Hi there,
my company is a pretty personalised company in the sense that we are more attached to actual persons instead of their companies. When a person switches companies we keep contact to the person rather than the company.
This leads to the point that we need a history of companies (incl. starting and leaving date and position) for each contact.
It feels like this is not quite possible with the Accounts module as remarked in:
https://support.sugarcrm.com/Knowledge_Base/Accounts_Contacts_Leads/Understanding_the_Accounts-Contacts_Relationship/index.html
I did my own Accounts (lets call it firm) module and wanted to add a corresponding data base with
“Firm_id contacts_id start_date end_date”
So I can make these visible on the contacts page afterwards. I do not quite see how to do this with studio or otherwise… I only managed to add a simple connection to customers, but this would leave out the time again…
I am quite new to this, so I would really appreciate any help…
Thank you in advance!
Best regards,
Friederike
First, it might be possible to this out-of-the-box, if you read the fine-print…
https://pgorod.github.io/Concepts-Accounts-Contacts/
You can have multiple relationships to Accounts.
But if you want to skip the quirkiness of the way that is implemented (or should I say, the way it is not fully implemented!), then I suggest just creating a new many-to-many relationship between Contacts and Accounts. You don’t need a new module, you just need a new list of relationships between two existing modules.
Adding fields to the relationships is possible, but much harder to achieve.
Also consider simplified versions of all this: off the top of my head, you could just keep a Note in each Contact describing his past history in plain text. If you don’t need too many search features, or reporting features, around this data, then sometimes this might be enough.
Hi,
thank you for your answer. 
Just having this in the comment section will unfortunately not do, you can hardly filter this properly. Yes, you can add it to multiple Accounts, as noted in the link I added, but you only see one account at a time (and our clients can be engaged in multiple accounts) and when you filter a name which is associated with multiple accounts it appears once for every account it is in. This would be quite confusing for the users of the CRM and besides blow up the search result list.
If I could see all accounts it is associated with on the detailed view (including the time entered and left) and the search result would not be so strange, I would be fine. But I simply see no way to do this by just adding some new relations.
Best regards,
Friederike
1 - the correct solution
If you add the new many-to-many relationship between Contacts and Accounts, you have the necessary structure to do what you require.
But to get the dates in there, these are not custom fields in the Contact, and they are not custom fields in the Account, they are custom fields in the relationship itself.
Now this is the correct data design, and it’s perfectly feasible, and not that hard for people used to customizing SuiteCRM in code, but it is not for newbies because it’s not something you can approach from Studio.
You need something like this:
http://sugarmods.co.uk/how-to-add-custom-fields-to-a-relationship-table-and-display-them-in-a-subpanel-sugarcrm-suitecrm/
If you can’t do it, you might consider paying someone to do it for you.
2 - the Hack
Now, to think about other dirty ways to achieve it, maybe check the Events module. Each event keeps a start and stop date, so you can build a history with them, and link them to Contacts. The missing piece there is the link to Accounts, which you can either try adding as a custom field in Events, or you can disguise it as a Location (an existing field in Events), where you would use the same name as existing Accounts. Check if this setup provides the searching and reporting you need; if not, dump it 
Thank you very much for your answer and your patience, I will try to do this
Thank you very much!
Just in case you know, otherwise I will find out myself:
In case I do not manage to do this, how do I find someone who I could pay to implement this?
Best regards,
Friederike
SalesAgility, the keepers of SuiteCRM, are precisely in the business of doing SuiteCRM customizations. If you want, I can ask someone to contact you by your email in the user profile on these forums, so you can ask him about prices and conditions.
You will also find many freelancers, here and on other sites on the Internet.
Hi,
yes, please, I would really appreciate this
Thank you so much already!
Best regards,
Friederike
If you Rename core Contacts as COMPANIES and Accounts as CONTACTS, that would solve your issue.
Under each CONTACT you would see subpanel for COMPANIES, which would have list of all past companies the CONTACT was in and also the current one.
Add two Dates field in the COMPANIES (Accounts) module, Start and End which would show in the subpanel so you know when they left the company.