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Linking Contact Persons and Companies - The Contact Relations Register

Customers, Suppliers and Contact Persons are all stored in the Contact register. On this page, we describe linking Contact Persons to the company they work for.
  1. The first step is to enter a Contact record representing the company. Mark the company as a Customer or Supplier or both, as appropriate. Remember that marking the company as a Customer or Supplier does not necessarily mean it has purchased goods or services from your business, or sold goods or services to you: the company can also be a potential customer or supplier to your business. Marking the company as a Customer or Supplier makes it available to the various sales or purchase registers respectively. Ensure you save this record before moving to step 2.

  2. The next step is to enter a Contact record representing a person working for the company (i.e. a Contact Person). Choose 'Linked Contact Person' from the Create menu (Windows/Mac OS X) or + menu (iOS/Android). A new record will be created in the Contact register and will be opened in a new window entitled 'Contact: Inspect'. This means the record has already been saved and is being opened to allow you to enter the Contact Person's name and contact details if these are different to those of the parent company:

    The address details, telephone and fax will be copied from the parent company. Enter the Contact Person's name and appropriate contact information. As the Contact Person works for a company that has been marked as a Customer or a Supplier, you should not check these boxes in the Contact Person record (unless the Contact Person is also a Customer or Supplier in a private capacity).

  3. Save the Contact Person and close the record by clicking the close box (Windows/Mac OS X) or by tapping < (iOS/Android). The Contact Person will have been added to the list at the bottom of the 'Contact' card of the parent company's Contact record:

    This list will contain all the Contact Persons working for the Customer or Supplier. As with all lists in Standard ERP, you can sort this one by clicking (Windows/Mac OS X) or tapping (iOS/Android) on a column heading. If you need to open the Contact record of a Contact Person, double-click or tap a line in this list.

  4. The 'Linked Contact Person' function just described will create a new record in the Contact register for a Contact Person, and will connect this new Contact Person to the Customer or Supplier. If, however, there already is a record for the Contact Person in the Contact register, you can use the 'Link Existing Contact' function instead. When you select this function from the Operations menu (Windows/Mac OS X) or Tools menu (iOS/Android) of the parent company's Contact record, the 'Add Contact' window will appear:

    Enter the Contact Number of the Contact Person or choose it using 'Paste Special' and press [Save]. The Contact Person will be added to the list at the bottom of the 'Contact' card of the parent company's Contact record. If the Contact Person was already connected to another Customer or Supplier, that relationship will not be disturbed, so the Contact Person will now be connected to two parent companies.

  5. The 'Linked Contact Person' and 'Link Existing Contact' functions are the easiest ways to add a Contact Person to a Customer or Supplier, but you can also use a more manual method. First, enter a new record to the Contact register for the Contact Person. No address, telephone or mobile information will be offered, so you will need to enter this information yourself (unless you duplicate an existing Contact Person):

    Now, you need to connect the Contact Person to the Customer or Supplier. The Contact Relations register in the CRM module provides this connection. The 'Linked Contact Person' and 'Link Existing Contact' functions described in the previous step will both create records in the Contact Relations register automatically, connecting a Contact Person to a Customer or Supplier. In this case, as you created the Contact Person manually, you also need to create the connecting Contact Relations record yourself. To do this, ensure you are in the CRM module, open the Contact Relations register and create a new record:

    Customer
    Paste Special    Customers, Suppliers and Contact Persons in Contact register
    Specify the Customer or Supplier for whom the Contact Person works.

    Contact
    Paste Special    Contact Persons in Contact register
    Specify the Contact Person.

    Start Date
    Paste Special    Choose date
    Enter the date when the Contact Person started working for the Customer or Supplier. This is for information only.

    End Date
    Paste Special    Choose date
    If appropriate, enter the date when the Contact Person stopped working for the Customer or Supplier. This is for information only.

    Invalid
    If the Contact Person stops working for the Customer or Supplier, you can mark the Contact Relations record as Invalid. This is described in step 9 below.

    When you save the Contact Relations record, the Contact Person will be added to the list at the bottom of the 'Contact' card of the Customer or Supplier:

  6. The Contact Relations register allows a Contact Person to work for more than one company. Simply enter as many records to the Contact Relations register as necessary, linking the Contact Person to the companies they work for:

    The Contact Person is listed in the Contact records for both companies:

  7. The information shown in the list at the bottom of the 'Contact' card of the Customer or Supplier is stored in the Contact Relations register. If you edit a Contact Person, the connected Contact Relations record will be updated immediately, making the change visible in the list in the Customer or Supplier record. For example, if you change a Contact Person's Email Address, the Email Address in the relevant Contact Relations record will be updated and so the new Email Address will be visible in the list in the Customer or Supplier record immediately.

