Setup the contact company or individual type contact by entering the phone number and address information. Next add personnel to the company contacts to show which staff you deal with regularly at the company. Use the contact details on projects, invoices, documents and more. Learn about each of the tabs shown in the contact, and what actions are available inside each contact record.
Setup required before use | Who can use it? | Where is it? |
User Assistant Project Manager Project Manager Director Access Assistant system administrator System Administrator | Open Contact > Details tab Open Contact > Edit tab |
What are the contact details?
Setup a contact record for each company, client, individual, and supplier that you deal with. Create company contact records if the contact is a registered business and employees staff. The staff that work at the company are entered in Synergy as personnel record. Setup individual type contact records to store the details of a person or client that you deal with that is not a registered business.
Track all the details about a contact using the tabs. Click contact name in the toolbar breadcrumbs (top left) and select which open a contact tab:
Details - a default read-only view shown when an item is clicked on in the list that displays the general contact details.
Edit - an update view that allows the general contact details to be changed.
Personnel - maintain a list of the staff who work at a company contact.
Projects - the projects where this contact is listed on the project contacts tab as part of the team.
Invoices - all invoices where the contact is listed in a the address to, c/o, or attention to fields.
Bills - all expenses (bills) where the contact is listed as having provided the goods or services for the expense.
Documents - view any saved emails, documents, images, statements for each contact.
Notes - add notes to track details told to the client during meetings, phone calls, debt collection etc.
Audit - track what changes have been made to a contact record, by who, and when the change was made.
Tip: The same tabs are available in all three contact types - company, individual and personnel.
Why use the contact detail tabs?
Record every company, client, or supplier that you deal with. Use the details in projects, reports, and document portals.
Details and edit tabs
Details for company, individual, or personnel type contact are updated using the 'edit' tab. The 'details' tab allows you to see a read only of the contact, to get a snapshot summary of the entered information. Click the button next to the contact information to call the phone number listed, email the contact, make a Skype call, view the address in Google maps, or view the contacts social account like Twitter or Linked-in.
Select an internal staff member to be the 'account manager' to show which of your staff is responsible for dealing with this client. Add a unique ID to each contact record when using Accounting add-ons to import contacts, or export invoices / bills to your accounting system.
The following actions are available from either the contact details read-only view, or in the edit the details view.
The default status applied to a contact record is active, which allows the contact record to be used in projects, attached to invoices and expenses. Change the status of a contact to 'Inactive' or 'Credit Hold' to stop future use of the contact on projects, invoices and expenses (bills). Select the status of 'inactive' to also remove the contact from drop down lists.
Apply a custom status to control which areas of Synergy a contact record can be used. *This feature is available with the Synergy Business or Enterprise products.*
Change the status of a contact record by:
Open the contact and select the edit button.
Locate the 'contact status' field and select an option from the drop down list.
Save.
The contact details tab is updated to show the new contact status.
Tips:
Change the contact status to be 'inactive' to stop future use of the contact, and remove the contact from drop down lists.
Setup custom contact status options to alter how the contact can be used with projects, invoices, expenses (bills) and more. *This feature is available with the Synergy Business or Enterprise products.*
Each contact is created with either a type of company (a registered business), an individual, or personnel. If the contact type was chosen in error and then you can convert the contact to an alternate type by:
Click the contact in the list to open the record.
Click the actions button in the top right and select on of the following convert to options from the list: Company - Enter the company name. Individual - Enter the first and last name. Personnel - Enter the first and last name.
Click OK and the contact is updated, and contact list is refreshed. Re-open the contact record if you need to further edit the details.
Use this option to send the details for the open contact record into an Excel file. This imports the single open record only. If you need to export multiple records to Excel then try using a Synergy report.
The export to Excel for contact details was added for GDPR EU regulations, to allow you 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:
Open the contacts list.
Click a contact row in the list to open the record.
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.
A contact can be deleted if it is not linked to any projects, expenses (bills), or linked to any shared document portals. Delete a contact by:
Locate the contact in the list view and click to open the record.
