How to Create Cross-Object Formula Field in Salesforce

I was working as a Salesforce admin on a sales application. Recently, the sales manager asked me to add a field to the contact object so that it would fetch the value of the amount field from the account object and display it on all related contacts of that particular account.

To achieve this requirement, I created a cross-object formula on the contact object that displays the annual revenue amount from the associated account.

Here, I will explain the cross-object formula in Salesforce and how to create a cross-object formula field in Salesforce with an example and step-by-step explanation.

Cross-Object Formula Field in Salesforce

In Salesforce, a cross-object formula field allows you to automatically calculate and display data from multiple related objects within the formula field. It acts as a bridge, pulling information from other objects and presenting it within the current object you’re working with.

Using the cross-object formula field, we can retrieve fields of objects and display them on the related object, known as a cross-object formula.

To create the cross-object formula field, there should be a Master-Detail Relationship or  Lookup Relationship between two objects.

Things to Remember

• You can create a cross-object formula that references fields from parent objects. That means we can create an object on Chile’s side only. For example, we can fetch from an account to the contacts.
• We can only follow up to 10 relationships away from fields to fetch the data from the parent object.
• The cross-object formula is always in the read-only form. We cannot edit them.
• The cross-object formula follows the field-level security and sharing setting rule. If a user doesn’t have permission to access the field of the parent object, then they won’t be able to access the cross-object formula field either.

Create Cross-Object Formula Field in Salesforce

Here, we will explain how we can display the annual revenue field value from the account object to the related records of the contact object in Salesforce. Using the following steps, we can create a cross-object formula field in Salesforce.

1. As per our example, we need to display the annual revenue field value from the Account object to the Contact object.
   • For that, go to the Setup. -> Object Manager. -> Click on the Contact Object.

2. Click on the Field & Relationships. Then, click on the New option.

3. Sele