Create Contacts

You regularly meet persons from other companies that may develop into business relationships, such as a customer relation. When such a new contact is made, as much information as possible must be recorded on a contact card so that communication can continue.

You can create the contact as type Company, for example, if the relation not an individual person but an entity, such as a contractor or a bank. You an also create the contact as type Person. Functionality is more or less the same for both types and both can be changed as the relationship evolves.

When a contact card is converted to a customer card, for example, the contact person or contact company becomes the name of the customer. The contact card remains, and data on the two cards will be synchronized going forward if you link them.

Person or Company

You can decide to set up a contact as a person or a company, typically depending on whether you know the name of the contact person at the time of creation. You do this when you fill in the Type field on the Contact Card page. You can also maintain contact cards for both a company and one or more persons working in the company. This happens automatically when you fill in the Company Name field on a contact card of type Person.

Functionality is the same for both types, except that the options for additional information changes depending on the type. For example, you can only assign job responsibilities to a person and industry group to a company. This is indicated in the UI by graying out the fields and actions that do not apply. You can change the value of the Type field later, or you can use the fields on the Inheritance FastTab on the Marketing Setup page to control which data is shared between a person and the person's related company. For more information, see Setting Up Contacts.

To create a contact manually

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature icon, enter Contacts, and then choose the related link.

  2. Choose the New action.

  3. In the No. field, enter a number for the contact.

    Alternatively, if you have set up a number series for contacts on the Marketing Setup page, you can press the Enter key to insert the next available contact number.

  4. Fill in the remaining fields as required. Hover over a field to read a short description.

To create a contact from a customer, vendor, or bank account

If you have customers, vendors, and bank accounts that you want to create contact cards for, you can use the Create Contacts from batch jobs to create contacts on the basis of the existing data. When you create a contact this way, the contact information is afterwards synchronized with the related customer, vendor, or bank account information. For more information, see Synchronizing Contacts with Customers, Vendors, and Bank Accounts.

Note

Before you can create contacts based on existing data, you must specify a business relation code for customers, vendors, or bank accounts on the Interactions FastTab on the Marketing Setup page. For more information, see Set up Contacts.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature icon, enter one of the following, depending what you want to create contacts from, and then choose the related link.
    • Create Contacts from Customers
    • Create Contacts from Vendors
    • Create Contacts from Bank Accounts
  2. On the request page that opens, in the Customer, Vendor, or Bank Account section, set filters if you want to create contacts from specific customers, vendors, or bank accounts.
  3. Choose the OK button to start creating contacts.

The next contact numbers in the number series are assigned to the new contacts. The business relations that are specified on the Marketing Setup page is assigned to the newly created contacts.

Tip

You can also do this the other way around, namely by creating a customer, vendor, or bank account from a contact. For more information, see To create a contact as a customer, vendor, or bank account.

To create a customer, vendor, or bank account from a contact

If you have a customer, vendor, or bank account for the company that you want to create a contact for, you can use the Create as function. When you create a contact this way, the contact information is afterwards synchronized with the related customer, vendor, or bank account information. For more information, see Synchronizing Contacts with Customers, Vendors, and Bank Accounts.

Note

Before you can create customers, vendors, or bank accounts from contacts, you must specify a business relation code for customers, vendors, or bank accounts on the Interactions FastTab on the Marketing Setup page. For more information, see Setting up Contacts.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature icon, enter Contacts, and then choose the related link.
  2. Select the contact you want to create as a customer, vendor, or bank account.
  3. Choose the Create As action, and then choose either Customer, Vendor, or Bank.
  4. Choose the OK button.

The contact information is transferred from the contact card to a new customer, vendor, or bank account card. You may want to add specific information to each of the cards, such as invoicing and payment details. For more information, see, for example, Register New Customers.

If you have a contact and either a customer, vendor, or bank account for the same company, you can link the two entities so that common data is synchronized.

  1. Open the contact that you want to link.
  2. Choose the Link with existing action, and then choose the Customer, Vendor, or Bank action.
  3. On the page that opens, select the customer, vendor, or bank account to link to.
  4. In the Current Master Fields field, specify whose fields to prioritize in case of conflicting information in fields common to the contact and customer, vendor, or account. For example, if the salesperson code is different on the contact card than on the customer card, you can choose to keep the one on the contact card by selecting Contact.
  5. Choose the OK button.

Synchronizing Contacts with Customers, Vendors, and Bank Accounts

If some of your contacts are also customers, vendors, or bank accounts, you can synchronize the contact information with the related customer, vendor, or bank account.

The following benefits exist when a contact is synchronized with a customer, vendor, bank account.

  • You only have to update information in one place. For example, if you modify the phone number on the contact, the phone number is automatically updated with the same modification on the customer, the vendor, or the bank account.
  • If you have specified a number series for contacts, when you create a customer card, a vendor card, or a bank account card, a contact card is automatically created for the customer, vendor or bank account.
  • You can create sales quotes and orders and purchase quotes and orders from the contact.
  • You can have your interactions recorded when you perform actions, such as printing orders, blanket orders, creating sales service orders, sending e-mails, and so on.
  • If you delete a contact linked to a customer, vendor, or bank account, only the contact is removed. The customer, vendor, or bank account remains.
  • If you delete a customer, vendor, bank account that is linked to a contact, the contact remains.
Note

Certain details, such as invoicing and posting details, do not appear on the contact card. Therefore, you may want to add them manually on the customer card, vendor card, or bank account card when you create contacts as customers, vendors or bank accounts.

Synchronization of common data between contacts and the related customers, vendors, or bank accounts is enabled in three ways:

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature icon, enter Contacts, and then choose the related link.
  2. Select the line for a contact, choose the Related Information action, and then choose the Customer/Vendor/Bank Acc action.

The page for the related card opens.

See Also

Managing Contacts
Setting Up Contacts
Working with Business Central