Enhanced interface

Contacts

Contact records hold all the information you need to contact an individual or business. Contacts almost never exist in Sage Intacct alone. Rather, they’re associated with one or more records across many applications.

Contacts can be used for the following purposes:

Send event notifications.
Determine ship-to or bill-to, and pay-to or return-to addresses in Order Entry and Purchasing transactions.
Determine tax on transactions.

Contacts are not dimensions like Suppliers, Employees, Customers, or Users. Instead, think of your contacts as a common, shared address book that's used across your company by many people for a variety of purposes. For example, if you update an address in a supplier record, the address will update everywhere in Intacct that the contact is associated with.

If your supplier has multiple addresses, Intacct recommends that you create a separate contact for each supplier address. For example, if your Supplier has two addresses, you can assign one contact as the Primary contact. And, you can assign the other contact as the Pay-to address. Go to Supplier contact information for more details.

To view a list of contacts, go to Company > Setup > Configuration, and select Contacts. From the Contacts list, you can Add, Edit, View, or Delete a contact.

This list supports the enhanced lists interface. Learn more about using enhanced lists.

About the suggested contact name

The suggested contact name is the most important field in a contact record. It acts as a unique contact ID across Sage Intacct, which means it cannot be edited after it's created. Furthermore, although you can change the printed name of a contact with the Print as field, the Suggested contact name is the name that appears in all lists and dropdowns across Intacct. If you run into a situation where you need to change the suggested contact name of a contact—for example, a supplier name has changed—see Change the suggested contact name for more detailed information about your options.

Additionally, when you create a new supplier, customer, or employee, a related contact is often created simultaneously based off of specific fields in the record. See Create a contact from a record to learn about which fields in each record create the related suggested contact name.

Add a contact

Because contacts are flexible and can often be created at the time of need, there are a variety of ways you can add a contact. Most notably, contacts are created when new supplier, customer, or employee records are added to Intacct. In each case, the Suggested contact name is created from specific fields that can affect the consistency of your company naming conventions. Be sure to review the record for the specific fields when you create a new contact.

Best practices for creating contacts

Because contacts are used by and can be created by various records and applications in Sage Intacct, they can be set up inconsistently, which could be confusing in the future or even cause errors. To avoid these problems and to set up your contacts right the first time, we recommend following the guidelines below.

Item	Details
Use only supported characters	The suggested contact name acts as a unique and permanent contact ID field in Intacct. The following values are supported: alphanumeric characters various punctuation (periods, hyphens, underscores, parentheses) Double spaces are not permitted by Intacct and result in invalid contacts or contact records not appearing within dropdown menus. Furthermore, using other special characters not listed here (such as # or %) may also result in an invalid contact.
Establish a naming convention	The suggested contact name is used in lists and dropdowns to identify your contacts. For this reason, we suggest using a naming convention that makes it easy to distinguish contacts in a list. For example, you can use the company name of a supplier or customer, such as Example.com for the suggested contact name. If the contact is an individual, you might choose a convention like Last name, First name or vice versa to keep your contacts consistent and easy to scan in lists and dropdowns.

Item

Details

Use only supported characters

The suggested contact name acts as a unique and permanent contact ID field in Intacct. The following values are supported:

alphanumeric characters
various punctuation (periods, hyphens, underscores, parentheses)

Double spaces are not permitted by Intacct and result in invalid contacts or contact records not appearing within dropdown menus. Furthermore, using other special characters not listed here (such as # or %) may also result in an invalid contact.

Establish a naming convention

The suggested contact name is used in lists and dropdowns to identify your contacts. For this reason, we suggest using a naming convention that makes it easy to distinguish contacts in a list.

For example, you can use the company name of a supplier or customer, such as Example.com for the suggested contact name. If the contact is an individual, you might choose a convention like Last name, First name or vice versa to keep your contacts consistent and easy to scan in lists and dropdowns.

Create a contact from a record

You can create new contacts as you create new supplier, customer, or employee records. The related contact, specifically the suggested contact name, is created from specific fields depending on the kind of record you’re creating.

The Suggested contact name is a unique ID field that cannot be edited after the contact is created. Be sure that the related field is correct before you save it. See Change the suggested contact name for more details.

