Edition: All levels
User-level: All users
You can use contacts in Synergy to store and save data regarding the people you communicate with, including customers, vendors, subcontractors, businesses, real estate brokers, and other people you interact with!
By storing your contact information in Synergy, those contacts can be used on invoices, reports, documents, projects, and emails from within Synergy. You can assign contacts to projects and allocate roles to those contacts so that you can easily see who is involved in a project, and in what capacity.
Contacts List
You can find your list of contacts from the Side Navigation > Contacts:
In the default view, you will see seven columns:
Name: Contact name from the company contact, or the first and last name for an individual or personnel contact. This column is always displayed.
Type: Show whether the contact is a Company, Individual, or Personnel contact.
Parent Contact Name: Displays the name of the company or individual contact which the personnel type contact is linked. Click on the parent contact name to open the parent contact of the personnel.
Unique ID: The ID assigned to the contact when it is created. Contact IDs are set from the Organisation Configuration Settings page.
Status: The current status of the contact is shown. The status controls where in synergy that the contact can be used. Learn more about changing the contact status.
Account Manage: The internal staff member that is responsible for this contact's account.
Website: The website URL for the contact. If this is a company contact, then it will be their company website.
Each view option will provide you different information from the contact details: List views. Click on a contact name to open it up and view further information.
How to add a contact:
From the contacts list, click the Add button and select a type.
Company - A registered business which employees staff. e.g. ABC Constructions, XYZ Builders.
Personnel - The staff that work at the company are entered in Synergy as personnel records. e.g. create David Brown who works for ABC Constructions (company contact).
Individual - Store the details of a person or client that you deal with that is not a registered business. e.g. Mr & Mrs Smith who requires some alterations to their house.
Fill in all details related to your contact, if it is a personnel you can add them to the Parent Company they work for.
You can now save your contact, or you can continue on to create another contact by clicking the arrow and selecting the next type of contact you wish to create
This contact can now be used in projects, invoices, documents, reports, and syncing to your payment system.
Tips: If you would like additional fields for your contact information, you can add Custom Fields.
Contact Types
There are three types of contact in Synergy:
Company - A registered business which employees staff. e.g. ABC Constructions, XYZ Builders.
Personnel - The staff that work at the company are entered in Synergy as personnel records. Those personnel are then linked to the Company contact. e.g. create David Brown who works for ABC Constructions. The company will become the parent contact of the personnel.
Individual - A person or client that you deal with that is not a registered business. e.g. Mr & Mrs Smith who requires some alterations to their house.
Contact roles
Contact roles allow you to define the role that contacts play to either your company or to a specific project. They also allow you to report on any contacts that have been assigned this role. For example, you could run a report that showed all contacts with the role 'client'
How to edit contact roles
Go to: Project > Project Contacts tab.
Select the checkbox(es) on the row left for each item you want to update the role against.
Click the multiple rows action button and choose the 'set role' option.
Select a role from the drop-down list, and click Save.
The list refreshes to show the project contacts with the updated role.
Filter & Search
Your contact list can end up being very large. You can easily find the contacts you're looking for by filtering the list, or by searching. Click the search icon at the top right to open the filters and search section:
Filtering
Filtering the contact page will let allow you to limit the list to just contacts that meet certain criteria. These are the filter criteria you can set:
Type - limit the list to show all 'company/individual' types or all 'personnel' type records. The default option applied is 'all' which displays all three types.
Roles - limit the list to show only contacts with a certain role set. e.g. view all the contacts with roles like supplier, builder, or consultant.
Tags - search all the contacts to find records that have a specific tag attached. Type one or multiple tags into this box to search for in all the contact records. Tags are custom text that can be entered on contact like extra data. Standard tags are automatically added if the contact was imported from your accounting packages like MYOB, Xero, and QuickBooks.
Active - By default, only active contacts are shown, which are contacts that can still be found in drop-down lists and added to projects or invoices. Use the drop-down to switch to seeing 'inactive' contacts, which are the records that have been used on projects or invoices previously, but are no longer available for use in Synergy.
Searching
If you have a specific contact you want to bring up, you can use the search for that. Enter a contact name or email in the search bar, and then click search, or press Enter on your keyboard.
Tip: Return to the default view by clicking 'Clear' to the right of the search bar.
Editing a contact
If you need to make changes or updates to a contact's details, you can do that from the contact list. To edit a contact:
From the Contacts list, click the row action button at the far right and select 'Edit'
You can also click on the contact itself to open it, then click Edit from the details page:
Make the changes you need to the contact details, and then click Save at the top right:
Note: If you are done and would like to close the contact, you can click Save and Close under the save menu:
List views
Use the list views to change which columns are shown in the list for the existing contact records.
