an Accounts record

• Creating a Contacts record

• Creating a Leads record

• Converting a lead to a contact

• Updating contact information

• Removing records from Sugar

• Dealing with duplicate records

• Exporting data

A database is only as good as the records it contains. In SugarCRM, adding, deleting, and editing the records in your database is easy. In this chapter, I show you how to do all three of these tasks to maintain an organized, working database. Because your business—and your database—expands, I show you how to link Contact records to Account records, as well as promote Leads to Contacts. For the overly zealous members in the audience, I show you how to get rid of any duplicates—just in case you manage to get the same record in there twice. And, if you change your mind about how records are added, I show you how to update all the information with the click of a button.

Having a Record Is a Good Thing

In this chapter, I show you how to add Accounts, Contacts, and Leads records. Before you can add any of these new records, you need to know the differences among them.

An Accounts record is basically a company. Generally, your business does business with other businesses — unless of course you mind your business and don't do business with anyone else!

A Contacts record is a person. You'll probably find that most of your Contacts work at a company, so you might want to associate ...