Record type	Suggested contact name
Supplier or customer	When you create a new related contact through a new supplier or customer record, the Suggested contact name is saved as Print as + V + Supplier ID for supplier records and Print as + C + Customer ID for customer records. For example, a supplier named Example.com with a supplier ID of 142 would create a contact with the Suggested contact name of Example.com(V142). Similarly, a customer named Frank Smith with a customer ID of 1557 would create a contact with Frank Smith(C1557) as the Suggested contact name. Creating a new supplier or customer creates a new related contact unless you specifically select the Exclude from the company contact list checkbox when you create the record. You may want to use this option if you want to keep your contacts consistent with your company's naming convention.
Employee	When you create a new employee record, you can choose an existing contact or create a new contact using the Primary contact name field. If the employee is also an Intacct user (which is required for entering Time & Expenses), you must select the same Primary contact name that you used for the employee's user record.
User	Creating a user does not automatically create a contact record for that user. If you're creating a user who is also an employee, customer, or supplier, add them to the Customers, Suppliers, or Employees list first, then add them as a user.

Record type

Suggested contact name

Supplier or customer

When you create a new related contact through a new supplier or customer record, the Suggested contact name is saved as Print as + V + Supplier ID for supplier records and Print as + C + Customer ID for customer records.

For example, a supplier named Example.com with a supplier ID of 142 would create a contact with the Suggested contact name of Example.com(V142). Similarly, a customer named Frank Smith with a customer ID of 1557 would create a contact with Frank Smith(C1557) as the Suggested contact name.

Creating a new supplier or customer creates a new related contact unless you specifically select the Exclude from the company contact list checkbox when you create the record. You may want to use this option if you want to keep your contacts consistent with your company's naming convention.

Employee

When you create a new employee record, you can choose an existing contact or create a new contact using the Primary contact name field.

If the employee is also an Intacct user (which is required for entering Time & Expenses), you must select the same Primary contact name that you used for the employee's user record.

User

Creating a user does not automatically create a contact record for that user. If you're creating a user who is also an employee, customer, or supplier, add them to the Customers, Suppliers, or Employees list first, then add them as a user.

Create a contact manually

To create a contact quickly, you only need to assign it a unique Suggested contact name and a Print as name for documents.

To add a more detailed contact record:

Go to Company > Setup > Configuration and select Add (circle) next to Contacts.
Enter the contact name, such as Jose Hernandez.
- This name is not necessarily the name that's used throughout your company because actual names are not always unique. For example, a name such as Jose Hernandez could be the same as a different contact in your company.
- Intacct automatically suggests a unique Suggested contact name and Print as name based on the naming details you enter.
For a contact to be associated with an Intacct user account, the contact must have a first and last name.
Add the primary email address, phone information, and company name for the contact.
Change the Suggested contact name, as needed.

This name appears in lists and dropdowns.

After you save, this field cannot be edited. See Change the suggested contact name for more details.
Optionally, change the Print as name. This name appears on printed documents.
On the Mailing information tab, add the contact address details.
On the Additional information tab, enter any secondary information you might have.
Select Save.

To use the contact with use with Advanced Tax or AvaTax, select the Taxable checkbox.

Edit a contact

After the contact is created, the Suggested contact name—which appears in dropdowns and lists—cannot be edited. See Change the suggested contact name for more details.

However, you can make edits to the Print as field, which is separate from the Suggested contact name. While changes to this field do not update the contact name that appears in lists and dropdowns, it does update the contact name as it appears on printed documents.

Go to Company > Setup > Configuration > Contacts.
Find the contact that you want to edit.
Select More actions > Edit at the end of the row.
Make your changes.
Select Save.

Go to Company > Setup > Configuration > Contacts.
Find the contact that you want to edit.
Select Edit.
Make your changes.
Select Save.

View contacts

You can view a list of all contacts or the details of a specific contact.

Go to Company > Setup > Configuration > Contacts.
Find the contact that you want to view in more detail.
Select More actions > View at the end of the row.

Go to Company > Setup > Configuration > Contacts.
Find the contact that you want to see in more detail, and select View.

Contacts with Advanced Tax or AvaTax

The system can look up the contact to determine the local sales tax. If there's no contact, the company is used instead. More specifically, a contact tax group is chosen for both the company and the contact. Intacct applies a tax schedule to that tax group.
Multi-entity users: Contacts can either be common (that is, accessible) to all entities, or exclusive (private) to a specific entity.
Many transaction pages contain fields either for a contact in the Pay-to and return-to or the Bill-to and ship-to fields, and you might have specified a contact. Suppose you specified a contact for an AR sales invoice and the contact has changed. If you reprinted the AR sales invoice and the new contact information was automatically substituted by Intacct, you would not print an exact copy of the AR sales invoice as it was originally issued. Consequently, the original contact information associated with the document is retained so that you can print an exact copy. However, Intacct also lets you know if the contact information has changed and enables you to substitute the new information if you want to use the Get latest information feature.