Joel,
This bizarre and potentially confusing design quirk that BCM / Office
Accounting presents an end user is something I wrestled with initially myself.
I have all the empathy in the world for your post to start this thread.
Looking at strictly the "Contact-management" function of BCM, the Account
Record is encouraged by MS to be used as an "all-in-one" repository to join
various Business Contacts into a "super-contact" record whereby all the
linked contact history conveniently rolls up into the one central Account
record location. Life is good so far. (as long as you don't need to link a
Business Contact to more than 1 Account Record!!!) The above is what I
personally think of and refer to as the "Super Business Contact" function of
the Account record.
Now comes the second tricky part: This second part I personally think of and
refer to as the "Accounting function" of the Account record. The BCM Account
record is the only current item through which it is possible for BCM to share
a link to Office Accounting (and ONLY to Customers, not Vendors). This
certainly seems logical enough on the receivables side of things. However,
if your particular business sales activity (like mine) involves a Business-to-
Person process rather than a Business-to-Business, your integration with
Office Accounting is potentially limited and confusing to work around. My
consulting service sales opportunities are always linked to a single person
using an individual Business Contact record (because MS documents and
educates us that Business Contact records are for Individuals... and "Trixs
are for Kids!").
Once my individual sales opportunity closes, I then had to evolve the
opportunity by creating an additional Account record to link the individual
Business Contact and opportunity to in order for my sale to have any relevant
connection to Office Accounting. Although this now linked Account record
shares the same title of "Account Record," this newly created Account record
is NOT for the same functional purpose of "super-business-contact-linked-by-
ORGANIZATION" relationship I mentioned above. My closed opportunity linked
Account record has NOTHING to do with a company or an organization. This
Account record relates to a PERSON not an ORGANIZATION. Confused yet? Well
I sure was for a long while until I stopped blindly following the MS
documentation and started logically thinking for myself.
I believe the problem lies in the semi-contradictory manner of how MS
documents the intended purpose for the Account record as an organization
related data entity. My own personal solution was to mentally purge from my
head the oft stated idea by MS that the Account record be a named company or
organization entity (The Super Business Contact Function). This shift in my
thinking allowed me to open up to flexibly understanding and adapting the
Accounting function. I now just use the BCM Account Record as appropriate
for either a single person AND/OR for an organization. The common purpose of
use for me is that the Account record be named for either the person or the
organization that is ultimately going to buy something from me. If you do
not choose to link BCM to the use of Office Accounting, this confusion does
not exist. Understanding and use of the "super-business-contact" function
will then suit the Account record just fine as a stand alone convenience.
The problem lies inherent in the fact that BCM has 1 separate and distinct
functional data purpose for the Account record which can be separate and
different from Office Accounting's purpose. It seems almost as if the
Accounting link to the BCM Account record was an after thought by MS quickly
put together and not thoroughly thought out completely! They can seem
contradictory depending upon how you look at and choose to use the BCM
Account record.
If I were King of the BCM design world I would consider rectifying this via
either more well thought out documentation and tutorials about the existing
design reality AND, in a future release, I would consider creating a separate
"Company" record from the Account record that would allow equal Account
linking status and function for an organization in contrast and compliment to
the separate Business Contact record for individuals. This could also enable
sub-company linking for divisions or various organization branch locations,
etc. Another design solution would be to enable Office Accounting to connect
its Customer record also to an individual BCM Business Contact in addition to
just the BCM Account record. Another nicety would add additional Accounting
to BCM item links beyond just the Office Accounting Customer record. Many of
my Business Contacts in BCM are Vendors in Office Accounting that I regularly
communicate and transact payables with. Having a vendor payables to business
contact link would be great. There is currently no way to link these 2 in
Office 2007.
Wow! Is this post long enough yet?!!
A final comment: BCM linkage to Office Accounting is not yet "seamless" and
my lengthy commentary here is intended as honest, real-world, end-user
feedback for consideration by whomever makes the design decisions for BCM. I
would encourage as much real world input as possible from folks who are NOT
just programming techs but rather, they are average Joe users like myself
that simply want a well designed, stable, and reasonably simple, yet robust
tool for common everyday usage. There are some glaring BCM omissions in
existance that really need to be more thoroughly thought out before next
release in order to make this Office combo a truly terrific rather than a
sometimes frustrating or confusing experience for its target market.
Best regards,
-THP
Problem: MS Accounting only integrates to Business Contact Manager under
"Accounts". "Accounts" don’t sync to a PDA.
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