Click the actions button in the top right and select 'delete' from the list.
Click 'Yes' on the delete confirmation pop-up box.
The contact is deleted and you are returned to contact list.
Tips:
Delete contacts in bulk in the list view using the multi delete option found in the checkbox.
If the contact has been used then it cannot be deleted. Make the contact inactive by changing the contact status to stop future use of the record.
View the address in Google Maps
Call the phone number
Email the contact
Skype call the contact
View the Twitter account
View the Linked In account
Open the website (company type contacts only)
Go to the audit log for the open contact
Tip: Edit the contact and add the above details to record to be able to see these action buttons in the read only view.
The details that can be stored against each contact record in the 'edit' page are:
Name Type the company contact name. This is a mandatory field when creating a new company contact. This field is not shown for the individual or personnel contact types.
Title Enter the title of the individual. i.e. Mr, Mrs, Miss etc. This field is not shown for the company contact type.
First name Enter the first name for the individual or personnel contact. This field is not shown for the company contact type.
Last name Enter the surname or last name for the individual or personnel types. This is a mandatory field when creating new individual or personnel contact. This field is not shown for the company contact type.
ABN The ABN number for the contact. ABN stands for Australian Business Number and is a unique number issued by the Australian Business Register (ABR) which is operated by the Australian Taxation Office.
ACN The ACN number for the contact. ACN stands for Australian Company Number, and this is a unique 9 digit number is issued to every registered company by the Australia Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
Website The company website address can be stored. This field is not shown for individual or personnel types.
Email domain Enter the company type contact email domain into this field. Each new personnel type contact created for the company contact will automatically have this domain added into the personnel email address field. This makes it easier to setup extra personnel records. e.g. @totalsynergy.com or @totalsynergy.com.au are email domains.
Time zone Save the location of the contact using the time zone field, so that you know when is best to call the contact. e.g. UTC + 10 is Sydney, Brisbane Australia time, or UTC is London GMT time, or UTC -7 is USA mountain time.
Status The default status for all new contact records is active, which allows the contact to be used through-out Synergy. Change the status to on-hold to stop the contact being added to future projects, invoices, or expenses (bills). Change the status to inactive and in addition to the on-hold restrictions the contact is also hidden from drop down lists in Synergy. Custom status options can also be selected if they have been setup by your System Administrator. *This feature is available with the Synergy Business or Enterpriseproducts.*
Roles Select the role to be the default classification or category for the contact. This 'role' is used to group the contact on projects. This is a mandatory field when creating a new contact. Multiple roles can be entered against each contact.
Job title Store the job title or position title that the personnel holds at the contact. This information can be seen in the project contacts tab, and on document and report outputs.
Parent contact This field is only shown for personnel type contacts, and is used to show which company contact the personnel record is linked.
Phones Enter the main office phone number, mobile cell phone number, or fax number for the contact. Four phone numbers can be stored against each contact record. The first phone number entered against the contact is consider the primary phone number.
Social accounts Store the user names for the company or personnel social media account. e.g. The Twitter and LinkedIn company page both have the username 'totalsynergy' for our company, or would be a custom created username for a personnel record like Jill_Lockhart or Jill-Lockhart1982. A Skype username is normally only exists at a personnel level as it calls that person directly. A Skype username may look like Jill_Lockhart or Jill-Lockhart1982.
Emails The main office email address for a company contact, or the direct email address for individual or personnel contact types. Four email addresses can be stored against each contact record, however the first email address is considered the primary email contact address.
Unique ID This is a unique number for the contact record, which is used by the Accounting add-ons interfaces. Learn more about unique ID numbers.
Account manager Select which internal staff member is responsible for this contact's account. This is the project manager at your company that manages this client's account.
Tags Store extra information against all types of contacts for use in reporting and grouping contacts throughout Synergy. Tags are used to store extra data against contact records in synergy, for use when a field for that information doesn't exist on the contact record. Tags are automatically attached to records that are created or updated by a Synergy process, to let you easily filter the list and find all the contacts updated by an automated process. e.g. MYOB / Xero contacts import.