Thank you!
3 answers
Hi Katie,
I've always used an IsActive checkbox or an Active/Inactive Account Status picklist field to designate whether or not a customer or vendor Account was "Active." It helps for things like reports and list views...Contact status is a little different because you of course want to control who you include in mass emails, so it's a little more necessary.
If you're using SFDC to store information about your clients and track the activity, then you must have some business rule of what constitutes a customer that you're actively working with or actively pursuing new business with...even if it's just the amount of time since the last Opportunity or Activity.
There really isn't a right or wrong answer to your question...it just depends on what you're trying to do and how you want to identify your records in Salesforce.
It's good that you don't have an attrition issue. I've worked in industries where losing 10 to 15% of your customers every year is somewhat common just because of the nature of the business. When you have that degree of change, then you definitely want to formalize a "deactivation" process, especially to address things like outstanding invoices, incomplete projects, even legal concerns.
