Salesforce has two types of Accounts: Business Accounts (the standard B2B model representing a company or organization) and Person Accounts (the B2C model representing an individual consumer). Person Accounts are not enabled by default — they’re an org-wide opt-in feature that, once turned on, cannot be turned off.
Business Accounts (standard)
The default Account in every Salesforce org. Represents a company, household, school, or organization — anything that isn’t a single individual consumer.
Key characteristics:
- Stored on the
Accountobject. - Has a separate Contact record for each person at the company. The relationship is Account 1 → many Contacts.
- Account.Name is the company name; person details (Title, Email, Phone) live on the Contact.
- Standard B2B use case — “Account = Company, Contact = Person at Company.”
Person Accounts (opt-in)
Person Account is a single record that merges Account and Contact data into one entity, representing a real human consumer. Activated, it’s used in B2C industries: retail, financial services, healthcare consumers, etc.
Key characteristics:
- Lives in the
Accountobject but with a special Record Type marked as “Person Account.” - Behind the scenes, Salesforce creates both an Account row and a Contact row, linked transparently. To users it looks like one record.
- Carries person fields (FirstName, LastName, Birthdate, Email, Phone) and account-like fields.
- The Account.Name is automatically derived from FirstName + LastName.
- An Account’s
IsPersonAccountfield istruefor these records.
Why Person Accounts exist
Without Person Accounts, B2C orgs face an awkward modeling problem: their “customer” is an individual, but the standard Account-Contact model forces them to create a fake company Account with one Contact for each consumer. Person Accounts solve this by making the consumer-as-customer the first-class entity.
Enabling Person Accounts
Person Accounts is an org-wide setting. To enable:
- Confirm at least one Record Type exists on Account (Person Accounts require Record Types).
- Setup → Person Accounts → Enable.
- Salesforce displays the irreversibility warning. Confirm.
- Configure Person Account record types, page layouts, and sharing.
Important: once enabled, Person Accounts cannot be disabled. Salesforce will not turn it off even via Support. This is the single most cautioned setting in admin work — only enable in a fresh sandbox first, never directly in production without certainty.
Differences in behavior
| Aspect | Business Account | Person Account |
|---|---|---|
| Represents | Company / org | Individual consumer |
| Underlying object | Account only | Account + linked Contact (transparent) |
| Has Contacts? | Yes (separate records) | No (Person Account IS the contact) |
Account.Name | Company name | Auto-built from FirstName + LastName |
| Record Type | Standard Account RT | Person Account RT |
IsPersonAccount | false | true |
| Use cases | B2B sales | B2C / consumer-facing |
Coexistence
Once Person Accounts is enabled, the same org can have both Business Accounts and Person Accounts simultaneously. Many B2B+B2C hybrid orgs (e.g., insurance — both businesses and personal policy holders) use this. The Record Type distinguishes them, and reports / list views can filter by IsPersonAccount.
Considerations before enabling
- Storage — Person Accounts use 1 Account row + 1 Contact row each, doubling storage vs. business accounts.
- API impact — integrations must handle the Person Account model (e.g., setting LastName on the Account record).
- AppExchange compatibility — verify any managed packages you use support Person Accounts.
- Triggers and Apex — code that hard-codes Account/Contact behavior may need updates.
- Custom objects linking to Contact must still work; Contact-related-list logic is mostly intact.
Interview-ready answer
“There are two types of Accounts in Salesforce: Business Accounts, the default B2B model where Account is a company and Contacts are the people at it, and Person Accounts, the B2C model where each Account record represents a single individual and there’s no separate Contact. Person Accounts is an opt-in feature, irreversible once enabled, and identified by the
IsPersonAccountsystem field.”
Bonus: technically there’s a third “type”
Some people call out a “third type” — Household Accounts in Financial Services Cloud. These are a specialized Account-Record-Type pattern used in FSC to model an entire family unit. But they’re really still Business Accounts at the schema level, with FSC managed-package logic on top. Most interviewers want the two-type answer.
Verified against: Salesforce Help — Person Accounts. Last reviewed 2026-05-17.