Add and use contacts on pages

Add a contact on the fly without leaving the task that you’re performing, such as creating an AP purchase invoice or AR sales invoice. You can also use contacts in your company to create default contacts that are automatically entered in your transactions.

You can manage all your company contacts from one central location. (Go to Company > Setup > Configuration > Contacts. )

Contacts are almost always connected to some other object in Sage Intacct. For this reason, to access contact records, you need permissions to Add or Edit the object related to the contact. For example, to see supplier contact records, you must also have access to suppliers.

Add a contact on the fly

The label of a contact field can vary depending on the page you’re working in. For example, in Accounts Payable you see Pay-to or return-to contact fields, and in Accounts Receivable you see Bill-to and ship-to contact fields, and so forth. Whatever the name, the process of adding a contact is quick and easy across the company.

  1. On the page in which you’re working, select the down arrow in the contact field. The dropdown list appears.
  2. Select Add at the top of the list. The Contact Information page appears.
  3. All you need to create a contact is to assign a unique name to it, and decide the name to be printed on documents. For more details on required and optional fields, see Contacts.

How are contacts used?

How your company uses a contact can vary depending on the application you are in and the task you’re performing.

Use contacts to: Where to do this task:

Make employees, suppliers, or customers users in Intacct.

  • A user ID combined with a password provides access to the company.
  • A contact can be a person who is not necessarily a user in the company, such as a supplier or customer contact.
  • A contact can be associated with a user by adding the contact name to a new user profile. For example, you can associate an employee contact with a user ID to enable that employee to enter timesheets and expenses. Similarly, you can associate a customer contact with a user ID to enable a customer to log in and approve timesheets or expense payments. Additionally, some suppliers may be subcontractors who need to log in to enter timesheets and expenses.

Go to Company > Admin > Users, roles, and groups > Users.

Determine the pay-to or return-to parties in transactions.

The company uses the pay-to contact for supplier-related activities, such as:

  • Cheque paying
  • AP purchase invoice creation
  • Tax calculation for VAT and GST tax solutions in Accounts Payable and Purchasing

The company uses the return-to contact for supplier-related activities such as:

  • Advanced Tax calculation in Purchasing (if used)
  • AvaTax calculation (if you have an Avalara integration)

  • Go to Accounts Payable > All > Suppliers.

  • Go to Purchasing > All > Transactions and select the applicable transaction type.

Determine the bill-to or ship-to parties in transactions.

The company uses the bill-to contact for customer-related activities, such as:

  • Sales transactions
  • AR sales invoice creation
  • Manual deposits

The company uses the ship-to contact for customer-related activities such as:

  • Order Entry transactions
  • AR sales invoice creation
  • Advanced Tax calculation (if used)
  • AvaTax calculation (if you have an Avalara integration)
  • Tax calculation for VAT and GST tax solutions

  • Go to Order Entry > All > Transactions and select the applicable transaction type.

Determine the pay-to contact for expense reimbursements.

The company uses the pay-to contact for employee related activities, such as expense cheque payment.

Employee expenses

Use default contacts in transactions

You create contact defaults for AP purchase invoices or AR sales invoices in the customer or supplier records respectively.

For example, if you want a specific contact to automatically be entered in the Bill-to field every time you select a specific customer in an AR sales invoice, you can add that contact as the bill-to default in the customer record.

If you create a transaction for which you want to specify a contact other than the default, you can simply select or add the other contact in the transaction in place of the default.

Example: Selecting a contact as the default pay-to contact for AP purchase invoices

  1. Go to Accounts Payable > All > Suppliers.

  2. Find the supplier that you want to update.
  3. Select More actions > Edit at the end of the row.
  4. Select the Contact list tab.
  5. Under Contact list, enter a category such as Pay to and select a Contact.
    Intacct adds the contact to all dropdown contact lists at the top of the page.
  6. Select the Pay-to contact dropdown and select the contact.
  7. Select Save.

  1. Go to Accounts Payable > All > Suppliers.

  2. Find the supplier that you want to update.
  3. Select Edit next to the Supplier ID.
  4. Select the Contact list tab.
  5. Under Contact list, enter a category, such as Pay to, and select a Contact.
    Intacct adds the contact to all three dropdown contact lists at the top of the page.
  6. Select the Pay-to contact dropdown and select the contact.
  7. Select Save.

