Accounts in REDA

Every company and person you do business with in REDA — a tenant, a buyer, a property owner, a vendor, an HOA, or one of your own company entities — is anchored to an Account. Unlike inquiries and deals, which are REDA's own records, the Account is the ordinary Salesforce object that ships with the platform: there is no separate "REDA Account". This article explains why REDA uses the standard Account, the four account record types and what each is for, where an account comes from when a conversion creates one you didn't type in, and which REDA record holds which party. No prior REDA experience is assumed — every term is defined as we reach it.

Why REDA uses a standard Account

REDA replaces several standard Salesforce objects with its own: prospects live on the Inquiry instead of the Lead, deals on the REDA Opportunity, service work on the Service Request, and marketing campaigns on the Promotion. The companies-and-people layer, though, stays standard. The Account (a business or party) and the Contact (a person) are the same objects every Salesforce org has, and everything REDA-specific points at them.

This matters in practice: every REDA deal references an Account, and when you convert an inquiry the only three records the conversion is allowed to create are an Account, a Contact, and the deal itself. So the Account is the hub the whole customer relationship hangs off — the deal, the people, the payments, and the reporting all trace back to it.

The four account record types

A record type decides which flavor of account you're looking at — its purpose, its layout, and which lookups can point to it. REDA ships exactly four, all active:

Think of the split as "who is this to us?" — a Client is someone the business serves, a Vendor is someone the business pays for work, an Internal Entity is one of your own legal entities, and a Lease account is a tenant's account created for you during a leasing conversion.

Council / HOA accounts

An account can be flagged as a community body with the Council/ HOA checkbox. When this is checked on a property's parent strata or HOA account, it switches on REDA's council and community features for that community — for example, it is what lets a person on a deal be given a Council Role (see Contact Roles).

The flag is deliberately restricted. It can only be turned on for an Internal Entity account whose Internal Entity Type is Company. Try to check it anywhere else and REDA stops you:

Internal Entity accounts also require you to pick an Internal Entity Type (Company, Employee, Team, or a blank placeholder). Leave it empty and you'll see:

One more community-related setting is worth flagging: a strata or HOA account can also carry an Internal Entity Type of Company and be Council/HOA-enabled at the same time — those two settings work together, and Council/HOA won't turn on without the Company entity type in place.

The Account Owners % field

An account can carry an Account Owners % value — a single percentage on the account itself. REDA won't let it exceed 100:

This is a manual field on the account and is not the same thing as the ownership splits that record who owns a property and in what share. Property ownership — where two or more owners each hold a percentage of a building — lives on the Property, not here. Treat the account's Account Owners % as a standalone figure and manage property ownership shares on the property record.

The account roles you'll meet

Because so much points at the Account, the same account object plays many parts depending on which REDA record references it. Here's the quick map of business party to the record that holds it:

A few of these carry rules worth knowing. The Account on a deal is required before you can win it — "Account is required to update an opportunity." On a Lending deal the Borrower Account is held to the acquisition it finances: "Borrower Account must be same as Buying Account on Acquisition Opportunity." The Buying Account (Acquisition) and PM Account (Property Management) lookups only offer Internal Entity accounts, since those are your own entities. A leasing deal can also carry a Subsidizer Account whose subsidy is inherited by every lease charge, and a Referral Account carried over from the inquiry for payout and reporting. Ownership of a property, and the Council/HOA link, are set on the Property and its parent — see those articles rather than the account itself.

Where accounts come from

An account is created one of two ways: you create it by hand from the Accounts tab, or REDA creates it for you when you convert an inquiry. Conversion is the common origin, and it's the one that surprises people, so it's worth understanding exactly what it does.

Conversion creates a new account only when you don't pick an existing one in the Convert dialog. The dialog's account picker reads:

Leave it blank and REDA builds a new account, copying a small, predictable set of values from the inquiry:

The account name and the "Company" field

You never type the account's name during conversion — it comes from the inquiry's Company field, which REDA formats for you before the inquiry is saved. That makes the resulting Account Name predictable:

The four Inquiry Type values are Individual, Company, Household, and Joint. When you choose Company, a real company name is required — otherwise REDA responds:

The record type conversion assigns

When your administrator has switched on default record-type assignment (it ships on), conversion also stamps a record type on the new account. A Leasing inquiry produces an account with record type Lease; an inquiry with no type produces a Client; other inquiry types take the org default. That's why a converted leasing prospect's account shows up as record type Lease without you choosing it — the leasing conversion did it for you.

Accounts as financial entities

An Internal Entity account can be turned into a financial entity — the accounting record REDA bills, pays, and reports against — once the finance features are in use. When that happens, extra accounting and tax fields appear on the account. You don't set these up here; see activating an internal-entity account as a financial entity for the full walkthrough.

Record type also matters to owner accounting: reconciliation distinguishes Client-type owners (property you manage for someone else) from Internal Entity-type owners (property your own entity owns). See Property Owners & the Ownership Trail for how that plays out — the account's record type is the switch.

Worked example: Meridian's accounts

Meridian Properties is one of the business's own entities — an Internal Entity account with Internal Entity Type set to Company, the entity that manages and owns property. Continental Holdings is an external owner the business serves, so it's a Client-type account. When a new leasing prospect submits a leasing inquiry, REDA sets the inquiry's Company to the auto-formatted First Last [ Lease ]. On conversion, with both Convert-dialog pickers left blank, REDA creates a new account with that name and record type Lease, copying the inquiry's phone and region across. Because the community is council-managed, its strata/HOA account — an Internal Entity of type Company — has the Council/ HOA box checked, which is what lets its residents be given council roles later.

The Accounts list in the REDA app — Continental Holdings (a Client), Aisha Rahman [ Lease ] (a Lease account created by conversion), and Meridian Properties (an Internal Entity), with the Calculate Management Fees and Owner Equity Draw actions.

The "Aisha Rahman [ Lease ]" account — created automatically when her inquiry converted; its name is the auto-formatted Company value and its record type is Lease.

Reference: record types and what conversion writes

The four record types and their purpose:

What a leaving-blank conversion writes onto a new account:

Where to go next

1. Working with Contacts — the people layer that lives under an account.
2. Converting an Inquiry — where a converted account (and its contact) comes from.
3. Opportunities: the Deal Hub — the deal the account hangs off.
4. Contact Roles — how people are attached to a deal.
5. Activating a Financial Entity — turning an Internal Entity account into an accounting entity.
6. Property Owners & the Ownership Trail — owner accounts and the managed-vs-owned distinction.

Frequently asked questions