Salesforce Fundamentals for Small Business
The object model is the foundation
Every Salesforce question ultimately rests on understanding that records are stored in objects (standard like Account, Contact, Opportunity, Case, or custom), that objects have fields with data types, and that records relate to each other through lookups and master-detail relationships. Small businesses live on the standard model: one Account per customer, Contacts under it, Opportunities for deals, Cases for support. Know that a lookup is loose (deleting the parent leaves the child), while master-detail is tight (the child inherits sharing and is deleted with the parent).
Org structure and the security stack
Understand the layers in order: organization-wide defaults set the baseline, role hierarchy opens records upward to managers, sharing rules widen access by group or criteria, and profiles/permission sets control object and field permissions and app access. A classic trap: field-level security is separate from record access - a user can see the record but not a sensitive field. Another trap: permission sets grant additional access; they never remove it.
Users, licenses, and the small-business edition
Small Business editions bundle Sales and Service Cloud capabilities. Know that profiles are one-per-user while permission sets are many-per-user, and that the principle of least privilege means starting restrictive and granting up.
Worked rule of thumb
When a question asks 'why can't this user see the record?', check in this order: (1) object permission on the profile/permission set, (2) organization-wide default, (3) role hierarchy or sharing rule, (4) record ownership. The first failing layer is the answer.