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Tara DunlopTara Dunlop 

Is it possible to convert a lead into a person account instead a contact with the same name as the lead?

Hi all,

we are working on a project based on students recruitment.
Our client is a Mexican university. Candidates for study programms can fill first a form in order for them to send their data about the Master they are interested in studying to the Secretary. Data, which would be registrated in Salesforce with a Web-to-Lead form.

Candidates for a study programm are registered first as Leads. By trying to convert a lead a new account would be created. As in this case students or future students are not considered business accounts, but person accounts. Is it possible to automate this, so the generated account has the same name as the lead and not the contact instead?.User-added image
Sagar PareekSagar Pareek
This is not that much of differ from the normal conversion. But keep the Company field of the Lead blank and convert. These are will be ended up with Person Accounts.
Reference - https://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTViewHelpDoc?id=leads_notes.htm&language=en_US
  
Leads with a blank Company field are converted to person accounts

 
Tara DunlopTara Dunlop
I can not keep the Company field blank as it is required and I can not remove it from page layout or even hide it as it is a standard field with a blue circle:

Fields that are displayed with a blue circle icon are universally required and can not be removed from the page layout.

Fields that are displayed in bold are required by Salesforce. These fields cannot be removed from the layout.
 
Tara DunlopTara Dunlop
Nice post making us to decide not to use Person Accounts for this case:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140507175728-96768874-5-reasons-to-avoid-person-accounts-in-salesforce-com

The question is how can we get rid of the Company field on the Lead Layout?, we can't even rename it as it is a standard and required field with a blue circle.

Is there a workaround?
Patrick CuyegkengPatrick Cuyegkeng
Do you have Person accounts enabled in your Salesforce org?  You can only do this through Support, and the change is irreversible once enabled.  I am currently testing this out for a perpective client in a developer org.

If you do not have Person accounts enabled, you will not be able to change the Company field on the lead layout to no longer be required.  Once Person accounts are enabled, this requirement is relaxed and you can remove the "Required" flag on the necessary page layouts (or remove the field altogether if you really don't need it).  With that no longer required, Leads without Company information will convert to Person accounts.