Managing contacts

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Practice CS enables you to manage multiple contacts for your clients, as well as standalone contacts who may be associated with no clients or several clients. You can enter contact information and manage contacts on the Contact Info tab of the Clients setup screen.

Types of contacts

You can designate four separate types of contacts for clients in Practice CS:

  • Primary contact — This contact is the main entry for the client, and may be either a company or a person. The primary address, phone number, and email address for this contact are included in datasharing with other CS Professional Suite applications.
  • Preferred contact — This contact is the person who represents the client in its relationship with your firm. By default, the primary contact is also designated as the preferred contact, but you can designate any contact (including internal staff or office contacts) as the preferred contact for a client.
  • Billing contact — This contact is the person to whom billing communications for the client (such as invoices) are addressed. By default, the primary contact is also designated as the billing contact, but you can designate any contact (including internal staff or office contacts) as the billing contact for a client.
  • Additional contacts — These contacts can be additional employees of the client or other contacts associated with the client (such as an attorney).

Card views

The Contact Info tab of the Clients setup screen provides four different ways to view your designated contacts, in the form of "cards" that show different sets of information.

  • File As card — Shows only the contents of the File as field for all contacts
  • Name card — Shows the contents of the File as field, plus the Name, Title, and Company fields
  • Primary card — Shows the contents of the following fields:
    • File as
    • Name
    • Title
    • Company
    • Phone (primary)
    • E-mail (primary)
    • Address (primary)
  • Business card — Shows the fields from the Primary card, plus any additional phone numbers, email addresses, or street addresses entered for contacts. The primary values are in boldface.

If the same contact is shown more than once (for example, the same person serves as both primary and preferred contacts), only the File as field is shown for additional instances.

Working with contact cards

In edit mode, contact cards offer several functions.

  • Right-click or click the down arrow Down arrow button to select another preferred or billing contact from a list of contacts.
  • Click the More Ellipse button to add or subtract contacts from the list of additional contacts for the client.

    Note: When you remove an additional contact, that contact is no longer listed in the Additional Contacts field for the client, but is not deleted from your overall list of contacts.

  • Right-click to add a new contact.
  • Right-click to remove the selected contact from the list of additional contacts for the client (not available for the contact designated as the primary contact for the client).

Contacts listed as preferred or billing contacts are omitted from the list of additional contacts.

Related topics

Changing preferred or billing contacts

Entering client contact information

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