Contacts to Multiple Accounts

When you use Contacts to Multiple Accounts, each contact still requires a primary account (the account in the Account Name field). The contact and its primary account have a direct relationship. But you can add other accounts to the contact. These secondary account-contact relationships are indirect.

Contacts to Multiple Accounts works with person accounts. That means a person account can be either a related contact on a business account or a related account on a contact. A person account can also be related to another person account as either a related contact or related account. When you relate a person account to an account or contact, the relationship is always indirect. That’s because person accounts don’t have primary accounts, so person accounts can’t be directly related to business accounts. And person accounts can't be primary accounts for contacts, so person accounts can't be directly related to contacts. When Contacts to Multiple Accounts is enabled, an Account Contact Relationship record is created for each contact with a primary account, and for each person account.

Contacts to Multiple Accounts can't be enabled with the Metadata API.

Tip We recommend turning on this feature outside of regular business hours to ease setup if your org has a large number of contacts.

Example John Smith is president of Acme Corporations, and Acme is the account on his contact record. But John is also involved with the nonprofit media organization Greendot Media. By adding Greendot Media as a related account on John’s contact record, you can track this other relationship. John is considered a direct contact to Acme because Acme is the account on his contact record. And he’s considered an indirect contact to Greendot Media and any other accounts that he becomes related to. John also appears on the Related Contacts related list for Greendot Media and any other accounts that he’s indirectly related to.