Standard vs Custom Objects in Salesforce

What are objects in Salesforce?

To set up Salesforce effectively, it's important to understand the difference between standard and custom objects. Objects are the foundation of your data model and determine how information is stored and organized.

💡 Practical example

Imagine you have a customer database. Each customer is a record in the Account object. Fields like company name, address and phone number are the columns of this table.

Standard objects

Standard objects are objects that Salesforce has already set up for you and that support the most common business processes. These objects already contain fields and relationships that fit many organizations.

Commonly used standard objects

Account

Represents companies or organizations you have a relationship with. Think of customers, suppliers or partners.

Contact

The people associated with an account. Each contact is linked to an account.

Lead

A potential customer or sales opportunity that hasn't been qualified yet.

Opportunity

The actual sales opportunity, with which you track the sales cycle up to Closed Won.

Case

A support ticket or customer inquiry handled through Service Cloud.

Campaign

A marketing campaign or action in which leads are generated.

Why use standard objects?

Advantages of standard objects

✓Pre-defined structure – already contain fields and relationships that fit many organizations
✓Consistency and maintenance – updates and maintenance are handled by Salesforce
✓Extensive documentation – lots of documentation available because all Salesforce users use the same objects

Custom objects

Not every process fits within the standard objects. That's why you can create custom objects. These are your own tables where you store data specific to your business, such as Project, Contract, Subscription or Training.

⚠️ When to use custom objects?

Only create custom objects when the standard objects really don't suffice. Too many custom objects make your Salesforce environment complex and difficult to maintain.

Best practices for custom objects

1. Choose a clear name and API name

Use capital letters for each word (e.g., Project__c) and make it recognizable for users.

Good: Project__c, Training__c, Contract__c
Bad: proj, trng, cntrct

2. Choose the right type of relationship

Determine whether the object should have a master-detail relationship (strict hierarchy) or a lookup relationship (looser) with existing objects.

Master-Detail: Project → Account (project cannot exist without account)
Lookup: Training → Account (training can also exist without account)

3. Use record types

When a custom object serves multiple processes, you can set up a separate page layout and picklist values per type.

Project__c record types:
- Implementation
- Maintenance
- Training

4. Document your object

Describe the purpose of the object and the fields. This helps with maintenance and supports AI features, as well-filled description fields provide context for Einstein.

Example scenario: Offering trainings

Say you offer trainings to customers. You already have standard objects like Account and Contact, but you also want to record information about the trainings you deliver:

Step-by-step implementation

Create a custom object Training__c

With fields like Training name, Date, Location and a lookup to Account

Create a related list on the Account

To show all trainings for that customer

Automate with Flow

For example, a record-triggered flow that automatically creates a task for the trainer when a new training is scheduled

Conclusion

Understanding standard and custom objects is the foundation of every Salesforce implementation. By making smart use of existing objects and adding custom objects where needed, you keep your data model simple, scalable and future-proof.

Next steps

In the next article, we'll dive deeper into fields, relationships and record types, so you'll know even better how to bring structure to your Salesforce environment.

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