Client management / Customer numbers

[Guite]

Hi all FO users.
What are the best practices for managing and maintaining information artefacts like customer numbers?

• One could add own fields for storing this information
• Problem is that a customer can be a company, but also a single (private) contact
• One could add companies also for the latter one in theory
• Another possibility is a document for making assignments (number -> name)
• Capabilities for the reporting would be nice, like seeing something grouped by customer numbers
  

Anybody working with unique numbers in practice? Thanks in advance.

[a2opinion]

we've always entered a new contact for each customer we have with all of their direct numbers and such, as well as a company contact with company numbers and addresses