Business account to Person account conversion
Key Takeaway
Converting a business account to a person account means exporting the records, manually altering some data, and importing them back. Each business account must first have exactly one contact, with the same record owner and currency values, and with its hierarchy links cleared.
A person account is a single record made of one account and one contact. Turning an existing business account and its contact into a person account is a manual process with strict conditions. Conversion also deletes data in some fields unless you plan ahead to keep it.
How conversion works
There is no easy way to convert a business account to a person account. The process has three steps:
- Export a file with the accounts and contacts you want to convert.
- Manually alter some of the data in the file.
- Import the file back into Salesforce.
Salesforce strongly recommends testing the conversion in a sandbox before you import the altered data into production.
Record type changes follow a related rule. You can change an account's record type from one business account record type to another, or from one person account record type to another. Changing an account's record type from a business account to a person account, or the reverse, requires using the API.