Look inside the client databases of a dozen small practices and the same short core appears in all of them, along with a long tail of fields that vary by trade and are mostly empty. That pattern is worth knowing before you design or buy one, because it tells you where the value is and where the effort is wasted. What follows is the core that earns its keep, the trade specific additions that are usually justified, and the categories that consistently disappoint the practices that add them.
The core that every practice actually uses
Identity, which for a business client means the legal name and any trading name. Contact, with the individuals who matter and their own details rather than one shared address. Ownership, meaning who in the practice is responsible. Status, meaning where this relationship currently is. And documents, attached to the client rather than filed elsewhere. Those five carry almost all the day to day value in any practice.
The trade specific additions worth making
Every trade has two or three fields the core does not cover: a registration or reference number, a renewal or year end date, a category that decides how the client is handled. Add those deliberately, because they are usually what drives a reminder or a document, which means they stay filled in. The test is the same as always: name what breaks when the field is blank.
What tends to be added and never used
Free text about preferences, a source or referral field nobody updates after the first month, elaborate tagging schemes, and anything that duplicates what a document already says. These are added with genuine intentions and are empty within a quarter, and their emptiness does slow damage, because a record that is visibly half filled teaches everybody that the record is not to be relied on.
Questions people ask about client databases
How many fields should a client record have?
Fewer than you first want. Aim for a record that is realistically complete on every client rather than one that could be rich if everybody cooperated, because they will not.
Should former clients stay in the database?
Usually yes, marked as former rather than deleted, because you will need the history. Their portal access should end even though their record does not, and your retention policy decides how long the record itself stays.
Do we need separate databases for different services?
Almost never. One client with several services is one record with several things attached. Separate databases are how practices end up unable to answer simple questions about a client.