UPDATE: Since the writing of this post Salesforce released Process Builder which can accomplish the same solution with #ClicksNotCode. Please check out my other post about Advanced Lead Conversion Using Process Builder. Thanks!

As of this writing, the Salesforce Lead Conversion process does not allow users to pick the record types for the converted accounts/contacts/opportunities.

Salesforce instead uses the ‘default’ record type for those objects of the user’s profile who is performing the conversion. This assumption is not always valid, particularly for users that have multiple record types available to them or that the ones they use aren’t actually flagged as ‘default’ on their profile (for example, the user’s profile has the master record type as default but the record types they actually use are granted through permission sets).

I developed a workaround (available on github) with a trigger that leverages a custom setting to provide administrators a way to provide simple one-to-one record type conversion mappings while still using the out-of-the-box lead conversion page.

Simply put, this trigger looks up a xref from the custom setting based on the lead’s record type then for each converted object (account, contact, opportunity) it updates their record types to the values specified in the custom setting.

On the Salesforce Success Community, the ability to choose a record type is a highly requested feature, and I hope that this workaround will eventually not be necessary:

Getting Started

To implement this workaround in your salesforce org you will need to create a custom setting and deploy the apex classes in this repository. The steps are very easy to do, and I’ll outline the basic steps below.

  1. Create a Custom Setting
  2. Create an Apex Class
  3. Create an Apex Trigger
  4. Create an Apex Test

Create Custom Setting

The custom setting is our cross-reference mapping between Lead record types and Account, Contact, and Opportunity record types that we want to leverage during lead conversion process.

custom settings

Manage Custom Setting

Once the custom setting is defined, from its detail page click the Manage button to add some mappings. You will create a new instance of the custom setting for each of your Lead record types. The name field of the custom setting will hold our Lead record type names and the three fields on the custom setting will hold the names of the actual record types we want to use for those sobjects during lead conversion. If you don’t use Opportunities then that field can be left blank. It is only used by the code if the lead converted into an opp.

manage settings

Deployment: How To

To simplify deployment of this custom code to your org, you may use the github deploy tool developed by Andy Fawcett.

To deploy in your sandbox: https://githubsfdeploy-sandbox.herokuapp.com/app/githubdeploy/douglascayers/sfdc-lead-conversion-record-types

To deploy to production: https://githubsfdeploy.herokuapp.com/app/githubdeploy/douglascayers/sfdc-lead-conversion-record-types

If deploying to production via github tool fails due to tests not being run, you may opt to use Change Sets or Ant Tool or however you normally deploy your code from sandbox to production. Please use your best judgement and due diligence before making any production changes to your org.