Moving forward, each time you create an AP purchase invoice and select this supplier, the Pay-to field in the AR sales invoice page automatically defaults to the contact you selected in the Pay-to contact field here.

Example: Selecting a contact as the default bill-to contact for AR sales invoices:

  1. Go to Accounts Receivable > All > Customers.

  2. Find the customer that you want to update.
  3. Select More actions > Edit at the end of the row.
  4. Select the Contact List tab.
  5. Under Contact list, enter Bill-to as the category and select a Contact.
    Intacct adds the contact to all three dropdown contact lists at the top of the page.
  6. Select the Bill-to contact dropdown and select the contact.
  7. Select Save.

  1. Go to Accounts Receivable > All > Customers.

  2. Find the customer that you want to update.
  3. Select Edit next to the Customer ID.
  4. Select the Contact List tab.
  5. Under Contact list, enter Bill-to as the category, and select a Contact.
    Intacct adds the contact to all three dropdown contact lists at the top of the page.
  6. Select the Bill-to contact dropdown and select the contact.
  7. Select Save.

Moving forward, each time you create an AR sales invoice and select this customer, the Bill-to field in the AR sales invoice page automatically defaults to the contact you selected in the Bill-to contact field here.

Defaults you can create

Default contact Autofilled in Created in

Pay to and return to

AP purchase invoices and adjustments

Purchasing transactions

Accounts Payable > All > Suppliers

Bill-to and ship-to

AR sales invoices and adjustments

Order Entry transactions

Accounts Receivable > All > Customers

Reimburse-to

Bill-to and ship-to

Expense entry and adjustments

Project AR sales invoices

Time & Expenses > All > Employees

Projects > All > Projects

Contact priority in a record

Intacct autofills many contact fields based on the defaults that you set up within the customer or supplier record.

For example, if you create an Order Entry transaction, Intacct automatically enters the Ship-to contact from the Ship-to contact in the sales transaction, which itself defaults from the Ship-to contact in the customer record. You can overwrite auto-filled contacts as you create transactions.

For Projects, Intacct uses the project contact information, and if there's none, defaults to the customer or supplier contact information.

If you do not create defaults for a contact field, you can select from the field contact list in each transaction. Here you'll see every single contact available without any filtering.

Use contacts to help determine tax

If your company ships to many different tax jurisdictions, such as many different states, you'll probably use Advanced Tax or the AvaTax integration to track sales tax.

Advanced Tax and AvaTax use the following contact fields to determine the tax jurisdiction and the applicable taxes.

Tax system Application Contact used

Intacct Advanced Tax

  • Accounts Receivable or Order Entry
  • Ship-to
  • Purchasing
  • Return-to

AvaTax integration

  • Accounts Receivable or Order Entry
  • Ship-to
  • Purchasing

The following contact tax fields are used to determine the applicable VAT or GST.

Application Contact used

Accounts Receivable and Order Entry

Ship-to

For Accounts Receivable, the ship-to contact filters the list of tax details that can be chosen to apply tax to the transaction, making it easier to pick a tax detail.

Accounts Payable and Purchasing

Pay-to

For Accounts Payable, the pay-to contact filters the list of tax details that can be chosen to apply tax to the transaction, making it easier to pick a tax detail.

About contact tax groups

Contact tax groups enable you to apply different taxes to customers, suppliers, and their contacts, according to their jurisdictions. You associate customers, suppliers, and their contacts with contact tax groups. Then, you can use tax schedule maps to apply different tax schedules to your contact tax groups.

  • Sales tax: Assume that the local taxes in two cities in the same state are different. Say that local sales tax is 7% in Los Angeles and 10% in San Francisco. You can create two contact tax groups, one for Los Angeles and another for San Francisco. You can then apply one tax schedule to all the customers in the Los Angeles group and another tax schedule to all the customers in the San Francisco group.

  • VAT and GST: VAT or GST is typically different for customers inside and outside your country. You could create two customer contact tax groups, one for "In-country customers" and another for "Outside-country customers". You could then apply one tax schedule to all the customers in the In-country group and another tax schedule to all the customers in the Outside-country group.