    If a Contact Person works for more than one Customer or Supplier, that Contact Person will have more than one Contact Relations record. It is likely that such a Contact Person will have different contact details for each company.

    When you connect a Contact Person to a second Customer or Supplier (as was done at the end of step 6), it is likely that their contact details for the second Customer or Supplier will not be correct and so you will need to change the contact details in the relevant Contact Relations record. To do this, open the Contact record for the second Customer or Supplier, highlight the Contact Person in the list at the bottom of the 'Contact' card and select 'Edit Linked Contact Data' from the Operations menu. The relevant Contact Relations record will open:

    When you open the Contact Relations record in this way, the window will contain fields related to contact details that are not visible when opening the record in other ways (e.g. as shown in the illustrations in step 7. Update the record in the usual way. After doing so, the Contact Person will be listed in the Contact records for the Customers or Suppliers, with different contact details:

    As mentioned at the beginning of this step, if you change the contact details in the Contact record for a Contact Person, those changes will be fed through to the related Contact Relations record automatically. However, if a Contact Person has more than one Contact Relations record, changes to their Email Address, Courtesy Title and/or Job Title will not be fed through to the Contact Relations records because these details are likely to be different in each one.

    The 'Edit Linked Contact Data' function cannot be used on iOS or Android.

  8. If you change the Invoice Address in the Contact record for a Customer or Supplier and you need the change to be copied to the connected Contact Persons, save the changes to the Customer or Supplier and then select 'Update Contact Persons' from the Operations or Tools menu.

  9. If a Contact Person stops working for a Customer or Supplier, you can do one of the following:

    1. You can delete the relevant Contact Relations record. This will break the link between the Contact Person and the Customer or Supplier. Alternatively, if the Contact Person moves to another Customer or Supplier, you can enter the new Customer or Supplier in the Contact Relations record.

    2. You can mark the relevant Contact Relations record as Invalid. The link between the Contact Person and the Customer or Supplier will remain, but the Contact Person will no longer appear in 'Paste Special' lists or in the list in the Customer or Supplier record:
      IMAGE(065.JPG) You can use this method if you want to remember that the Contact Person once worked for the Customer or Supplier, between the dates recorded in the Contact Relations record. If the Contact Person moves to another Customer or Supplier, you can create a new Contact Relations record.

    3. You can open the Customer or Supplier record, highlight the Contact Person in the list at the bottom of the window and select 'Remove Linked Contact' from the Operations menu. This function will mark the relevant Contact Relations record as Invalid and is therefore similar to option (ii) but means you do not need to find the Contact Relations record. This method cannot be used on iOS or Android.

    4. You can mark the Contact Person as Closed (on the 'Terms' card of their Contact record). All Contact Relations records for the Contact Person will be marked as Invalid automatically. The Contact Person will no longer appear in 'Paste Special' lists. This option will not be suitable if the Contact Person moves to another Customer or Supplier, or works for more than one at the same time. It closes the Contact Person as a whole, so they will not appear in 'Paste Special' lists of Contact Persons belonging to the new or second companies.

    5. You can delete the Contact Person record altogether. This option is not recommended if you want to keep your Contact History with the Contact Person. All Contact Relations records for the Contact Person will be deleted automatically.

  10. Once you have entered a Customer or Supplier and all its Contact Persons, you can work with them quickly and easily. For example, when you enter a Sales Invoice, the 'Paste Special' list from the Customer field will only list Customers:

    When you enter a Purchase Invoice, the 'Paste Special' list from the Supplier field will only list Suppliers:

    In some cases (e.g. Activities, Customer Letters), you can specify Customers and Suppliers. When you open the 'Paste Special' list from the Customer field, it will list Customers, but there will be a [Suppliers] button at the top of the list, allowing you to choose a Supplier if necessary:

    In many records, you can choose a Contact Person as well as a Customer or Supplier. The Primary Contact from the 'Contact' card of the Customer or Supplier will be brought in as a default. To choose a different Contact Person, activate 'Paste Special' from the Contact or Attention field (the name of this field varies depending on the register):

    This list will only contain Contact Persons that work for the Customer or Supplier. Closed Contact Persons will not be included in the list. The Primary Contact from the 'Contact' card of the Customer or Supplier will be included in the list, but will not be listed twice if you have a separate Contact record for that Person. Note that the Title of each Contact Person is shown in the list, so you should record this information if you have it (on the 'Comments' card of the Contact record), to make selection of the correct Contact Person easier.

  11. If you will be sending documents by email to a Customer or Supplier and you need to specify that particular documents will be sent to particular Contact Persons (e.g. that Invoices should be sent to one Contact Person and that statements should be sent to another Contact Person), you can set this up using the Additional Email Recipients setting in the CRM module. Please refer to the description of that setting here for details.
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The Contact register in Standard ERP:

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