The contact name is shown in all the views. The standard views add extra columns such as:
Default - the view shown each time you open contact list with the company type and parent contact name.
Address - the street address line 1 and 2, suburb / town, state, post code and country.
Phone and Email - the business phone, mobile, and email addresses.
Tags and Roles - the tags and roles that have been assigned to the contacts.
Changing a contact's status
You can change the status of a contact to reflect their status with your company. Most commonly, this is used to set a contact as 'inactive', which will prevent the contact from showing in drop-down lists to be used throughout Synergy.
You would also change a contact to be inactive if it cannot be deleted as it is already linked to projects, bills/expenses, or attached to any personnel records.
To set a contact as inactive:
Go to the contacts list and select the checkbox(es) on the row left for each item you want to mark as inactive. Click the multiple rows action button and choose 'set as not active'.
The list refreshes and the item(s) have been updated.
To change the contact to a custom status:
Find the contact in your contact list and edit the contact.
Select the status you want to set from the status dropdown.
Save the contact record to apply the changes
Tips:
Use the list filter 'all' to find both active and inactive contacts.
To create your own custom statuses, see this article on contact statuses
Delete a contact
A contact record can only be deleted if it is not linked to any other records such as projects, bills, expenses, or have any attached personnel records. To delete a contact:
From the contacts list, select the contacts you want to delete using the selection boxes on the left.
Click the bulk action arrow at the bottom and select delete
The list refreshes and the item(s) have been deleted.
Tip: Make the contact inactive if it cannot be deleted, and it will be removed from dropdown lists throughout Synergy.
How to convert contact type
From the contacts list, open the contact that you want to edit
Click the '...' button located next to the edit button and the convert contact type options will be available. The contact types listed in this drop down are dependent on the current contact.
From here, select the contact type you wish to convert to and follow the prompts on screen.
If it was a company, and you made it an individual, the personnel will remain
If you change it from a company or individual, and it has personnel, those personnel will be converted into individuals
How to export contact details to Excel
You can export a single contact into an Excel file. The steps below will walk you through how to do this. If you need to export multiple records to Excel, you can use a Synergy report.
The export to Excel for contact details was added for GDPR EU regulations, to allow you to export the personal details stored against any contact type to Excel to provide to that person on their request. Read more in the Synergy GDPR guide.
Export contact data to Excel by:
From the contacts list, open a contact.
Click the page action button > Select 'Export contact to excel' option.
An Excel file is created and downloaded to your computer. This includes all the details for the open contact record.
If you require additional records in Excel, then open those contacts and repeat the export step above.
How to merge company contacts
If you have duplicate company contacts, you can merge contacts together. When merging companies together, most information will be associated to 1 company and the other will be archived.
To merge a contact:
Go to the contact page of one of the companies you want to merge, and use the ellipses menu to select 'Merge contacts'
The merge contacts wizard will appear, showing the company you have selected in the left modal. Select the other company you want to include in the large by searching in the right modal, and selecting it.
Use 'Keep this contact' to choose the contact you want to retain, and the other contact will be merged into it.
This action cannot be undone - once two contacts are merged, this is permanent.
You can also access the merge contacts feature from the ellipses menu on the main contacts page!
Company and associated data merge
By default, Contact Details from the selected company will be used. If the selected company details are empty, those fields will be populated from the company being archived.
Company details include:
Company details include:
Name
Website
Primary email
Secondary emails
Status
Unique ID
ABN
ACN
Phone numbers
Social links
Addresses
Street
Postal
Billing
Other
Account Manager
Tags
Roles
Custom fields
Associated Data
Associated Data
All these will be merged to the single company:
Invoices
Credits
Bills
Documents & folders
Project contacts
Bills & notes
Transactions
CRM Data
Portal Data
Purchase orders
Merging can affect your connections to accounting packages (because a single contact unique ID is retained) - always review these connections and your synced contacts after a merge has been completed.
How do I move personnel between contacts?
The way to change the parent contact for a personnel contact is to change the contact type to Individual, and then back to personnel. Changing the contact to individual removes the parent contact, and changing it to personnel allows you to select a new parent contact.
To do this, follow these steps:
From the contacts list, open the Personnel record, click the ellipsis button (3 dots) at the top right > select Convert to an Individual from the menu
Click OK
With the contact record still open, click the ellipsis button and select Convert to a Personnel.
Click the down arrow at the end of the Parent contact field to view the list of company contacts. Select a parent contact name from the list.
Click OK to complete the change.
The name of the new parent contact is displayed on the details screen of the personnel record
Personnel can be moved between parent contacts at any time using the above steps
Synergy provides a comprehensive system that organises your contacts - no matter if they are companies, personnel, or individuals. With alternate list views, comprehensive search and filter functions, and the ability to modify and update any contact status, Synergy streamlines how you engage with your contacts.