When to use contacts versus sub-customers

There are going to be times when you're working with a client to get through their customer-related requirements and things are a little confusing. Some companies, for lots of different reasons, have a very different idea of who they call their customers versus those customers' contacts.

In NetSuite, it's very straightforward—a contact is someone you want to always be associated with a single lead, prospect, or customer record. Contacts can be set up with access to the Customer Center if that's in play, and they can have other custom properties associated with them. For instance, I've created customizations for clients where we added new checkbox fields to contacts, and then used those to fine-tune which contacts received which email notifications coming from the system.

Sub-customers, on the other hand, are also customer records in NetSuite, so they have the same properties and actions as the parent customer...