Assign contacts to records

Contact records simply hold the information you need to contact individuals or businesses. Alone, they’re no more than a shared address book used for a variety of purposes. However, because one contact can be associated with many records, contacts become an easy way to manage contact information across many records, such as your customer, employee, supplier, and user records.

Though you can create a new contact automatically when you create a customer, employee, supplier, or user, you might want to associate an existing contact with a record instead.

Whatever the case, it's important to note that contacts are associated with the records of individuals and businesses you interact with, not the other way around. For instance, if you want to associate the existing contact Jim West to the employee Jim West, you would go to the employee record to make this connection, not the contact record.

Changing a contact in an existing record only affects transactions and other data records going forward. It will not affect your historical data.
Associate a contact with a... Details

Customer

  1. Go to Accounts Receivable > All > Customers.

  2. Find the customer that you want to associate the contact with.

    Can't find the customer you want to edit? If you want to include one-time use customers, add the One-time use column and then clear the filter at the top of the column. To include inactive customers, clear the filter at the top of the Status column to include Active, Inactive, and Active non-posting customers.Be sure to select the Include one-time use and Include inactive checkboxes above the list if you want to make changes to these sorts of customers.

  3. Select More actions > Edit at the end of the row.

  4. Select the Contact list tab.
  5. In the Contact list table, add the contact you want to associate with the record.
    • Enter a Category.
    • Choose a contact from the dropdown in the Contact column.
      • Select Find to easily search for a contact by name in a pop-up window.
  6. Set the Primary contact, Bill-to contact, or Ship-to contact to the new contact you just added to the Contact list.
  7. Select Save.

  1. Go to Accounts Receivable > All > Customers.

  2. Find the customer that you want to associate the contact with.

    Can't find the customer you want to edit? If you want to include one-time use customers, add the One-time use column and then clear the filter at the top of the column. To include inactive customers, clear the filter at the top of the Status column to include Active, Inactive, and Active non-posting customers.Be sure to select the Include one-time use and Include inactive checkboxes above the list if you want to make changes to these sorts of customers.

  3. Select Edit.
  4. Select the Contact list tab.
  5. In the Contact list table, add the contact you want to associate with the record.
    • Set a Category.
    • Choose a contact from the dropdown in the Contact column.
      • Select Find to easily search for a contact by name in a pop-up window.
  6. Set the Primary contact, Bill-to contact, or Ship-to contact to the new contact you just added to the Contact list.

  7. Select Save.

Employee

  1. Go to Expenses > All > Employees.

  2. Find the employee that you want to associate the contact with.
  3. Select Edit.
  4. Depending on your needs, do one of the following:
    • Change the Primary contact name on the first tab to change the primary information of the employee.
    • Select the Contacts tab, and add the contact here if it's extraneous information. For instance, their mailing address might be different from their home address. You could add that information here through a different contact than the primary contact.
    Select Find to easily search for a contact by name in a pop-up window.

  5. Select Save.

  1. Go to Expenses > All > Employees.

  2. Find the employee that you want to associate the contact with, then select Edit.
  3. Depending on your needs, do one of the following:
    • Change the Primary contact name on the first tab to change the primary information of the employee.
    • Select the Contacts tab, and add the contact here if it's extraneous information. For instance, their mailing address might be different from their home address. You could add that information here through a different contact than the primary contact.
    Select Find to easily search for a contact by name in a pop-up window.
  4. Select Save.

Supplier

  1. Go to Accounts Payable > All > Suppliers.

  2. Find the supplierthat you want to associate the contact with.

    Cannot find the supplier you want to edit? Be sure to set your filters include one-time use and inactive vendors Be sure to select the Include one-time use and Include inactive checkboxes above the list if you want to make changes to these sorts of suppliers.

  3. Select More actions > Edit at the end of the row.

  4. Select the Contact list tab.

  5. In the Contact list table, add the contact you want to associate with the record.

    • Enter a Category.
    • Choose a contact from the dropdown in the Contact column.
      • Select Find to easily search for a contact by name in a pop-up window.
  6. Set the Primary contact, Pay-to contact, or Return to contact, or 1099 contact to the new contact you just added to the Contact list.

  7. Select Save.

  1. Go to Accounts Payable > All > Suppliers.

  2. Find the supplier that you want to associate the contact with.

    Can't find the supplier you want to edit? Be sure to set your filters include one-time use and inactive vendors Be sure to select the Include one-time use and Include inactive checkboxes above the list if you want to make changes to these sorts of suppliers.
  3. Select Edit.
  4. Select the Contact list tab.

  5. In the Contact list table, add the contact you want to associate with the record.

    • Enter a Category.
    • Choose a contact from the dropdown in the Contact column.
      • Select Find to easily search for a contact by name in a pop-up window.
  6. Set the Primary contact, Pay-to contact, or Return to contact, or 1099 contact to the new contact you just added to the Contact list.
  7. Select Save.

Learn more about supplier contact information.

User

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

    A list of all users appears.

  2. Find the user that you want to associate the contact with.
  3. Select Edit.

  4. Select the Contact name dropdown, then select the contact you want to associate with this record.

    Select Find to easily search for a contact by name in a pop-up window.

  5. Select Save.