Details

Rules

• Use Record Types - eg Clients, Partners, Suppliers. 
  • Potentially even instead of Type - it gives you more flexibility for later. 
  • See Accounts and Contacts Rules! for more details. 

New Salesforce Org

Account Settings

• NOTE: In Lightning Account Settings is not in Object Manager, it's in Setup, which is highly annoying. 
• Enable
  
  • Show View Hierarchy link on account pages
  • Allow users to relate a contact to multiple accounts
• Disable - as they only work for US Orgs
  • News
  • Automated Account Fields
  • Logos
• Enable Person Accounts only if necessary and never with NPSP. Note: Person Accounts are not evil, they just need to be understood. 
• Enable History Tracking

Social Accounts, Contacts, and Leads Settings

• Disable
  • Klout

Fields

• Change the name to Organisations because it allows way more flexibility than Accounts. Accounts has the connotation of an account that an advertising agency deals with (eg Mad Men style). Organisations allows for Suppliers, Clients, Competitors, Authorities etc to be added
• Add Record Types to Accounts to allow for different fields to be added for different Org Types (as above).
• Remove the standard list of Industry values and add ones that are relevant to the organisation.
• Remove the standard list of Type values and add ones that are relevant to the organisation.
• Rename Billing Address to Mailing Address and Shipping Address to Physical Address because who uses shipping except for orgs who sell widgets.
• Add ABN.
  • Unless you need to track ABN on the Leads - then create a new field named ABN, so it's easier for Lead Conversion. 
  • Give permissions to the SIC Code field so that users can see it (by default Admin can't see this field). 
• Rename Site to Office because that makes more sense to most orgs. Or hide this feild
• Rename all State/Province names to State
• Rename all Zip/Postal names to Post
• Rename City to Suburb

Values

Buttons Links Actions

• Remove Mail Merge buttons
• Remove Request Update
• See ABR Links

Layout

• Hide Number of Employees and Annual Revenue because most orgs don't use that (or show it only on particular Record Types if the org needs it).
• Add System Fields to separate section with heading.

Salesforce Mobile and Lightning Experience Actions

• Override standard layout (always)

Other Lightning Settings

• Ensure you set up Compact Layouts and assign them

If you are still using Classic also 

• Set up Mini Layouts

Related Lists

• Add Account History
• Add Files 
• Add Notes
• Remove Notes & Attachments

Views

See Views

Required Views

• One View for each Record Type

Reporting

When using Nonprofit Success Pack - NPSP and reporting on Organisations use the field _SYSTEM: IsIndividual = False to remove all Organisations created for Individual Contacts.

When reporting, beware of the Contacts and Organisations report type. If an Organisation does not have any Contacts, the organisation will NOT show on this report. 

Lightning Page Layout

See Record Page for an example Lightning Page Layout for Accounts.