Overview

When attempting to change an account type from Former Customer to Employee in Salesforce, the change may not save successfully. This typically occurs when the account has existing policy data that prevents the type change from being processed.

Why this happens

The system prevents account type changes when there are existing policy records associated with the account, even if those policies have zero values or are inactive. Any non-null values in policy fields will block the account type change.

Process

There are three approaches to resolve this issue, depending on your specific needs and data integrity requirements. Creating a new employee account (Option 1) is the recommended approach as it:

• Maintains data integrity by preserving customer history.

• Simplifies future reporting by keeping customer and employee data separate.

• Prevents confusion about access permissions and record visibility.

• Avoids potential issues with automated workflows that depend on account type.

Option 1: Create a new employee account (recommended)

This approach maintains data integrity by keeping the customer history separate from the employee record.

1. Create a new account record for the employee.

2. Set the account type to Employee.

3. Transfer any relevant employee-specific information to the new account.

4. Keep the original account as Former Customer to preserve historical data.

Option 2: Remove policy data and change type

This approach clears the blocking policy data to allow the type change.

1. Navigate to the account record.

2. Locate all policy-related fields that contain values (including zero values).

3. Delete or clear all values in these policy fields.

4. Save the record.

5. Change the account type from Former Customer to Employee.

6. Save the record again.

Option 3: Temporary type change workaround

This approach uses an intermediate step to successfully change the account type.

1. First, change the account type to Customer.

2. Save the record.

3. Move any existing policies to the appropriate account.

4. Change the account type from Customer to Employee.

5. Save the record.

Considerations

Before implementing any of these solutions, consider:

• Whether you need to preserve the historical customer data for reporting purposes.

• How the change will affect user permissions and record visibility.

• Whether any automated processes or workflows depend on the current account structure.

• The impact on existing document attachments and related records.