Secondary Contacts

[cforger]

Hello,

We have a number of accounts that we're now starting to create secondary contacts for, by using the Contact tab in the Accounts window.

Currently, I have all my Quickbooks Accounts intoCommitCRM.

This seems to be rather straight-forward, but I have two questions;

1) If we create billable time/charges for a secondary contact who is not in Quickbooks, will we need to create that contact in QB when we push the invoice, or will the invoice go to the parent account (which is what we want really).

2) How can I take imported Outlook contacts, sync them so they are in the CommitCRM Accounts DB, and then tag them as secondary contacts for the main parent account? I'd like to be able to add a contact via Outlook (as I can use a little add-in to grab their sig info and populate their contact info). I don't mind tagging them manually one by one, I expect I have to do that. I see there is an import routine, but that seems to be for bulk entries. I'm looking to add on average 3-4 secondary contacts per Parent Account.

Thanks. I looked in the forum here, and couldn't see anything related to this.

[Support Team]

Hi,

Thanks for the questions, please find answers below:

1) If we create billable time/charges for a secondary contact who is not in Quickbooks, will we need to create that contact in QB when we push the invoice, or will the invoice go to the parent account (which is what we want really).

Yes, the Invoice will be linked to the main Account as you would want it to. When you select the contact for the Charge, the main Account stays the same, and only the contact changes. This way you can charge different secondary contacts, in order to keep track of specific jobs and their clients, but the invoice itself will be billed to the main account.

2) How can I take imported Outlook contacts, sync them so they are in the RangerMSP Accounts DB, and then tag them as secondary contacts for the main parent account? I'd like to be able to add a contact via Outlook (as I can use a little add-in to grab their sig info and populate their contact info). I don't mind tagging them manually one by one, I expect I have to do that. I see there is an import routine, but that seems to be for bulk entries. I'm looking to add on average 3-4 secondary contacts per Parent Account.

Each Outlook Contact creates a separate Account in RangerMSP. In case you want to create secondary accounts in RangerMSP, you should probably start with creating them in RangerMSP, and then sync the accounts to Outlook.

Note when you are in the Contacts tab in RangerMSP, you can use the Import option by right-clicking the secondary contacts list > Import Secondary Contacts (as you mentioned), which allows you to import the secondary contacts for this Account from any input file (e.g. Excel, CSV, etc.). Also, if you wish to attach any additional files and file them under the secondary contact, you can simply drag-and-drop the file onto RangerMSP when the Account is selected, this will open a new RangerMSP Document, and you can select the specific Contact for this document.

Once you have all the secondary contacts in RangerMSP, you can sync with Outlook, and this will create an Outlook Contact per secondary contact, and they will all have the same "company name" in Outlook.

I hope this helps.

Sherry

[cforger]

Thanks Sherry, that is most helpful.

So this means that if I have an account that I want to be made into a secondary contact, that I need to delete the account, and create a secondary contact?


At this stage, I'd like to ask for a feature request:

We should be able to click on an Account and turn it into a Secondary Contact. I'd understand there would probably have to be some basic logic checking - i.e. it couldn't work for an account that is already synced to Quickbooks, because that would cause problems.

This would be close to a feature that Microsoft CRM 4 has, where you can open a contact and attach it to a parent account.

It would allow me to clean up my contacts when they become unorganized due to staff not realising that Customer A and Customer B with different division names, all bill through to Company C, etc. It would also allow me to create a contact on-the-fly in Outlook via my SIG grabbing hook, and later on attach it properly inCommitCRM.

Is this something you could consider? Thanks.

[Support Team]

Thank you for the feedback and suggestions. We will look into this and may enhance the current options to support this as well.

As for the Accounts - yes, you'll probably need to add new secondary contact and delete the account.

Another option to consider (though I am not sure it will help in this case) - each Account has a tab called 'Relations'. This tab lets you link between two separate 'main' accounts. For example, if you have Customer A and Customer B and you know that they are somehow related - for example you know that Customer B is a client of Customer A - you can log this information as a relation between the two accounts using the 'Relations' tab (you add a Relation for one Account and the other Account automatically has a Relation to the original Account - a kind of a back link).
Another example would be - you have two accounts - Customer A and Contact B - where Customer A was referred to you by Contact B - you can save this information and the link between these Accounts by adding a Relation link.

HTH

Sherry

[AutoPilot]

We should be able to click on an Account and turn it into a Secondary Contact.

Has this feature request from 2008 been implemented?

[Support Team]

Accounts are much more complex objects than secondary contacts are. For one the record includes much less fields (where will then go when converted into secondary contacts?). Anyway, we do get why this may help when importing and during the initial phase, noted. Thanks.